Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Modas on April 23, 2003, 12:44:09 PM
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Ok, well, gonna bite the bullet and upgrade. Saw Boxboy's post about dropping AMD prices :D
I built my machine originally, and it it all intel. I don't know much about AMD... But, this is the combo I'm thinking of after reseaching....
ABIT NF7-S motherboard
512 MB PC2700 333 ram
All the other components I'd keep from my existing machine. Although, I'd probably loose the sound card since the abit board supposedly has pretty good sound.
This is where I'm confused. Do I need to use 2 sticks of 256 MB on the Nforce motherboards or can I go with a single 512 stick?
Also, any particular brand of memory?
Thanks all... :D
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You get standard performance with a single stick of memory. A 2nd stick allows you to use the dual memory controller feature on Nforce2 boards, giving a performance boost.
I have 2x 256mb sticks in my board.
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The kingston hyper x series ram has been getting lots of good reviews lately. 85 bucks for 512mb PC3000 from Googlegear with free 2nd day shipping.
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If you go with that board try to find the revision 2.0 boards. They use a newer version of the nForce 2 chipset which can support the 400 MHz FSB Athlon XPs (3200+ and up) when they are released. This is the first nForce 2 based board where revision 2 series boards have hit the shelves. I took a look at a rev 2.0 one the other day and it looks pretty good. A review I read was very positive, with the REV 2.0 board achieving a 217 MHz FSB clock (433 MHz DDR equiv) on a 2500+ CPU. (That is the highest FSB speed I've ever seen on an Athlon CPU.)
I'm waiting for REV 2.0 Asus A7N8X Deluxes to become available as well.
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Originally posted by bloom25
If you go with that board try to find the revision 2.0 boards. They use a newer version of the nForce 2 chipset which can support the 400 MHz FSB Athlon XPs (3200+ and up) when they are released. This is the first nForce 2 based board where revision 2 series boards have hit the shelves. I took a look at a rev 2.0 one the other day and it looks pretty good. A review I read was very positive, with the REV 2.0 board achieving a 217 MHz FSB clock (433 MHz DDR equiv) on a 2500+ CPU. (That is the highest FSB speed I've ever seen on an Athlon CPU.)
I'm waiting for REV 2.0 Asus A7N8X Deluxes to become available as well.
Are the Rev 2 boards actually out?? I've been looking around on pricewatch and was unable to find one. Anyone know a shop selling Rev 2 boards??
thanks!!
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Originally posted by Modas
Are the Rev 2 boards actually out?? I've been looking around on pricewatch and was unable to find one. Anyone know a shop selling Rev 2 boards??
thanks!!
Here you go
http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?cPath=156_222&products_id=866
Great company to deal with, check out the processor section as well this company allows you to order specific steppings. The Kingston HYPERX memory works very very well, if not better than the more expensive Corsair XMS. My suggestion is to get the Abit board along with 2x256 MB of at least PC3000 Hyper X, a good heatsink and fan combo preferably a thermaltake slk-800 heatsink with a 80mm fan, then get this xp1700+ processor for $72
http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?products_id=1926
This processor XP1700+ JIHUB DLT3C 0310 WPMW is an overclocking madman, take it out of the box and it will hit 2.2ghz ghz NO PROBLEM and at 1.6v on air cooling, it is very simple with the ABIT board and the TBred B core all your chip multipliers are unlocked, I have this chip running at 12x200FSB in my Epox board solid as a rock. Hell some guys have gotten this chip up to 3.4GHZ with water cooling. Just a suggestion you are guaranteed at least 2.2GHZ with this chip which is faster than any other AMD processor out there even the new Bartons.
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Originally posted by bloom25
A review I read was very positive, with the REV 2.0 board achieving a 217 MHz FSB clock (433 MHz DDR equiv) on a 2500+ CPU. (That is the highest FSB speed I've ever seen on an Athlon CPU.)
Actually that is pretty low for a FSB with the new rev 2.0 board, lots of guys are hitting 220-230 and higher, head over to http://www.amdforums.com and look in the Abit section plenty of guys hitting that range.
