I read through Eclipse's A64 sticky guide, and attempted to follow it through. My comp is as follows --
3000+ A64 Winchester (failed to grab stepping before putting the HSF down)
Gigabyte K8NF-9 mobo
TwinMOS 2x512MB RAM (nothing spectacular)
Sparkle 6600GT
The mobo is, I suspect, what is really hamstringing my efforts. I'm not a hundred percent positive as to what speeds the RAM can manage before it coughs it's lungs up.
I first went through the "FSB (HTT) OVERCLOCKING" section. The K8NF-9 bios seems to have two modes -- double or nothing. You can change the CPU multi down, and you can wind the voltage up, but nothing else. I couldn't even set a RAM divider.
Heck, half-ass-ery never stopped me before. I put the CPU multi to 5x, and booted into windows. An instance of Prime95, Speedfan, and CG-NVNF4 later, I was gingerly increasing the FSB a few MHz at a time. (Gingerly, since I'd mucked about before and knew that this thing does not like being pushed at all.) It got to 225MHz and Prime95 packed a wobbly. Fair enough, I stepped up slowly from 221MHz, finding 224 to be stable.
Well. The guide says that if it can't do 250, something is wrong. The damn thing couldn't even do /half/ that.
This FSB wouldn't do miracles, but the heck with it. I went on to "CPU OVERCLOCKING". I wound the CPU mult back to 9x, and went for gold (rust, at least) with 224MHz, gaining me a whopping 2.016GHz.
I didn't even /bother/ with RAM overclocking. The mobo wouldn't let me tinker with RAM settings beyond the voltage. (No timings, no nothing.)
I bought the Gigabyte since my previous mobo was a Gigabyte 7ZXE for my 1GHz Morgan core Duron, which would happily run all day at 1.2Ghz. 20%, or double the overclock that this thing will do. Without really tweaking it at all.
So. My final questions are --
Without a doubt, I need to get a new motherboard. My TJ06 has a flipped tray, BTX style, so it can't have any heat pipes (Don't want to take chances of the things not working upside down). SLI is of less than no use to me -- I'm in this OC thing for the savings, not for the play aspect. What would be the best brand? Gigabyte is great for stock speed, but it ain't so hot for overclocking.
Also, is my TwinMOS ram (no fancy labels) possibly the next bottleneck I'll encounter should I get a new motherboard?
3000+ A64 Winchester (failed to grab stepping before putting the HSF down)
Gigabyte K8NF-9 mobo
TwinMOS 2x512MB RAM (nothing spectacular)
Sparkle 6600GT
The mobo is, I suspect, what is really hamstringing my efforts. I'm not a hundred percent positive as to what speeds the RAM can manage before it coughs it's lungs up.
I first went through the "FSB (HTT) OVERCLOCKING" section. The K8NF-9 bios seems to have two modes -- double or nothing. You can change the CPU multi down, and you can wind the voltage up, but nothing else. I couldn't even set a RAM divider.
Heck, half-ass-ery never stopped me before. I put the CPU multi to 5x, and booted into windows. An instance of Prime95, Speedfan, and CG-NVNF4 later, I was gingerly increasing the FSB a few MHz at a time. (Gingerly, since I'd mucked about before and knew that this thing does not like being pushed at all.) It got to 225MHz and Prime95 packed a wobbly. Fair enough, I stepped up slowly from 221MHz, finding 224 to be stable.
Well. The guide says that if it can't do 250, something is wrong. The damn thing couldn't even do /half/ that.
This FSB wouldn't do miracles, but the heck with it. I went on to "CPU OVERCLOCKING". I wound the CPU mult back to 9x, and went for gold (rust, at least) with 224MHz, gaining me a whopping 2.016GHz.
I didn't even /bother/ with RAM overclocking. The mobo wouldn't let me tinker with RAM settings beyond the voltage. (No timings, no nothing.)
I bought the Gigabyte since my previous mobo was a Gigabyte 7ZXE for my 1GHz Morgan core Duron, which would happily run all day at 1.2Ghz. 20%, or double the overclock that this thing will do. Without really tweaking it at all.
So. My final questions are --
Without a doubt, I need to get a new motherboard. My TJ06 has a flipped tray, BTX style, so it can't have any heat pipes (Don't want to take chances of the things not working upside down). SLI is of less than no use to me -- I'm in this OC thing for the savings, not for the play aspect. What would be the best brand? Gigabyte is great for stock speed, but it ain't so hot for overclocking.
Also, is my TwinMOS ram (no fancy labels) possibly the next bottleneck I'll encounter should I get a new motherboard?