Yo PIMPS!...

Ref this thread that I posted;

"BEST Overclocking STEPPIN' CPU...AQXEA Barton XP2500+" (http://forums.pcapex.com/showthread....&threadid=9218)

I purchased an

AMD 2500 AXDA2500DK4D
AQXEA0331RPMW

from www.DIRECTRON.com . Incidentally, these guys were SUPER in checking the steppings on individual boxes to ship me this cpu.

I've got

ASUS A7V333 mb
Radeon 9700
Corsair 512 mb pc3000 (single stick)

Note : This memory is guranteed to go 185 mhz:
"The second part, part number CMX512-3000C2, is guaranteed to operate at 370 MHz, but with a column access strobe latency ("CAS latency") of only two clock cycles."...text copied from www.CORSAIR.com

Now to my problem...

The cpu is currently running at 172x12 just GREAT.
I can up the fsb to 185 and the computer boots fine. However, when I start a game, the computer freezes and I have to hit RESET. It also boots fine and then freezes in gameplay if I up the multiplier to 12.5 while decreasing fsb proportionately. This leaves my MAX overclock at 172x12=2064. I KNOW this cpu can do more than this...I can feel it in my bones!

Please note that my bios does not allow me to lock pci/agp bus.
My max available multiplier is 12.5.

My agp/pci bus changes from 34 to 35 at 173 fsb, which is why I suspect that it runs fine at 172 / 68 / 34 versus 173 / 70 / 35.

I have already bumped voltage up from default 1.650 to a max of 1.825 without solving the problem. I have also used the slower/less aggressive memory settings with no solution.

1) I want to know if there is a solution that hasn't occurred to me, or, if the solution is to upgrade motherboard to nForce2 chipset in order to control pci/agp bus?

2) Is there some difficulty involved in using 1/2 step multipliers, ie; 12.5, 13.5, etc. so I should forget about these 1/2 step multipliers?

3) Small question: Any body got a link that explains the stepping number definitions; ie Date of Manufacture, Place of Manufacture, etc?

JazzyJ

You can try dividers in the bios to lower the AGP and PCI bus, That might get you stable. Try 5/4 or something till you find one that works

But your best bet for Overclocking is the Abit NF7, Epox RDA3+ or Asus A7NForce-2 Deluxe.

The Abit is what I am using, has very good Bios options, Like over 2v to the CPU, 2.9 memory and 1.7 chipset, and it locks the AGP and PCI bus, and a whole lot more

This the kinda link ya lookin for?>>> Steppings<<<

Decreas your multiplyer some and that will allow you to bump your FSB up some. That is what you really want.... an OC of say 200 FSB X10 mult is better than a say 167 FSB X12 mult. It equals that same 2 GHz but with you FSB opened up more in comparison to your mult you are getting way more data throughput...

Heres a lil something for stability testing... http://www.overclockers.com/tips645/

You will need to employ the 6:1 divider if it works (they are kind of hit or miss). That will take you back within spec on your pci/agp buses.

you got that stepping thing for Bartons?

Thanks for the REPLIES...


KayinStorm
Ref: "you got that stepping thing for Bartons?"

May I ask...WHAT "stepping thing"?

$SOLID$ Necro
Ref: "You can try dividers in the bios to lower the AGP and PCI bus"

I cannot set the pci/agp independently...this is an ASUS board.
Also, do you mean ASUS A7N 8X-DELUXE?
Ref: Epox RDA3+...did you see my other post regards negative EPOX board comments from www.DIRECTRON.com employee? Any COMMENTS???

http://forums.pcapex.com/showthread....979#post115979

So Cal
Ref: "Decreas your multiplyer some and that will allow you to bump your FSB up some."

My LOWEST multiplier available is 12...I got ASUS board.

putwig
Ref: "You will need to employ the 6:1 divider if it works..."

If I change to 6 / 1 divider, my pci/agp will be at 47! I think I got problems now? This is ASUS board and pci/agp is not lockable.

Anyway, gentlemen/ladies??? I deduce from your posts that in order to accomplish a successful overclock, the answer to my QUESTION #1 from my initial post,

"1) I want to know if there is a solution that hasn't occurred to me, or, if the solution is to upgrade motherboard to nForce2 chipset in order to control pci/agp bus?"

is YES...I do need to upgrade to nForce2 solution. THANKS!

Also, the links you all supplied were right on.

JazzyJ

Well, there may be a hacked BIOS out there (somewhere, I dont know where though) that someone has made that might open up your multiplyers to go lower. Other than that, I would recommend Abits NF-7S Rev2.0 Mobo. Its great for OCing.

a 2500 should do 2400mHz out the box. stable. period. when you get your new board (NF7-S preferably) run that thing to 210 x 11.5 right as ya get it installed. bump the voltage to 1.7, memory to 2.9, and Chipset to 1.7. if you want to add some more stability to that OC go ahead and do some research on the Volt-Mod for the chipset. i just have a .15 volt increase on the chipset, but it helped alot.

