Problem solved.
I'm at 2.75 GHz now with stock cooling (CPU frequency @ 250 MHz, HTT multiplier @ 4x, RAM backed down to DDR333 almost back up to DDR400 [392.8] with overclock). Haven't tested it in Prime95 for stability or anything yet. It overclocked to that from 2.2 GHz (3700+ San Diego) quickly and with no headaches, so I am pleased with it, provided it proves to be stable.
So in case anyone is wondering what the problem was, while searching the overclockers.com forum, I found a post from someone who had a similar problem to me, but with a different model of Asus board. Here was one of the replies:
...
And that was the problem. Unbelievable.
Thanks, MaximRecoil! I used the same settings on my Asus A8N5X running an Athlon 64 3400+ Venice (2.2G stock). This works on both the production 0902 and beta 1003 BIOS's. Amazing how we have to work around these silly BIOS bugs!
Here are my BIOS settings
Floppy: 1.44 MB (even though no floppy drive is installed)
DRAM: 333 MHz (same timings as DDR400 since the overclock bumps the RAM back up to 400+ MHz)
(Note: I'm using PC3200 DDR 400 modules)
CPU (HTT bus): 250
CPU Voltage: 1.525 V (up from stock 1.425V)
PCI-E: 100
PCI sync: 33.3 MHz
Cool 'n' Quiet Enabled
Q-Fan Enabled
Everything else set on Auto.
Results:
CPU 2.75 GHz (25% overclock)
HTT 1000 MHz (25% overclock)
RAM 416 MHz (DDR 208, automatically bumped up from 333 due to HTT)
I have Cool 'n' Quiet enabled along with Q-Fan, so the system runs very cool (and quiet! lol) when the system isn't performing CPU intensive tasks.
I am extremely pleased with this overclock. Asus & AMD, two great tastes that go great together