Overclocking the Athlon 64 on nForce4

[congo]

It took a while to familiarise myself with the BIOS of my new Asus A8N-SLI mainboard. It's got an nForce4

[the_autopilot]

Congrats.

BTW, another 6600 gt is not that expensive and you'll be set for some time. That will give you a higher 3dmark03 score if you wish. Keep in mind though, that this will help most other games except fs2004. You will see a drop in fps should you use SLI in fs2004.

If you need any help with the BIOS, just ask. I have the same mobo (actually, I have the premium versian of the A8N-SLI, but the only difference is the digital SLI switch as opposed to the interface card SLI switch).

EDIT:   I under-clocked it just to see how it worked today, then completely forgot about it, hosted some Forgotten Battles servers and flew all night, not even noticing the difference...... Now that's a fast rig!

Thats probably because that game isn't very CPU intensive/dependant. You would notice the fps drop if you played a game like half life2.

[congo]

Actually,  I do have a query.

When I selected manual setups in both the cpu and memory configurations in bios, I tried to get higher performance in using certain configurations there.

What would happen is that certain settings simply wouldn't "stick", that is, when I rebooted, I found that the changes did'nt effect, and in fact, the bios reverted to "auto" settings, as if the bios is running a logical protection routine that prevents incorrect or unattainable configurations.

On trying again, I noticed that the changes I made were not sticking once I changed to the other bios page and then back again.

Is the bios actually intelligent enough to do this as a protective mechanism? Most bios would simply effect the changes and cause boot failure or bios defaults to load.

It doesn't seem possible to "force" the hardware into dodgy specs.

Any ideas on this?

[the_autopilot]

I know the mobo has some protection routines, but resetting its own settings is not one of them, at least on my mobo.

It could be AI NOS doing something fishy. AI nos is the feature that auto overclocks. I turn it off due to it being unpredictable at times.

I would also flash the bios with a newest bios. That usually fixes small problems with the bios'es that mobo manufacturers find after they have shipped the board.

[congo]

I disabled AInos and all the other auto thingy's the board is capable of before I started tweaking, maybe I missed something.

I loaded the board's bios page at Asus and noticed that most bios updates were beta's which was a bit disconcerting at first, so I went to the support forums.

The forums were filled with users reporting various issues, (In particular, issues relating to "venice" cored cpu's), with the original bios, version 1001 I believe, and identical hardware to mine.

I had absolutely no compatibility issues at all with my venice cpu and the board, (except perhaps this setting I refered to above), which made me wonder what the heck they are on ......

Anyway, I decided to chance it and downloaded and installed the latest beta BIOS for my board, which had a few minor changes. I can't now remember which bios I was doing the above tweaking on, so, I'll go try it again and report back.

Thanks for the input.

[the_autopilot]

Hope this works out for you. Don't mind the beta label as I've never had any trouble with asus beta products, still follow all the usual precautions though like googleing the beta versian to see if other reports problems.

I've heard a lot about venice CPU's and asus mobo's, but my dual core runs fine, so thats all I'm worried about.

[congo]

Thanks, I worked it out I think.

If I set my RAM using the 433mhz preset, it sends the CPU back to Auto.

If I overclock the FSB too far beyond what my RAM should handle, The RAM starts back at 166mhz with auto timings, it sets up a divider automatically I guess, strange because I don't see any option to set up a divider manually....... my Soltek nForce2 board used to do a similar thing, but you could set up a divider manually. By divider, I mean a FSB/RAM ratio setting.

I just wanted to see what happens and what the bios can do really.

CPU voltage and temperature:

So far, I ended up with a maximum stable speed of 220mhz on the FSB, (2420mhz CPU speed), at least it ran Prime95 all last night without failing. But this was only possible with a voltage increase to 1.5v from the default 1.4v, otherwise Prime95's torture test failed within minutes.

Temperature was very stable and low at stock CPU speed, but as soon as I got the CPU voltage above 1.45v, the temps started to slowly increase..... and increase more rapidly with each step up in voltage from that point on.

I was measuring the temperature while running Prime95's "large FFT's, max heat/power consumption" torture test, in a bid to simulate the sort of punishment my simulators will put on it.

Temps started to increase exponentially as I reached 1.5volts this point so that's as far as I went. I have no idea at all how far the voltage can be pushed up on these cpu's, or how safe it is.

The temperatures are still quite low compared to what I'm used to seeing on my previous PC's, but it looks as if the temperatures are going to be excessive if I push voltage beyond 1.5v without a third party cooling solution. My cooling is the standard AMD fan that comes boxed with the CPU.

Temeratures:
Ambient room temp....................24*C
CPU Idle @ 2.2ghz/1.4v............ 31*C
CPU Idle @ 2.42ghz/1.5v.......... 34*C
CPU full load @ 2.2mhz/1.4v......42*C
CPU full load @ 2.42mhz/1.5v....47*C

Anyone who reads this and doesn't quite get the picture of what I'm trying to achieve here, please note that I'm basically trying to turn this 3500+ cpu into a 3800+, and it seems to have worked so far.

Judging from the fact that I'm having to increase voltage so early in my attempts to overclock this CPU, I somehow think my overclock options might be limited with it.

Well, it's time for me to start doing a bit of research before going any further methinks.

[imchief]

I just built my new machine with an

Asus A8N-E NF4 Ultra
with AMD Athlon 64 3200 939 Venice
and a Leadtek 6600 GT.

[the_autopilot]

I'd overclock the video card with coolbits. Its simple and will only take a few min.

If you want to, overclock your CPU, but you'll need better than stock cooling.

[congo]

Hi Again, I meant to mention the fun we had flying in CFS2 years ago chief

[imchief]

Thanks Congo and Autopilot.

[congo]

The direction of airflow is up to you and your fan placement.

The usual ATX Tower case design attempts to assist the throughflow of fresh cool air by using thermal convection (? if that's the right word).

Air is typically sucked in at the lower front of the case and expelled at top rear. So, Lower case fans should blow in, and upper case fans blow out, this is typified by the PSU fan (top rear) which should be blowing OUT. (if it doesn't, reverse the fan in it's mount.)

It's up to you how you ventilate the case, convective assistance is more efficient is all.

Ambient air temperature makes all the difference in temperature readings, so you can't compare my "winter" temps with your "summer" temps for instance. I think your temps are fine.

The coolest case is an open one, so open it up in the really hot weather. It will run considerably cooler. I can only close my case for a month or two here because the rest of the year is so hot, that my case temps rise sharply if the covers are on.

[the_autopilot]

Nice pic, lol.

You must live in a very warm place. My cases always stay closed and I never have a problem with tempuratures.

Maybe a case with a side air duct w/fan might solve your temp woes?

[congo]

It gets very hot here, even with the air conditioner on in the room, ambient summer temps are very high, like 34*C, and the higher the ambient temp is, cooling solutions really struggle.

I have a side vented case with a draw cone, but it's still not good enough, my pic demonstrates my only successful solution to date.