DescentBB

can anyone point me to a GOOD overclocking / bios guide?

most of these settings i get... but there are things here i have not seen having not worked with the nForce and Athlon 64's before on a PCIe architecture.... I am running the BFG Tech nForce 4 ultra board cause i got a good deal on it.

(actually did well on everything... cooler master cavalier case, bfg nforce 4 ultra, nothing special ram (pny optima 2x512, meh), amd athlon 64 3700+, ati radeon x700 pro 256mb pcie, seagate barricuda sata 160gb, antec truepower 2.0 430 watt psu, took the plextor dvd-rw drive from another machine... final cost on everything was just over $600, and nothing shipped (compusa, best buy, friends i know, and 2 hours of driving lol)(also got the Gateway FPD2185W 21\" LCD for $350 as well.. but i am not telling how i did that...)




also, wondering what the better cpu coolers are these days... without going watercooling.

i went PIB (athlon 64 3700+ socket 939) so I'm using stock fan and heatsink... I know that I can get a little extra out of it as is, but before I go crazy I wanna get something better. there are a couple of things i have been looking at, but i wanna hear what y'all been using... (saw a zalman for about $50 that looked fairly tight)

also... ati radeon x700 pro 256mb PCIe... facker runs hotter n hell... good video coolers anyone?

Overclocking guide...I cant link you to a specific guide, but i can link you to one hell of a resource

forums.amd.com

most people there, including myself would be glad to help.

As to CPU coolers, Zalmans are good, im personally using a TT Blue Orb 2, temps- idle: 32C, load 37C CPU OCed from 1800mhz to 2466mhz, waiting for ASRock to fix thier damned bios so i can go further.

OCing, remember, your not overclocking the FSB, rather the Hypertransport Tech, or the HTT Bus. resulting frequency works the same way, CPU Multi*HTT = CPU speed.

On the same token, you can use a ram divider. Ive got optima ram in this box as well, running it using a 166mhz divider. The divider works by taking the defualt ram speed, and dividing it with the dividers ratio, in my case, im running a 274HTT, and a 166mhz divider, 166/200 is .83, multiply that by the HTT, 227mhz, the speed of the ram, idealy best performance is attained 1:1 ratio, but most ram wont do that.

The other catch is the HTL, HyperTransport Link. it is also affected by the OC, HTT*HTL Multiplier = HTL speed, most boards go unstable bast 1050mhz(one way) or 2100mhz(2way) the higher the better.