Oc'ing A Barton 2500 On Asus A7n8x Deluxe

[alangsam]

OK I am now running my 2500+ Barton at 200FSB no problem 2.2Ghz very stable as if it were a 3200+. No change to Vcore.

I have a mix of 333 and DDR 400 Memory - dont ask me why.

 

I have been running SiSoft Sandra to assess performance impact. I am running 20% faster on CPU benchmarks with the simple flick of the 200Mhz FSB Bios change from 166(stock).

 

I was wanting to check performance vs cost the benefit of ditching the DDR333 cards and replacing with DDR 400. When I up the memory speed to 200 from 166 and set the timings on aggressive it stays stable log enough to run the Sandra cache and memory benchmarks.

 

The interesting part is that were talking a 2-4% difference at most?? The system goes unstable when I run the Sandra Burn in wizard after a while. I have upped VCORE to 1.85 from 1.73(stock) and the memory voltage to 2.7 from 2.6 (stock) with the same instability. I am assuming would need to get all the memory up to DDR400 to have chance. I am still suprised at how little the perfromance increase in bandwidth is? I was looking for another 20% or so?

 

What am I missing here?

 

I have an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe

AMD Barton 2500+

SATA Raid 2x120GB

1 x 80GB UDE

1GB Memory 2x256 DDR333PC2700 and 1 512MB DDR400 PC3200 Cards

Zalman CPNS ALCU 7000 CPU Fan

ATI 9100 Video

 

2x120mm Case Fans in an Antec Sonata

[Eva_Unit_0]

Woah...easy on the vcore. 1.85 is awfully high for a baron, especially on air cooling. And I think the stock voltage for a 2500 barton is 1.65. My asus probe reads about .05V high...did you get your stock voltage number from asus probe? Maybe yours reads high also. Anyway, I must say you've got a decent system there.

 

Does the system eventually go unstable if you have the ram set to 166? My initial guess would be that the cpu rather than the ram is causing the instability. Anyway, regarding the performance difference, there has been a long running debate as to whether high clock/high latency or low clock/low latency gets better performance, and different people get different results. Your memory timings are probably set to "optimal," right? If so, then when you increase the speed it automatically loosens the timings and performance ends up being about the same. However, just set the timings manually so you'll have both the higher clock speed and the tighter timings. The automatic timings tend to be very conservative anyway. For example, my pc3200 defaults to 8-4-4-3 timings at 200fsb, but I have them running completely stable at 10-2-2-2.5.

[wanksta]

ya go for the DDR400 stick, ditch the DDR333, you will get more preformance out of the 400 stick

 

check your temps, what are they, keep an eye on that, and run prime95 to burnin and check for stability

 

use spped fan or something else to check for tems, the asus probe is not very accurate, because it takes socket temps, not diode

[captor]

Is there a way to pump the mem voltage beyond 2.8 on the a7n8x del?

 

I got GeiL ram and I think i'm limited by the voltage.

[Eva_Unit_0]

No, the a7n8x only goes up to 2.8v. And yes, Geil ram tends to want 2.9 or 3.0 V to run at its best. That fact has brough Geil some criticism, since not all users can run their ram at its fullest potential.

[alangsam]

how do i get more than 200MHZ on the FSB? seems the options are only 100 133 166 and 200. I hear bartons will go to 217?

[Eva_Unit_0]

Set the "system performance" tab to "User Defined" to open up all the fsb options. You'll then have 100-233 in increments of 1 mhz.

[alangsam]

EVA_Unit_0 listed off some memory timings for me to use

For example, my pc3200 defaults to 8-4-4-3 timings at 200fsb, but I have them running completely stable at 10-2-2-2.5.

How do I correlate these to the items listed in the ASUS BIOS - ie I am guessing that the 2.5 is CAS latency. What are the others? Is there a standard?