teh Forum

I've done a wickity-flippity-fliznop...

I'm now running:

AMD64 3800+
MSI NEO2 Platinum NForce 3 Ultra
2GB PC3200
120GB Barracuda IV
80GB Barracuda IV
BFG 6800GT OC
Audigy 2

Ummm.... It's pretty fast.

I just had an interesting thought. I have a spare 80GB HDD. I may have to toss Linux onto it or something. I think it would be interesting to have that on my main computer. I've never really seen Linux on what I'd call, "a fast computer." I actually have VERY little software these days that couldn't be run natively in Linux (or have an equivalent.) I can get all my emulators for it, there are ports of most of my favorite games for it, and probably most of my old Windows favorites would run under emulation. Hmmmm... I said HMMMMMMM........

Who's here to try and talk me out of it?

See, if I get it running on a separate drive, and it turns out that I like it, and am not losing out on much, then I may have to migrate completely. I just have to see if people have things like U9, and other "that era" Windows games running in Wine or something like that.

Oh, audio software. That might be the tricky part.

Holy motherfux0ry!! I just checked out the "Linux Compatible" site, and every game that I'd want to run will run on Linux. A few need some tweaking done, but now I can't think of any reason that I don't want to switch. There are also ways of getting VST instruments to work as well, so that solves my musical problems. Still going to start out with just a Linux drive, until I get everything working the way I want. Once it is, I think the switch may become permanent. I've just been seeing more and more cool free stuff become available. I happen to have an Nvidia card, and they write very nice drivers for it. I suppose the only thing I might have trouble with is demos, and I love my demos. Hmmmm....

Yeah...good luck...installing software on teh linux box can be not fun...

oh here is a site that talks about all the distributions and where to dl them etc...


www.distrowatch.com

I'm quite familiar with installing software for Linux. Yes, sometimes it can be a bit of a pain, but not too bad. Also, once it's installed, it's less likely to get fuxored. Oh, and with the newer distributions, things get installed more or less like they do in Windows anyway, (using setup programs and such.) McNevin and I did some Linux work for Allen a couple years ago, and it was quite simplistic.

Oh, and nice Asp-Avatar. Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp-Asp.

I could not get xmame to work...on suse anyway...yeah teh mozilla stuff came with regular windows style installers.

I got very ANSI waiting for payday, and I went and bought an Athlon 64 3000+ with Mr. Capitol One. Only $170!

Very nice! Let me know how it all goes!

The MB only worked in single channel mode, and said I only had 256MB of ram. I flashed the bios, and that has fixed that problem.

People have this chip running at 2.6GHz, but i cant seem to get over 2Ghz... What I think is the problem is the RAM, it is trying to overclock the RAM as well. That is the beauty of the A64, you can increase the HT-L (formerly bus) and have a separate rate for the ram. There is even an option in the bios, dont clock ram over this magic number. I set that, and i just ran CPU-Z and it shows my ram running at 235 MHz. I'm getting all kinds of video crashes, dont think the ram likes 235Mhz.

There should be a RAM to FSB divider. You know 1:1 5:4 etc. That's how most of them work. That way you can bump the clock up, and the RAM stays at or below speed. There is a review on HardOCP, so perhaps they mention how they overclocked with it.

Another tricky thing with the A64 boards (at least with mine,) is that I had to do a few extra things to get it all running stable. I had to manually adjust some RAM timings, and I also needed to bump the RAM voltage up to 2.6v. I'm also able to set my RAM clock separately. Basically I have the option to choose 133, 166, 200, etc. So if you have that option, try setting it to 166, then crank up the FSB, and that should bring you back up into the range of 200 RAM clock. Then there is the fact that many of the A64s are multiplier unlocked, so you may actually be able to overclock without changing your bus speeds at all. You'll have to find out which chips are like that though. It's something like one product line can change the multiplier in one direction, and the other line can change it in both directions. Not sure which is which though.

So the setting kinda works, i set it to DDR200, and it set the memory clock to 117Mhz, which would be half of 235.

With J3RK's MB, there seems to be more control over this, since this guy was able to run the HTT at 250, and the RAM at 209

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p ... ostcount=1

You can see his ram ratio is CPU / 12, and his multiplier is x10.

I dont have any ram : CPU ratio setting (AFAIK)

Setting it to 166 sounds good though, i should be able to set my HTT @ 240, and have the ram run at 206. that would give me 2160

9 is the highest multiplier that I have, if i remember right, i have all the lower ones too, so maybe i have the chip that only goes down.

So that is my ram ratio, i get three choices 133, 166, or 200.

