Barton 2800+, some n00b OC questions...

[luckyfives]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to squeeze some extra FPS out of my barton 2800+, I'm running it at standard clock speeds on an Asus A7N8X nforce 2 chipset mobo.

Given I'm a complete n00b at overclocking, this will be my first effort, can someone give me a basic guide on how to do this? I had read that with this chipset on the mobo it can be difficult to do because nforce2 locks the multiplier (or something, not sure).

Any guidance most appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Fives

 

[raven_87]

Wow, socket A... been a while. That said, the multiplier isnt "locked" per-say. You just can't take it any higher. If memory servers, Barton's were 333mhz fsb chips. I thought they were stock near 2ghz, can't quite remember. Multiplier should be at 12, I thought I remember hearing certain cpu/mobo combinations allowed you to use the 13x multiplier, but that was many moons ago.
start in the bios. remember overclocking relies on many factors (cooling, ram, motherboard, PSU, the CPU itself) so just begin by slowly raising the FSB until you experience instability. Then you'll know the first threshold you have til you can push farther.

 

[luckyfives]

Thanks for the reply raven. I had a go last night and this is what i found;

- Current settings were 12.5 x 166 = 2075
- Vcore was an auto setting effective 1.675
- Tried increasing clock to 11.5 x 200, saved and restarted, bios shows CPU as a 3200+, windows fails to load
- Tried increasing Vcore above 1.675 various settings up to 1.80, created a loop where it would POST and then reset, POST, reset.
- Tried a clock speed of 11 x 200, bios shows CPU as 3000+, on one occasion managed to start loading up the desktop but seemed corrupted with artifacts, didn't finish loading.

So overall not very successful at all! Bit disappointed really. Happy that nothing is locked but it seems that it can't handle a 200mhz FSB. The ASUS mobo bios I'm using is v1.07 which I thought could handle it. Any ideas?

 

[raven_87]

look at the possible factors I listed already... start by process of elimination.