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View Full Version : Can Any of you Help? VNF3-250 + A64 3K = no Overclock :(



HeadRusch
09-22-2004, 03:02 PM
System:
Antec TruPower 400+ watt (forget which model, 410, 430.....) PS
Chaintech VNF-250 Nforce3 board flashed to 7/29 Bios
1 stick 512megs Crucial Ballistix PC-4000 (500Mhz) Ram
Boxed Athlon 64 3000 Newcastle, 512m cache
Stock HS/F applied with Arctic Silver 3 (had it lying around)
Radeon Pro 9800
Seagate 120 gig SATA drive
Generic DVD-Rom drive

Purchased the MB, Chip, Ram and HD recently...upgrading from overclocked Intel 1.6a Northwood @ 2.3Ghz.

After flashing the bios on the Chaintech, I began to test the overclocking waters.....each attempt at taking the chip past its 200x10 settings results in Prime95 instability.

Now, I have tried adding voltage, changing RAM latencies (1:1 and 5:6), and jumping through all sorts of hoops. I've read the online Guides, I've read other forums, and the end result is usually the same.....unstable.

The chaintech temperature sensor shows the chip running in the mid 40's at idle at stock speeds, and around 50 when I managed to boot into windows with 1.65v and a 230x10 multiplier for 2.3Ghz. It primed for about 3 minutes before failing and the temp went up to around 64c, but I'm not sure I trust the sensor on this MB.

The long and the short of it is this: I have become really frustrated with seeing all my attempts at overclocking resulting in failure. I was hoping to see 2.4Ghz out of this setup, but for the life of me I can't even get to 2.2ghz and have it still pass a Prime test.

I am looking for some instructions, and basically some hand-holding on trying to get the most out of this setup. Someone suggested the SATA drive was the problem, others have suggested I keep the FSB setting low while cranking up the memory speeds (I guess that is done by lowering the multiplier?? I'm not entirely sure since I know my ram should run pretty quick).

This is nothing but a gaming box so I want to get the most out of it that I can..and right now I can't do better than stock. Can someone help me out here? I sure would appreciate it, and promise to pass on any knowledge I learn that leads to some @($*%$(@( success :)
:bow:

piddock
10-03-2004, 01:39 AM
Hi

I have the VNF3-250 and 2.8 CPU at 2250 and DDR500 RAM with Hynix D5 chipset.

Here are my settings.

In BIOS

In Advanced Features
HT Frequency = 3x

In Frequency and Voltage
In DRAM Configuration
Auto, 3, 4, 10, 4, Disabled (as AndyT said in his review, this board seems to prefer the setting of 10 for all tests).

In Frequency and Voltage
CPU Overclock = 250
AGP Overclock = 66
Hammer FID Control = x9
Voltage Finetune = Enabled
Voltage Regulator = 1.7 (1.65 is not enough for my CPU).

The rest here are at default settings.

Prime95 crashes after 7 minutes at about 58 degrees C, and I don't care!
Benchmarks like 3DMark do not crash and my games do not crash, so for gaming it is perfectly stable. If at any stage it crashes during games, I'll lower FSB a bit until it stops crashing.

Room temperature is 22 degrees C and case temp is 32.
CPU reaches 52 degrees C in 3DMark2001 and my score is currently 18675 with an fx5900 - you should get more with your 9800Pro.

CPU-Z reports my CPU stepping = 8.

So, if you can't make 10x (Hammer FID Control), you could try 9x to run the same as my settings for a starting point.

Nothing else I can think of...

XII
10-07-2004, 09:50 AM
I use a little proggy to tweak the core settings, called
A64Tweaker0.5XTbeta.zip. You can use it, to force the mem en coretimings to different values. Do not set Core 1T/2T, change mem 1T/2T = Core T

Workes for me. (235/235@1T)

LINK: http://users.tpg.com.au/spark69/A64Tweaker/a64tweaker0.5Xtbeta.zip

Good luck :fire:

Jeff7181
10-28-2004, 11:01 AM
I tried the same board with a Sempron 3100+
I can tell you with 99% confidence it's due to your SATA hard drive. The only SATA ports on that motherboard are part of the chipset... when you overclock the chipset you overclock the SATA bus as well, and SATA drives don't like that. I was able to get to 240 MHz with no SATA drives, but not even 203 MHz with my SATA drives. So back to my A7N8X Deluxe + Mobile XP2500 it is.