OCing the 3000+ Article Discussion

"With expensive 939-pin CPUs dousing many enthusiast dreams, the 754-pin CPUs are coming back into focus with the help of ABIT and VIA's new K8T800Pro chipset."

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjI5

Please read and discuss.

great article. This is most likely what i'm gonna buy in the upcoming days
Do you think a A64 2800+ could achieve a similar OC?

Great news and article!

While i may be laughed out with this comment/request... especially since its the first reply...

What kind of heat are we talking about when overclocking this processor? I would love to know what kind of overclocking can be done with both stock as well as cheaper aftermarket fans on this processor. Some of us on very cheap budgets and/or lack of ingenuity can't/won't be able to water cool the CPU, but still enjoy doing the little they can to tweak their PC's. I could of course try it myself (which i will) but im still trying to save up the cash to be able to get a 64. Also any chance of trying a 64 2.8+ and see how she does?

I just got home from work, and am about to plug up my Athlon 64 3000+ that came yesterday. I have Corsair 3200 as well, so I am hoping for similar results. Just a note, I went with the Chaintech nForce 3 250 board. I considered getting the similarly priced Abit board, but...frankly, I don't want to touch a Via product. There's alot of rumors going around about problems with the AGP/PCI lock at the KT800Pro, and to be honest, I didn't feel like getting stuck with a crappy product from VIA.

Kyle, if you have any comments, I'd be glad to hear 'em. Perhaps most specifically with regards to nForce 3.

Originally Posted by Koslov

great article. This is most likely what i'm gonna buy in the upcoming days
Do you think a A64 2800+ could achieve a similar OC?

I dont KNOW, but I would guess YES. I will share information as I get it.

Maybe the mobile 2800+ thats 1.6Ghz and 1mb cache at the same price as the 3000+ ...
that would be nice even if it didn't clock quite that high.

Originally Posted by The DarkBlade

There's alot of rumors going around about problems with the AGP/PCI lock at the KT800Pro, and to be honest, I didn't feel like getting stuck with a crappy product from VIA. .

The article states that this will be fixed in the next BIOS release

Kyle do you know if this board works with the mobile A64 chips? I know that the K8N Neo works with them right out of the box, but have not seen anything on this board.

Originally Posted by The DarkBlade

There's alot of rumors going around about problems with the AGP/PCI lock at the KT800Pro, and to be honest, I didn't feel like getting stuck with a crappy product from VIA.

Kyle, if you have any comments, I'd be glad to hear 'em. Perhaps most specifically with regards to nForce 3.

The "problem" with the K8T800Pro is not a hardware problem, it was a documentation problem. The feature was not in the dev kit that was given out to motherboard builders. So now, all the motherboard builders are going back and putting the AGP/PCI lock in. Asus will require a hardware change, but it looks as though ABIT will not. My VIA boards have been AWESOME when it comes to stability although there are some other issues that need to worked on before prime time, but that should all about be done now.

As for the NF3 Ultra boards, the only one I have had that worked right was the Ref sample. I got the MSI board out again last night but I could not get an OS on it. This was NOT a production motherboard, but rather and engineering sample.

So all in all, the boards are coming and I think there are going to be great products on all sides of the fence. We did have our ref sample NF3 Ultra up to 300MHz FSB.

Originally Posted by NeoGodzilla

The article states that this will be fixed in the next BIOS release

Kyle do you know if this board works with the mobile A64 chips? I know that the K8N Neo works with them right out of the box, but have not seen anything on this board.

I dont know.

Well I have both a K8N Neo Platinum and a Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ 1MB CG revision that DOES NOT work right out of the box. It will post at 4x200 but you must use clockgen to get the proper voltage set in windows. I'm pretty sure the multiplier will work in the bios if you set it to 10 but it will not boot as it only shows .91volts in the bios. I wonder where you read it works. I'm one of the only people I know with the combination. I have searched high and low trust me.

Originally Posted by infinity9

Well I have both a K8N Neo Platinum and a Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ 1MB CG revision that DOES NOT work right out of the box. It will post at 4x200 but you must use clockgen to get the proper voltage set in windows. I'm pretty sure the multiplier will work in the bios if you set it to 10 but it will not boot as it only shows .91volts in the bios. I wonder where you read it works. I'm one of the only people I know with the combination. I have searched high and low trust me.

