Need a little help OCing A8V and AMD3800+

[Mad Murdock]

Ok, I looked through the forums and found a few links, but no details, so I though I would just ask. if there is a pointer I missed, I'll gladly take it.

I have the ASUS A8v mobo, the serial number is 46MG0xxx. I have the AMD3800+ and a BGF 6800GT and 2GB of Centron DDR400 memory, currentl running the 1006 bios

On the ASUS Intel system I have, it seemed fairly easy to overclock, but the AMD side seems to offer more options and quiet honestly, I don't understand half of them.

I'm able to overclock to 2.64Ghz, but the system seems to come and go, and I believe it's the video card having issues, since I'm getting more artifacts. Interestingly enough, all the benchmarks runs fine, but games like FarCry and Doom3 choke out after a few mins. I believe I need to locate the 1005.002 bios to get to the AGP lock, but I was wondering if someone could give me a quick run down of what other settings I need to check, The Voltage settings are where I have the most questions, followed by some of the memory options. The Hyper 6 is doing a great job of cooling, has the CPU temp hasn't gotten above 125F (around 98 idle)

Again, if there is a link I can read that will tell me most of this stuff, I'll gladly take it, so far, I haven't found anything that is specific enough to help me out enough to really understand what I am doing. My biggest concern is toasting the video card by accident

Thanks for your time

Dale
AMD3800+ 939
ASUS A8V-Deluxe\WiFI-G bios 1006
Centron DDR400 4x512MB
Coolermaster Hyper 6 HSF
Thermaltake V2000a with 6 case fans
BFG6800GT
WinXP SP1
Hyperion V4.51 chipset drivers

[Pointhore]

First grab the 1005.021 bios here (http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2224) After you flash the bios set your agp/pci to 66/33 in the bios options.

For the memory manually set it to 2:1. This will give you DDR400, 1:1 only gives you DDR200.
PC3200 memory should be able to run the 2T option disabled (at the bottom of memory option screen) If you are running 4x512 memory then you will not be able to set the 2T option to dissabled. 1T is faster then 2T.

This should get you started. If you are a gamer then 1Gig of ram in dual channel, should be plenty paired up with your 6800Gt. Generally 4 sticks of ram will limit your overclock, compared to 2 sticks.

[Mad Murdock]

Thanks, getting the 1005.021 seems to have be the main thing. Currently it doesn't seem to matter if i OC with 2 sticks or 4 sticks, anything above 217fsb will cause random crashs to the desktop. I aslo tried the pair of OCZ400512ELs and they seem to have more problems then the centron, They crash above 210.

I have a pair of Mushkin PC4000 memory I might give a try and see if it behaves better, in the long run I want to have 2GB of ram, so I may have to consider getting 2x1GB sticks at some point.

It does seem odd that the ASUS P4C800-Deluxe never had problems OCing with 4 sticks. I'm starting to think this Asus KT800Pro i sjust a little too new and I should have waited for the Nforce board.

Thanks for your help, I'll keep tinkering away.

Dale

[Hillbilly]

I have the AMD FX 53 / ASUS A8V setup, rev 1.02 bios 1005.021 beta, and I've had a hard time overclocking this setup, I was able to finally overclock to 236 fsb X 11 multiplier = 2596, memory 3-2-2-8, I locked my AGP/PCI to 75/37 (I should've locked to 66/33), after a lot of work it stayed stable for one day, and the next day my Leadtek 6800GT went out I'm waiting for a new video board now.

I put a BFG 6800 ultra in it (I couldn't wait to receive my warranty card back from Leadtek, so I purchased another board, I guess I'll give my Leadtek to my son, then he can play Doom3 and leave my computer alone).

Now, the highest succesful overclock seems to be 217 mhz x 12 = 2604. I don't know how stable this will be. I get kicked out of MS Word sometimes so I don't know if this is gonna work. But during my tests I noticed the biggest increase if your into gaming came when I overclocked my video card, not the processor. 3DMark03 increased by 300 with the processor overclocked, with the processor at normal speed, and the video card overclocked 3DMark03 increased 1000. 13870 was the highest 3DMark03 mark I could accomplish so far.

The GT overclocked almost to ultra specs without any problems, till it quit.
I overclocked my BFG ultra to 445 core and 1.2 memory, no problems yet.
Running Doom3 at 1600x1200 on high quality, no studdering.

Any questions, or suggestions greatly appreciated.

[Mad Murdock]

Just a quick update. I did set my memory to run at CL3.0 and that has allowed me to overclock to 220x12, which is getting me to 2640 MHz. I can't seem to get beyond that, even if I set my memory to run at 1:1 or 3:2, so I'm thinking it's not the memory at this point.

I did set the memory to 1T and I'm getting 6530 MB/s in SANDRA 2004 SP2 benchmarks, if I go to 2T and run 4 sticks I drop down to 5200 MB/s, though it doesn't seem to make much difference in any of the benchmarks I run (outside of memory that is)

I was really want to get to 2.7GHz, but it seems that that just isn't going to happen. At least, not with this board.

FWIW, running at 2640 MHz and using the Coolermaster Hyper 6 HSF, the CPU hasn't gotten above 125F under load and idles down to 97F, so I don't think heat is an issue either. Oh well, can't have it all I guess

[papashex]

Murdock,

What changes did you make to any settings for HT multipliers (or LDT as on my ABIT board). I'm not sure how they appear in the Asus bios.