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I just saw a rather distrubing piece of information on the ABIT nforce2 boards (rev 2.0). Apparently the BIOS has a tendency to get corrupt or loose information when saving changes to it.
Has anyone else seen or heard this? There were no mentions of this issue in any reviews. YIKES!!!
Might have to rethink the abit board and got with something else....
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Originally posted by Modas
I just saw a rather distrubing piece of information on the ABIT nforce2 boards (rev 2.0). Apparently the BIOS has a tendency to get corrupt or loose information when saving changes to it.
Has anyone else seen or heard this? There were no mentions of this issue in any reviews. YIKES!!!
Might have to rethink the abit board and got with something else....
It isnt just ABIT, that is a problem native to all nforce2 chipsets, no biggie really it happens if you change the bios ALOT meaning like 4-5 times a day which you wont do once you get the system doing what you want it to.
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Oh and if you dont plan on overclocking then the Bios issue wont mean jack, Nvidia recognized the problem occurs past 180 mhz ( less or more)
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That bios corruption bug was supposed to be fixed on rev 2.0 boards and bios updates are supposed to fix the problem on all other boards. You probably won't run into this if you just pick "save" before "save and exit" in the bios anyway. I've messed with a lot of nForce 2 boards and haven't had this happen to me yet.
I found the rev 2.0 board at a local computer shop near where I live.
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Originally posted by Pfunk
Oh and if you dont plan on overclocking then the Bios issue wont mean jack, Nvidia recognized the problem occurs past 180 mhz ( less or more)
Originally posted by Pfunk
This processor XP1700+ JIHUB DLT3C 0310 WPMW is an overclocking madman, take it out of the box and it will hit 2.2ghz ghz NO PROBLEM and at 1.6v on air cooling, it is very simple with the ABIT board and the TBred B core all your chip multipliers are unlocked, /
Pfunk -
Acutally, after reading you post regarding the xp1700 cpu, I was considering trying overclocking, although I have to admit I know very little about it.
What type of Epox board are your running?
Do you think overlocking the xp1700 on the abit board will be a problem to the 2.2 ghz
The big thing is I don't want a MB that gonna be flakey. It sounds like you are having good luck with your board which might be the better route for me.
I appreciate the help Pfunk
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Well I have an EPOX 8rda+ board which you can get from newegg at around $90 shipped. This was my first overclocking experience and with a little help it was very simple. I went with the EPOX board simply for the fact that I didnt want to pay for features that I would not use, things like serial ATA etc. Both the EPOX and Abit boards are the two best Nforce2 boards out there for overclocking. The EPOX had a small problem with voltage adjustments for some users trying to get to a 200FSB this of course was with earlier revisions which are no longer on the market.
However some users still cant hit 200FSB or higher with out physically modding the board. Abit had the same problems with their earlier revisions as well but the 2.0 took care of that. Overclocking on my EPOX was extremely easy with the XP1700 chip, I put some Artic Silver on it dropped in. I locked my AGP bus at 66mhz which on the EPOX board in turn locks all the PCI cards there to-----for stability-----. Turned off AGP fast writes put the mem timings at 100% of FSB and then started to move the FSB up in increments of 10 testing with the Prime95 software for stability. I hit a wall at 12.5X175 FSB but I let it run for a few days to burn the chip in. Then I lowered the chip multiplier to 11, uped the core voltage to 1.65 and the memory voltage to 2.99 and started to crank the FSB. It would boot into windows at 11x210 or 2310mhz but it wasnt stable.
The Prime95 software torture test will let you know if you have a stable overclock, if you get errors at all then it isnt. With mine at 2.2ghz Prime95 ran for 24hours and no errors, I plan on playing with it some more after I use it for a month or so but right now its 100% stable and with my GF4Ti4200 I get 13,500ish 3dmarks.
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Pfunk -
Are you using the onboard sound with your board or something else?
