Barton and DDR 400

[Neoprene]

Hi ,

I`m more of a "tweaker" and not extreme OC`er .. I have an MSI KT400v mobo with the latest BIOS , supports up to Athlon 3000 . My mobo multipliers go down as far as x6 and up to x15 .

MSI states that the 333fsb procs cannot run DDR 400 ram .. is this correct ? Forgive my ignorance here. If I run the proc at 133 mhz the DDR 400 ram ( Winbond @2,2,5,2 cas 2.0 ) runs at 400mhz no problem ..but I`m losing proc speed. If I up the proc FSB to 166 , the ram defaults to 333mhz . Yet I see posts where Barton procs are running their RAM at 400mhz or greater ? Am I missing some basic point here ? Or is it just my mobo ? Is it a case of changing voltages to achieve this ( which , being a noob , I`m a bit reluctant to do ). My geforce 4 Ti4400 is ocd to 305/650 with stability and 3D mark 2003 score at present is 1812.

Thans for your patience ,

Gerry:nervous:

[Neoprene]

Hi ,

So if I drop the multiplier to 10x and set the FSB to 200 , does this mean the proc will then run at 10x2000 = 2ghz ?? I tried 10x199 before , had a total system crash which screwed my windows up necessitating full reinstall.

Yes I`m a noob

G

[Dentoni]

There are dividers. So when running your board at say 133/166/200 your pci cards run at 33 and agp at 66, if you run at 134/167/201 pci and agp go up one mhz, 34 and 67 respectively. Your Hard disk probably runs at 100mhz or 133mhz so that increase would have put it up to 101 or 134. So when you put it up to 199 that was running your pci/agp cards hard disk, cd roms etc at an extra 33mhz. It just can’t handle this.

Think I got this right, I'm not really an over clocker as I don’t like running my peripherals out of spec especially the hard disk, shortens its life and increases potential failure.

Hope this helps

[Neoprene]

Hi ,

Thanks Dentoni for the advice , but I`m still a little unclear. If I run the proc say at 133 FSB , I can run the DDR Ram at 400mhz with stability .. so why doesnt this cause problems with the HD if it only runs at 133 ?

Is it a case of running a lower multiplier with a higher FSB to allow DDR 400 mhz speeds ? I tried this ( at 10x multiplier ) and got to 150 fsb before instability , but the proc speed was a lot lower than my current 2.09 mhz.

Cheers ,

Gerry:beer:

[Dentoni]

If you set the fsb at 100, 133, 166 or 200 all your peripherals will run at spec. Its just the board, ram and chip that will run at fsb you set. The board is a KT400 chipset so 200 fsb is fine, your ram is pc3200 so it will also run at 200 also. Seeing as your chip is unlocked and is already running at 12.5X166 you could run it at 10X200 giving you 2gig or 10.5X200 giving you 2.1 gig. Or higher multipliers, if it can do it

Don’t worry going up at 1mhz increments, just wack it at 200fsb. Test it for stability. Should be fine. Then if you want to keep upping the fsb by 1mhz test it, if stable 1mhz more and so on and so on till it becomes unstable and then back off by 1 or 2 mhz (I think, its 5mhz with graphic cards).

If you can with this board you could up the cpu and ddr voltage should give you higher clocks.

Hope you understand now that the dividers are only at 100/133/166/200 so when you put it at 150 that’s 133 + 17mhz so everything will be running at an extra 17mhz.

With my epox 8rda3+ you can lock the pci and agp at their 33 and 66 mhz. So even if I put it at say 217fsb only the cpu and ram will run at 217 everything else will run at default. Very cool

[Neoprene]

Hi again,

Well I think I`ve answered my own q by experimentation. If I drop the FSB to 133 , then OC from there up , I can reach to about 12.0x150 before instability ..and my DDR ram can reach up to a whopping 238mhz at that point ( Winbond 5H) . If I have the FSB at 166 , manually increasing just the FSB causes an instant crash . The DDR of course defaults to 333mhz.