I don't think you understand pci and agp divider and what they do.

Quote: Originally posted by Jazzyjazz putwig Ref: "You will need to employ the 6:1 divider if it works..." If I change to 6 / 1 divider, my pci/agp will be at 47! I think I got problems now? This is ASUS board and pci/agp is not lockable.

I don't know where you get the number 47.

If you employed the 6:2:1 divider in your current pursuit of 173 FSB, you would get the following settings:

173:58:29 (FSB:AGPCI)

You would in fact be underclocking your agp and pci buses. However, this would open the window on your way to 200 MHz FSB.

For reference, the dividers are actually intended to allow a mobo to support multiple porcessor generations thusly:

6:2:1 gives 200:66:33
5:2:1 gives 166:66:33
4:2:1 gives 133:66:33
3:2:1 gives 100:66:33

When we use them for overclocking, we attempt to keep the agp / pci buses as close to 66/33 as possible while ramping up the FSB.

Your Asus board is actually a very good overclocker, and was one of the top oc boards of that chipset generation. The NF2 boards are the first to lock down buses on amd systems (marketed to the general public).

So, two questions. First, does the board have a 6:2:1 option? I cannot recall. Second, does the 6:2:1 option (if present) work? they were notoriously shaky (on all boards, not just the Asus).

Lastly, what PCI cards do you have in place? Is your video card overclocked? You need to unlock the lower multipliers.

If you don't want to mess with all that, get an NForce 2 board.

putwig: Ref

"I don't know where you get the number 47."

I exagerated slightly...the actual value would 40. My ASUS board's BIOS supplies a table of selectable values. I have abbreviated the table below. If you go to 199Mhz on the chart, you see that the pci/agp bus is locked at 40. I cannot change this . A divider of 6:2:1 would yield values of

200 / 80 /40

and this is out of specs for pci/agp. This is also the reason that I concluded that the only way to fully realize the potential of this cpu is to upgrade to nForce2 solution.

I even loaded the BETA bios that Asus has available for this board...no go.

"Is your video card overclocked? You need to unlock the lower multipliers."

No, my video card is at default settings...I reset it from a 10 percent overclock when I started testing.

Is there a way to unlock lower multipliers WITHOUT doing a hardware mod?

Thanks,
JazzyJ

133/33
134/34
135/34
135/34...
138/35
139/35...
142/36
143/36...
146/37
147/37...
149/30
150/30...
153/31
154/31...
158/32
159/32...
163/33
164/33...
168/34
169/34...
173/35
174/35...
178/36
179/36...
183/37
184/37...
188/38
189/38...
193/39
194/39...
198/40
199/40...
203/41
204/41...
208/42
209/42...

Well, you answered one of the questions ....... you don't have a 6:2:1 divider, based on the choices you listed.

200/6 = 33 not 40

but:

200/5=40

Therefore, the highest divider option you have is 5:2:1.

Like I said, no big deal, most of the 6:2:1 dividers back then did not work anyhow.

I will answer your unlocking question when I get home from the pool (got to take the kids).

Thanks,

Ref:

"200/5=40
Therefore, the highest divider option you have is 5:2:1."

The 40 is out of specs for pci/agp I know but I think it should be okay at 35. However, I can boot at 174 / 35 but it freezes loading games, even after increasing voltage. I get same result when I increase multiplier to it's max of 12.5...works fine at 12 though.

THIS left me puzzled and saying that I need nForce2.

I took my 3 monsters/kids swimming today at the YMCA...I hope you have as much fun as we did.

I am looking foward to the answer to unlocking cpu...please don't tell me "Buy an nForce2" either. (LOL)

JazzyJ

OK, I am back.

There are several ways to unlock the low multis, but all are "hardware mods".

The one everyone knows about is draw around the 5th L3 pit with a conductive trace. This works and is fairly simple. But it requires a very steady hand, some equipment, and a magnifying glass. Also, if you try to RMA the chip, you will have to get the trace material off.

The second involves wire wrapping two pins on the proc. Very fiddly, plus the danger of bending pins. Not recommended.

The final method, and my personal favourite, takes less than two minutes, requires no special equipment, and is totally undetectable if you need to RMA the proc or the mobo!

You take a very fine piece of wire (like a single strand of phone cord wire (I am talking hair thin) about a 1/4" long. You bend it into a "u" shape and bridge two socket holes with it. Works like a charm, the proc is unaltered, and if you need warranty on the mobo ....... you just remove the wire before you send it off.

Taken from:

http://www.logan.eclipse.co.uk/unlocking_tbred's_&_bartons.htm




The latter is the method I currently use, and the one I would recommend.