Me miss nforce already!

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p ... ostcount=1

Mine only has that option. (133-166-200) I also have that "Max RAM speed" thingy. The memory controller is actually on the A64 chip itself, so that may explain this. I can change my Hypertransport settings (I'm sure you can too,) so we should see how high we can get that. I'm very limited in how far I can overclock my RAM though, because all the slots are populated. Newer P4s and Athlon 64s seem to dislike running more than two RAM slots at high speeds. Maybe it's time to get some PC4000 Corsair memory or something

What's the status Admiral? Do we have a go?

No... i spent 4 hours trying to get a good overclock.

It is almost perfect at 9x245, runs at 109deg F. The dam video card fails with a vpu recover. Ive tried messing with voltage, even tried disabling fast writes. I got it to run 75% of a timedemo in D3 @ 9x243. Ive tried every combination of agp voltage, and have my agp clock locked at 66mhz.

Have any idea what HTT Voltage affects?

Probably something to do with Hyper Transport, which if memory serves is the main bus from CPU to memory and such. I don't think that would have an effect. Hmm... Strange about the VPU recover thing. Try running it at the highest speed (stable minus 3D,) and run something extremely CPU intensive but not 3D card intensive. Something like a demo in software mode, or a game in software rendering mode. If that works fine, then it's video card related. Have you checked the HardOCP forums? I've never had to adjust anything to do with AGP. I just set it to lock at 66MHz, and leave it. (On all my recent systems.) The BIGGEST problem when OCing, is usually the memory. (Even when using dividers sometimes.) RAM has always been my biggest problem when OCing. Just thought of something. I don't know if your BIOS does this, but many MSI boards have "hidden BIOS settings." You do something like shift+F3 then alt+F2 or something like that. There are settings that automatically overclock your video card slightly, and if that's on, then that could very well be your problem. I'd check it out if I were you.

Hidden BIOS settings?! Wow. I was wondering how they got my colors all f'ed up.

It's not my memory, cause its only running at 200.9 MHz. Anyway.. I think i figured it out:

Ok, I've been able to get my proc up to 2.0GHz by upping the FSB to 222 (x9=2.0). It boots, runs Prime95 endlessly flawlessly. Heat is not an issue. Problem is when I loadup 3DMark2001 it will lockup durring the first "demo". Memtest is fine too. SiSoft Sandra benchies everything fine too.

At first I thought it was my AGP getting set too fast (becasue thats when it locked up, when I loaded up the 3D game stuff) so I made sure the AGP lock was enabled (it is). I tried a plethora of BIOS settings to no avail.

Then I found this: Heres the deal, if I lower "HT Frequency" in the BIOS from 1000MHz to 800MHz then it runs stable. 3DMark is fine, UT2004 is fine, HL2 is fine, etc etc etc.

It makes sense that the HT Frequency would not like to run at 1225 MHz. I figured that if I had it set on 1000, it would run at 1000, but what it really means is 5xHTT. Why dont they just say that. HT multiplier, memory ratio, etc, instead of just putting the end result in.

That might make too much sense. Sounds like that could be the problem. You may still want to check those hidden settings though. There are a few people that had problems with that video overclock setting. The HT thing sounds very likely though. Let me know.

9x250 and rock solid! That was totally the problem. I will still try and find those hidden settings though, sneaky bastards.

I am teh jealous.

Well, originally I wanted to get the Athlon 64 3500+ ($275)

It runs at 2.2 GHz, well guess what, I'm running at 2.25Ghz, for over a hundred less.

Thanks Ender for the great research, and for talking me into the 3000+

Thanks also to J3rk for the great deal, and for all the OC tips...

Not a problem Admiral. Glad to hear it's all up and working. I definitely need to get that CPU-Z utility. I'm quite familiar with its displays and readouts, I just never bothered to see what it was called when I see it in reviews. That should more than adequately force-feed your video card until it nearly pukes now

My PC needs a name, any suggestions?

Something nautical perhaps?

Mine is called SHODAN.

You could call yours XERXES.

I'm now running:

AMD64 3800+
MSI NEO2 Platinum NForce 3 Ultra
2GB PC3200
120GB Barracuda IV
80GB Barracuda IV
BFG 6800GT OC
Audigy 2

Thats insane! How does ScumVM run on that box?

I haven't yet run any SCUMM games. The Admiral sent them all up, but I haven't had time to start them yet. I'm in the middle of both System Shock 1 and 2 at the moment. I'm playing System Shock 1 at full speed (well as fast as it was on my P90 when it came out) in DOSBox.

Admiral: Now you can run System Shock 1.