Here

Yeah Tedine is returning his MSI because it doesn't work right with the mobiles. He states once early on that he fixed the voltage problem and later concluded that it was only if you don't power the machine down. I have spoken with him about it. It does not work correctly. If you turn off the computer or change the voltage in the bios it will revert to .91 volts. Also sometimes it will not save the voltage change sometimes it will. If it does it will reboot at 2400 (240x10 1.65v) or at 960 (240x4 .91v). This does not work correctly. Booting at 800mhz is a little painful.

Also the .91volts will vary based on what you have it set at. Setting 1.80 volts in bios will result in 1.17 reading in the bios. After you set clockgen for any voltage above 1.45 it will start working at whatever you really have it set at in the bios. Clockgen will only allow up to 1.55 but it just uses what the bios is set at. Setting clockgen to 1.40 and below i believe will set it to 1.40v or below. Honestly it seems like its a hardware issue and not a bios issue but the fact you can get it set at the right voltage at all is encouraging. I don't think there is an easy fix though.

I read through that thread at 3AM so I might have missed Tedine saying he was going to return the board. Hopefully the Abit board will work with the mobiles as you can get great OCs out of them.

What about the 1.4v and the 1.5v DTR mobiles? are they defaulting to .91 or is it just the lower voltage mobiles.

Thats a pretty good article. I do have some questions about the board used and with heat output. How would you compare the feature set of the Abit board with the MSI K8N Neo Platinum? I like the features on the MSI board thinking that it would make a great "highend" HTPC foundation. You touched on the heat issue so I was wondering how hot the OC was? I assume from your comments that your comfortable with the heat, right?
As I alluded to I would like to use something similiar in a HTPC setup (yes, CPU prowess can be a need if you use the right filters ) so heat and feature set would be great to know. Thanks for the great article.

Originally Posted by NeoGodzilla

I read through that thread at 3AM so I might have missed Tedine saying he was going to return the board. Hopefully the Abit board will work with the mobiles as you can get great OCs out of them.

I think that he may have mentioned it in another forum. The freak has articles going at like 4 different forums about it hahah.

Originally Posted by Spammy1984

What about the 1.4v and the 1.5v DTR mobiles? are they defaulting to .91 or is it just the lower voltage mobiles.

I believe the DTR's are in the same boat. I think they have a different microcode (mobiles and dtr vs. desktop)

I'd still like to see what one of These can do ... especially if there is a motherboard that doesn't have the weird low voltage with it.

Howdy all, nice review Kyle. Too bad Abit has not at least released the BETA BIOS yet. I considered a VIA socket 754 soloution but the current lack of AGP/PCI lock and the release of the retail MSI K8N Neo Platinum pushed me over to a NF3-250GB MOBO. Hopefully you get a retail board from MSI soon as I would love to see a side by side OC'ing comparison between the two chipsets with working locks. I had a bad time with the K8N initially bit the new v.125 BETA BIOS fixed a lot of issues I was having. I was able to hit 2600Mhz/1.65v with my A64 3000 in a Vapochill PE. I noticed in your article you are using 1.75/1.8 Vcore. In your opinion how safe are Vcores over 1.7v as long as temps. stay reasonable? Do you remember what the break point was with voltage increase vs.Mhz?? Example, on my A64 3000 over 2400Mhz from stock Vcore took about .05v for every additional 50Mhz. And lastly...... at what Mhz do you think the HT link would start to suffer a performance hit?? FYI, the A64 shared common parts with the P4 rig in my sig with the A64 and NF3 MOBO being the only differences.

You touched on the heat issue so I was wondering how hot the OC was

Temps for the A64's seem to be all over the place. With mine running at 2600Mhz/1.65v the BIOS reported 22c load and 8c idle. What is odd is the fact the temps at idle never dropped past 8c no matter what the cooling head on my Vapochill was reporting. -25c at the head = 8c idle on the CPU?? I don't think so. To add a comparison. My P4 at 4Ghz/1.65v would run at 15~17c load and -2~2c idle. So I have no idea at this point what the actual temps on my A64 were at.

A few screenshots from my A64 fun...

what video card did you use for testing?

Edit: beat me to it

What video card did you use in the review? You stated that "with the right video card" the combo would be a great Doom 3 box, so I'm sure your preference for this review will have no effect on readers' opinions.