So it seems true ..FSB 166 procs cant run DDR 400 ram .. but if you manage to raise up the FSB of the proc ( by raisng the voltage which I tried ) , the ram will of course match it. I`m up to FSB 169 at present , with the ram at the same speed (338mhz).

I could keep pushing the voltage .. but my fan is for silence and not OC`ing , so I`m worried about temps ..at the mo ( coz its hot here with a background temp in the comp of 40C ) it`s running about 51C.

So I`ll stick about here , I reckon my sys is about tweaked as far as I`ll take it right now , Sisoft puts my rating about 3055 , and proc/memory bandwidth about equal to stock Barton 3000+ speeds. Course I may set the RAM at Ultra setting , should take it as its running below the 400mhz rate.

Hope this is of some use to any other noob tweakers/oc`ers ..and thanks Dentoni .. a fellow Dub like me ? lol

Cheers ,

Gerry

[Dentoni]

Originally posted by Neoprene


So it seems true ..FSB 166 procs cant run DDR 400 ram .. but if you manage to raise up the FSB of the proc ( by raisng the voltage which I tried ) , the ram will of course match it. I`m up to FSB 169 at present , with the ram at the same speed (338mhz).

Firstly I don’t understand procs, what is it?

Tell me what voltage you had on cpu and ram when you were running at 12.5x166?

Tell me the ram timings your running maybe they are to aggressive, which isn't allowing you to hit 400mhz on the ram.

You really should be getting it to run at 200 fsb/400 ddr. Maybe your having stability issues because of heat, don’t you have any case fans? 40 seems a bit high in the case lowering this will (well should) lower your cpu temp. BTW what heat sink are you using?

Was just after looking at your computer specifications, woohaa does seem like a quiet system. Mine is really quiet as well the loudest thing in my case is a 19db papst fan which I 7volt, as it’s too noisy. And I only get temps of c.28 case and c.40 cpu.

Yeah I'm from Rathmines and you?

[Neoprene]

Hi,

Well lol I`m a northsider from Drumcondra :-))

Sorry procs was my abbreviation for processors. The MSI website states quite clearly that FSB 166 chips ie Barton will not run DDR 400 . I only upped the voltage on the CPU a little , to about1.70 or thereabouts if I remember ..and the RAM to just 2.6. If I try multiplier of 10x with a FSB of 200 , the sytem wont even post. I`ve also tried 199x10 with similar results. I tried dropping the multiplier to 11x and raising the FSB in increments of 1mhz from 133 upwards , but about 150FSB again the system failed to post . I`ve also tried 1mhz increments from 166 at multiplier of 11 but still no joy.

I have seen a few snippets here and there that for some reason with Barton chips u may have to use an "odd" number like 198 fsb x11 when OC`ing . Doesnt seem to be my RAM as it OC`s nicely with the FSB at 133-150 . I may give it one last go with the RAM at default settings and an FSB of 198x11.5 ..but my system is totally stable at 12.5x169 = 2.11mhz , even when playing Battlefield 1942.

London is damn sticky at the mo with a background temp in the comp of 35c.. some of this no doubt is heat also from the VGA heatpipe as well. I`d recommend it to anyone looking for a silent system , the stock Creative fan had a terrible whine which is now in the bin !

Lol I`ll let u know how I get on ,


Gerry

[Neoprene]

Hi again,

Well I tried FSB 198x11.5 , with the RAM at default settings apart from a voltage of 2.6 , and the CPU at 1.675 volts ..and no post . I`m tired lol of resetting the BIOS ..the jumper is in an awkward place on this mobo . I`m going to keep scanning the forums for some ideas on this , but really what I need is to wait till I get a new mobo , maybe with dual channel DDR 400 , and also perhaps a 400mhz processor . Hence lol I`ll be waiting about 6 months for my savings to go up and the cost of these to go down !

Ah the joys of tweaking ....

Gerry