Also the prime95 software that you mentioned, I did a search and found something by that name but is for a prime number search thingy. Is this the same software? I downloaded the file, but don't want to install without knowing for sure what this is.
I've having a tough time finding an ABIT v2 board (excalibur is fresh out of them today) :mad: So it sounds like the Epox board might be a good alternative. Its gotten good reviews also.
Again, I appreciate the assistance :)
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I am using the soundstream audio that comes on the 8rda+ motherboard. It sounds really nice and has zero issues. Oh yeah http://www.newegg.com has the EPOX 8rda+ for $96 shipped, damn good deal I paid $120 when I got mine a month ago
Prime95 is here, use to "torture test" to check stability
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
You need to install motherboard monitor as well, the way you can see what your temps are on the CPU, anything below 50C under load is very good, 50ish is acceptable
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Oh yeah it looks like newegg is indeed shipping revision 2.0 ABIT boards, so to me it would be a toss up on which one to choose. The ABIT has serial ATA but are you really gonna use it? It also has the the optical and coaxial outputs if you plan on using surround sound. The Epox has the capability for that but you have to order the accessory for it, which is $12 i think. ABIT does have a far better RMA policy than EPOX does 3yrs if I am not mistaken and you just do it all online and ship the board off. So I guess what I am trying to say is if you think your going to use the extra features on the ABIT board go with that, if not look into the EPOX 8rda+ I am more than satisfied with mine.
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Pfunk - (probably driving ya nuts ain't I :D)
Last couple of questions....
Do you put the Artic Silver compound directly on the CPU, then put the heat sink/fan combo on top of that? (pardon my ignorance :D)
Excalibur website has several different XP1700 CPU's listed. What's the difference between them? I couldn't find any reference to the one you recommened on the AMD website.
HOPEFULLY, I won't think of anymore questions. I owe ya a beer or two (or soda if you're not a beer drinker :D) Thanks a ton!!
Modas
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This is the chip you want
http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_186&products_id=1926
AMD Athlon XP1700+ 1.47GHZ 384K 266 Tbred (TRAY)(JIUHB:0310WPMW)
and yes you put the AS3 directly on the cpu and nowhere else, most people gob it on and the actually is detremental to keeping the temps low. I put a small gob on it maybe the size of this... 0.... really small amount then use a flat surface to spread it out evenly, I have used a matchbook cover with success. But for a REALLY good step by step on appyling it go here
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm
Also make sure you get a real good heatsink, pretty much everyone uses thermaltake, I have an AX7 but they are discontinued as have been replace by the SLK line. thermaltake slk-800 heatsink is a good one,but a tad pricey the sk7 is good as well. Then your gonna want an 80MM case fan the vantec tornadoe's are very nice but are loud, the panaflo's are good as well as the sunons. I have a panaflo and it isnt to loud. With the panaflo's you need to get a "tail" which allows you to plug it into the motherboard for monitoring, or you can just use it the way it comes and plug it into the power supply. I would go with the Sunon's as they tend to be quiter while have a higher output. With that heatsink and fan combo CPU temps should not be an issue with overclocking it. The nice thing about that processor is that it runs at a default 1.5V which is nice as it keeps the temps down a tad. Rumor has it that the processors were actually MobileXP processors that didnt quite hit the Ghz they wanted them to, some people say that they are "downgraded" XP2800's, I have no idea but all I know is that EVERYONE that has bought one of those chips has hit AT LEAST 2Ghz, like I said before 2.2-2.4 is the average and some guys have hit over 3Ghz (with water cooling of course). A $72 chip overclocks at least 800mhz is a damn fine deal.
This is a good place to buy from as they are VERY highly rated on resellerratings.com
http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/scan/se=CPU%20Cooling/se=Thermalright/mp=menu_search.html
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You can still find the AX-7 here http://heatsinkfactory.com/cgi-bin/HFAstore.pl?user_action=detail&catalogno=HS-004
I just picked up an extra one last week. Coupled with the Thermaltake smartfan II Its still one of the best air coolers around and you sure cant beat the price.