Overclocking Athlon XP3200 on DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra B

[tottyspotter]

Hello to one and all! I'd appreciate some advice.

I'm getting somewhere with my overclocking, see siggy for details so far. I'm surprised that i'm having to run at CAS3 on the memory to get the system stable, as I thought i'd be able to run it at CAS2.0, or at least CAS2.5 - as it runs at CAS2.0 as standard.

I've upped the RAM voltage to 2.8V, the CPU is at 1.8V (45C load) with all other voltages standard. Would upping the northbridge voltage have any effect? I have a temperature sensor on the heatsink on the northbridge and at the moment that heatsink is at 47C so don't really want to push it. Or should I be upping the RAM voltage some more, or maybe even changing BIOS (in which case would anyone have any recommendations and perhaps some guidance with regards to switches - as they're the only part of BIOS flashing i'm unfamiliar with)? I'm running the DFI bios, release date 2004/11/24 currently.

[MietmaN]

2x512MB is pretty much for the nForce2 memory controller - FSB230, while running 2x512MB dual channel and standard bios with CPC On, is already a good overclock. There're plenty of modified bioses for your mobo - just search the web and you'll find them for sure.

Timings - well, it depends on the memory chips. What kind of memory chips do you have in your Corsair modules? If these are Samsung TCCD, then they should do better. E.g. with my Mushkin PC3200 on TCCDs I got FSB230 stable, 2-3-3-11 - everything above results in 3D instability, since it's too much for my boad and NB mem controller.

[tottyspotter]

I'll check out one of the tictac BIOSes to see if they help with my overclock, but regarding the latency - yes, they are Samsung TCCD.

I had them at 2-2-2-11 and it boots, is stable in prime but corrupts textures in 3dmark03. If I back them off to CAS3 it's solid as a rock. What's better, CAS2 but with lower FSB, or higher FSB with CAS3 timings? Do you think it would be worth trying with CPC off or would I take too much of a performance hit?

[MONKEYMAN]

Generally a higher FSB makes a better performance increase than timings, a 5mhz FSB increase is probably similar to the difference between cas3 and cas2 in my opinion.

[tottyspotter]

I thought the difference between cas2 and cas3 was great than that at these speeds. Can anyone verify? What increase in speed would I need to make it worthwhile dropping from CAS2 to CAS3? Or is the easiest way just to benchmark with sisoft sandra and see which has the best result?

[MONKEYMAN]

Benchmarking in Sandra will give you a good idea of the real-life performance of your memory, Several benchmarks have been done on varying brands of memory and they have MOSTLY shown that changing the latency on standard ddr400 memory from cas3 to cas2 has less than a 5% performance increase, even though you are running your memory at a higher speed the overall benefit of raising you fsb(hence gaining more data bandwidth and a higher total cpu clock) will outweigh the advantage of tighter timings.

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by tottyspotter

I thought the difference between cas2 and cas3 was great than that at these speeds. Can anyone verify? What increase in speed would I need to make it worthwhile dropping from CAS2 to CAS3? Or is the easiest way just to benchmark with sisoft sandra and see which has the best result?

With CPC Off you would have to gain about 15Mhz on the FSB or even more to make up for performance loss. I know many folks, who have tried CPC Off and finished with CPC On in the end (including me ).

Timins, well - it's not only CAS Latency that matters. 2-2-2-11 vs. 3-3-3-11 - does make a difference, especially in 3D applications. How big that difference is, you will have to discover on your own. Can't your mem modules run CL 2.5???? TCCD chips don't go very high with 2-2-2 settings. I would risk a statement, that FSB210 2-2-2-11 vs. FSB220 2.5-3-3-11 doesn't make a difference, providing the CPU OC remains the same (e.g. 10.5x210 vs. 10x220).

EDIT : At FSB230 they should do like 2-3-3-11 (my current Mushkin) or 2.5-3-3-11 (my former G.Skills). Btw. TCCD doesn't like high voltage, as a rule - my G.Skills didn't, but with Mushkin Vdimm does make a difference.