Upgrading & Overclocking

[ROM-DOS]

This is what I'm looking at doing (in a few weeks);

I have a MSI K7N2 Delta-L board(MS-6570)

w/ the nVidia nForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset

and an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ barton core (unlocked).

Drivers and Bios are all updated

First; I'm getting a new video card, 

The eVGA Geforce 6800GS CO Edition ($199)

400 MHz GPU AGP(3.0) 8X

256 MB, 256 bit 2ns (8x32) GDDR3 

1100 MHz effective 

32.0 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Dual 400 MHz RAMDACs

12 Superscaler Pixel Pipelines

[can be unlocked to 16 Pixel Pipelines and 6 Vertex Shaders]

  CineFX 3.0 Engine, UltraShadow II Technology,

Intellisample 3.0 Technology, Hardware MPEG-2 Encoder 

VPE, DVC, DVI-I, S-Video, Full OpenGL ICD

64-phase Video Scaler

guru 3D review http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/314/2/

3DMark 03 Professional Edition

3DMark 05 Business Edition

AquaMark 3

Second; I'm going to upgrade my RAM to Dual Channel

CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM ($99)

Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory

Cas Latency 2

Timing 2-3-3-6

w/Heat Spreader

Latency Settings and their Impact on Memory Performance

I put together my present system about three years ago,

with the intention to upgrade (vid & memory)

and overclock the barton core to 3200+

by simply changing the fsb to 200x11 = 2200Ghz

I already replaced the stock heatsink/fan a long time ago

w/ Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste & 80mm heatsink/fan 

I have a (fairly new) 450w power supply & case

[i know I might have to manually set memory timings in bios

and might have to up the voltage a little for both cpu & ram]

. . .so, after I install the new video card

and get it running w/ updated drivers and all,

I'll then install the new Dual Channel DDR 400 Ram ~

Question is; should I just leave my present settings

(166 fbs & 2700 memory timmings) in bios alone?

. . .then go back into bios and increase fsb MULTIPLIER

    (maybe) starting at 8x and working up to 11x ~

I'm not sure what to do first ~ fsb MULTIPLIER or memory timmings?

. . .will the system detect the new memory timmings automatically?

or will I have to set fsb MULTIPLIER & memory timmings before I install new Ram?

Any help and/or comments would be appreciated ~ thanks

[RTB]

Note: Very few 6800GS cards have unlockable pipes.

The memory will give the motherboard the preferred settings, then you can change it. A higher FSB will give more performace than just increasing the multiplier.

[ROM-DOS]

. . .I'm not worried about unlocking the vid card (right away ~ lol)

But, This is what I (think) know about overclocking; (ExtremeOverclocking)

. . .start out with a low multiplier (such as 8 or 9) first to find the maximum FSB. set multi and then FSB in 3-5mhz increments and then booting and testing overclock stability.

"Once you have hit a wall (computer freezes or testing shows your unstable) go back and raise the vcore to your CPU. Once you have found the absolute maximum FSB you can go back and start upping the multiplier in .5 increments. Same idea applies, once you fail, freeze or can't boot raise the vcore until you can. The maximum voltage you want to be running if you have aircooling is 1.95V (in Windows).  Also, a common overlook is the locking of the AGP/PCI frequnecy @ 66mhz."

"On AMD systems; set the vdimm to 2.8V and loosen the timings to 3-4-4-11 to make sure RAM isn't hindering overclock. Once you have found the highest FSB go back and start lowering your timings, as tighter timings result in faster speeds. The best possible timings are 2-2-2-5 but don't be worried if you can't achieve these. For some reason, the nForce2 chipset likes the final number in the RAM timings to be 11 instead of 7-10. If you hit a wall with your RAM, you can increase the voltage to 2.9V, which is the max most mobo's."

. . .sooo, should I set MULTIPLIER to 9x or should I start fsb 170x11, increasing it 5 at a time &  bump up the CPU voltage to 1.675 to start . . .and timings to 3-4-4-11 @ 2.8V ?

     BEFORE I install new RAM?

[just-]

sounds like a project

do a benchmark before u upgrade and after the upgrade

that would be bool

[ROM-DOS]

Note: Very few 6800GS cards have unlockable pipes.

The memory will give the motherboard the preferred settings, then you can change it. A higher FSB will give more performace than just increasing the multiplier.

. . .well, one day ~ RTB ~ I'll have to give RivaTuner at Guru3D.com a try, it's one of the best Tweak Utilities available that gives you access to all the undocumented features for NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon based videocards. 

[richcornucopia]

Try upping the fsb first at default multi to find the max. Then try other multipliers to see if you can get a higher clock speed, basically play around with different fsb multi combinations until you find the sweet spot.

[RTB]

. . .well, one day ~ RTB ~ I'll have to give RivaTuner at Guru3D.com a try, it's one of the best Tweak Utilities available that gives you access to all the undocumented features for NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon based videocards. 

I know, I use it, and will use it on my next setup.

[ROM-DOS]

the XP 3200+ is physically the same as a XP 2500+

but just operates at a different speed.

The 2500+ has an 11x mulitplier

  2500+ runs at 11x166=1826Ghz

  3200+ runs at 11x200=2200Ghz

richcornucopia  ~ . . .so, keep the 11x multitpler and start at, say ~ 170Mhz fsb, then increase by 3 - 5Mhz 'till I max it or get it close to the 200Mhz fsb (400 FSB) ~ raising Vcore to 1.675v

and loosen mem timings to 3-4-4-11 & Vdimm to 2.8v  ~ 'till fsb is set ~ then tighten timings. . .

~ that sounds like the way to go ~ . . .I just hope my board registers the dual channel DDR config ~ that's what worries me the most . . .

[richcornucopia]

If your motherboard says it supports dual channel ddr then it will usually just recognize it, which brings me to my next point, when you are try to up the fsb as high as you can with your cpu be sure to loosen the memory timings so you can be sure they aren't the limiting factor. Once you have found the best fsb and multiplier for your cpu then you can see if your ram can run that fast if not you might need a divider, but by the looks of it you picked some good ram so that shouldn't be a problem.

Edit: You might not even need to put a divider on any type of ram you use because if your only looking to hit 200, thats not much, a lot of cpus nowadays run at that by default. I thought you were looking to get the fsb up to like 300 like I am going to have to get close to for the max overclock of my opteron.