Edit: I should clarify, this unlocks only the lower multis (5-12.5). I can tell you how to unlock the higher mutis, but you won't like it!

Putwig,do tell.....even if its not used,its good reference material.
as usual,you prove yourself a true pimp

Hello putwig,

My multipliers are already unlocked (5-12.5) so this wire trick, although convienient, will not help me. I will keep it in reserve for future reference though...THANKYOU!

Now as to HOW to unlock the higher multipliers...I found a technique:

"So you have to CUT that L3 bridge to gain access to 13 and up. (That bridge is CUT for the athlon 3000+ for example.) So for people in my situation, I am running PC2700 so I cannot get my FSB up to 200(x2), (175 (x2) Stable) so I would have to cut that bridge on my Barton 2500 to get access to the higher multipliers as I'm hitting the ceiling at 12.5"

Is this what I won't like (smiles)?

A detailed explanation to cut the brige was not given, so, when you find time...could you post it?

Also, saw a note and performance comparison graphs:

"As we can see, higher FSB is king, though it is a close call between 166FSB and 200FSB" at

http://www.viperlair.com/articles/ho...nlock/p4.shtml

This comment (supported by graphs) leads me to belive that I must unlock higher multiples in order to max out the cpu.

J

You are exactly right Jazzyjazz. Cutting or blowing (frying with voltage) the 3rd and 5th L3 bridges will in your case unlock all multipliers from 5-24. Your 5th L3 is cut by the factory, so you would need to sacrifice only the 3rd L3 bridge.

I have never tried to do this, but have found the reference in several forum threads. the best of which is probably here:

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...threadid=53662

This action will require a very steady hand, and will definately void your warranty.

There is another work around. By setting you multi in the bios to "auto" or "default", you can impose the higher multis with wire socket tricks similar to the one I posted above.

The wire placements can be found here:

http://www.ocinside.de/index_e.html

(choose "socket view" in the drop down menu)

This will work fine and would be undetectable in the case of warranty work. The downside is that every time you wanted to raise the multi, you would have to pull the heatsink, pull the proc, wire mod the socket, re-install everything, stability test, repeat.

Things that make you go UHMMMM!

I think I will try the wire trick AFTER I revert back to previous bios's to see what results I get.

I will also HOPE that new nForce2 board will enable higher multiples even though from what I've seen, it will make available the same multiples already available to me

..I'll let you know

J

Jazzy,

I am in a very similar situation. I am running a proc that I know will do 200+ FSB (1700+ JIUHB DLT3C), with ram that will do 200+ FSB (PC3200), and I am stuck at 180.

My mobo is an IWill XP333-R (Ali Magik chipset). I cannot lock PCI buses, and although I have a 6:2:1 divider, it does not work.
I know full well that my overclock is limited by the mobo, or my pci / agp cards. My mobo only has multipliers from 5 - 12.5, and I am maxed out in that regard.

The difference is that I have already acheived a 790 MHz oc.......... so I just decided to cool my jets!

With your current system, have you tried relaxing your ram timings? That could be your problem. I would be surprised if your pci was crapping out at 34. Try relaxing the memory timings, and pulling all cards but the GPU.

Quote: Originally posted by Jazzyjazz I will also HOPE that new nForce2 board will enable higher multiples even though from what I've seen, it will make available the same multiples already available to me

The NF2 board that I would recommend most would be the Abit NF7-S rev 2. Awesome board. I was pretty sure that it offers all multis when coupled with a Barton, but not 100% sure.

So I called my buddy who has a 2500+ Barton and an NF7-S. I asked him to try and boot at (5 x 100) and (15 x 100), both worked fine.

So, if you go with that board ....... you will have all the multis you need. Also, you can run the memory asynchronously. Therefore, you could overclock your CPU to the extreme without needing to urgently upgrade your PC2700 ram.

Hope all that helps.

i need to check the bios to be sure, but the board(abit NF7-s) itself (well the manual) lists 5-22 and fsb 100-237

Ill check the bios in a second

EDIT: just looked, in my bios (Abit Nf7-s) i have all multipliers from 5-22 and fsb from 100-300

(to bad i have a palomino or however its spelled core and cant do much overclocking, cant wait to get a barty)

Lord, Ain't that good news...

I went to ASUS Beta bios but multipliers stayed the same.
I tried relaxed memory settings...no soap.

I will order a new mobo come Friday and let you know what happens.


Ref:
"Also, you can run the memory asynchronously."

I read SOMEWHERE that to run asynchronously, one runs the risk of the cpu being so out of sync with memory that performance acually DECREASES. I will cross that bridge later (keep your eyes peeled for new post LOL).

Yes, the time that you and other members devoted to answering my questions CERTAINLY did help.

Thankyou,
J.