gigabyte socket 754 GIGABYTE GA-K8NS mobo and overclocking

[narhic_fd]

was wanting to try some overclocking with my socket 754GIGABYTE GA-K8NS mobo , athlon 3000 64. wanting to know if anyone out there has this mobo so i can get some advice on it. thanks.

 

[BlueMoonKid]

I have a Gigabyte motherboard (socket 754) . .the K8NSNXP which was the premium Gigabyte socket 754 motherboard this time last year. This board performs very well now but is not very overclockable. I dont recommend Gigabyte socket 754 motherboards for overclocking. First and foremost this motherboard does not run well (even with NO overclocking) if the memory is less than premium memory (very expensive) and only 2 brands of memory have worked with this MB. BIOS are also an issue with this motherboard. I started with F6 BIOS and it ran poorly . . now after a year I am using F15 BIOS and it performs as it should have 1 year ago. Overclocking the 754 doesnt yield good results. It will overclock but quicly become unstable and crash. If you read Tom's review of this motherbaord you will notice that Gigabyte provided special BIOS for the review but never posted the BIOS they supplied to owners of this motherbaord. (They were removed from Gigabyte's website a few days after the review) This seems to be "cheating" and leaves me less than thrilled with Gigabyte. This motherboard does perform very well and is stable but is not a performance leader. If you want to overclock than the only good option that will give you stability and great performance (especially for gaming) is a socket 939 motherboard. No socket 754 can match a socket 939 MB.

 

[narhic_fd]

yeah this is true, but currently 754 is were im at. I need to start somewere and here is what i have to work with for now. I want to get my feet wet, im may not be able to get very far on it, but would like to start so i can get some exp on it. It would be nice if i was able to get the cpu wich runs at 2.0 ghz to overclock to 2.1. I want it to be a bit unstable so i can learn a little on what i need to work on to get the cpu to overclock a little more , and be stable. Have you done any overclocking at all on yours. I have good ram, corsair xms pc 3200 ram, 2 sticks. ill start a little on it once i get the new case fan. the only thing im not sure on in this overclocking thing, is when things start to get unstable , how do you know what to do next to stable it out some more. how do you know if you need to up the voltage on cpu or ram, loosen the ram timmings, and so on.

 

[BlueMoonKid]

I tried overclocking my Gigabyte / 754 as soon as I had it. I had memory problems that crashed the system immediately.

I then purchased high quality memory and many problems went away and I got a slight overclock which went unstable after 3 hours.

So I returned to stock speeds and the system is very stable. It is more of an issue with the particular Gigabyte motherboard model I have (K8NSNXP) than with the 754 CPU I think. Since you have a newer and different model of Gigabyte you may have much better luck than me.

I have a DFI LanParty Expert now and I spent my time tweaking and overclocking that now . . so I just run the 754 as my second system as it performs well and dont mod it at all.

I cannot advise you on memory timings and / or BIOS settings as I am not familiar with all of your hardware. (Better to give no advise than the wrong advise). I would encourage you to read other postings of overclockers and you may find someone who has the same MB as you and has more experience with it.

 

[narhic_fd]

sweet , thanks ill def do that, hopefully i can find someone who has this board and has some success overclocking on it.

 

[cwyap]

I tried overclocking my Gigabyte / 754 as soon as I had it. I had memory problems that crashed the system immediately.

I then purchased high quality memory and many problems went away and I got a slight overclock which went unstable after 3 hours.

Hi BMK:

Could you please tell me the specifications of the high quality memory that you purchased? I am trying to use 2 Kingston 512MBs in non-overclocked mode and the motherboard keeps crashing. No problems with using either one of them alone though!

Thanks,
Chi