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OC-ing ASUS A7V333, Best vid card for?

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  • OC-ing ASUS A7V333, Best vid card for?

    Hi all,

    I have an ASUS A7V333 with 512MB of OCZ PC-3200 and an Athlon 1800+ (core speed 1.53 Ghz)

    I want to overclock the memory and board as fast as I can... currently my Athlon is still locked but through BIOS I am able to get these results with no crashes:

    1.690 Mhz (12.5x multiplier, 147/37)
    WCPUID says "System Bus: 294Mhz DDR" (147 x 2)

    If I go any higher in BIOS settings than 147/37, the system starts locking up during 3DMark2001 SE Benchmarks.

    This leads me to think that the vid card is limiting my OC-ing on this board, am I right? Or is it the board itself? Surely it is not the RAM.

    With the VIA 333 chipset, the board should be able to go up to 333mhz, right?

    Any idea what could be causing the system to lock up? I thought maybe it was my vid card because it starts locking up during 3DMark. I had an ATI Radeon 8500LE but I sent it back when I discovered it was only running at 230/230mhz. I could only tweak it to 240/240 with Powerstrip before it would start artifacting.

    I want to buy a new video card for <$200 USD, so I was thinking of the Gigabyte Radeon 8500 which is a bit faster and has better cooling. Any other recommended cards for that price? Do I need a certain card to keep my system from locking up?

    Right now I'm running my old Riva TNT2 32MB vid card until I decide what new card to get, but strangely I get the same mobo overclockability with this old card as the Radeon 8500. That leads me to think maybe the vid card is not the source of the lockups?

    Thanks for any advice!

  • #2
    it wouldn't be your ram...

    i'm thinking that 147 is might be the limit for a stable OC for you athlon, if you are game enough, try giving the cpu/ram more voltage, you might be able to get it higher, and if that doesn't work, you can always unlock your cpu, you will probaly be able to OC it more

    one more thing, that HSF are you using, and what temps are you getting?
    TweakTown SETI@home Team

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    • #3
      My CPU voltage is maxed out (at least from BIOS) to 1.85V (default 1.6)

      The HSF (heat sink fan) I am running is the "Dragon Orb 3" and ASUS Probe utility reports my CPU temps as 42 C idle, and 52 C full load (running Seti @ Home for 20 minutes temperature peaks and stabilizes at 52 C )

      I am using Artic Silver 3 as the interface between the HSF and CPU, and no shim. I tried using a copper shim but the ASUS mobo kept saying "System failed due to CPU overlocking!" when I used the shim.

      I already tried to unlock the Athlon with some Arctic Silver... it is conductive enough so it should have worked, right? No luck tho... I will have to try again maybe with some conductive grease.

      What I am really wondering tho, is there any other way to overlock my RAM without increasing my FSB any more?

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      • #4
        :eek: yeah ya never use a shim with any Orb HSF as they have a recess which when combined with a shim stops the Orb from contacting the core. :devil win
        TNT2 cards would usually go to the mid - high 70MHz on the AGP so maybe that is what's stopping you though seeing as ya have OCZ memory there I wouldn't put it past that to be dodgey.
        Not sure how well the Radeon would handle the high AGP frequency though but any of the GeForce ones should handle that ok. :smokin:
        <center>:cheers:</center>

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        • #5
          well Xyllian, you can not say that the purchase of the A7V333 with COP was well worth it... if you bought some other board without some sort of thermal protection, you would have a nicely toasted chip :\
          TweakTown SETI@home Team

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          • #6
            Can the ASUS A7V333 Mobo realy support PC3200 though??? I thought PC2700 was its limit???

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            • #7
              The reason is that PC2700 is the latest offical DDR standard, PC3000 and 3200 aren't offical standards yet. Also it supports the 166MHz speeds, which require PC2700 to operate at. Getting higher memory can't hurt.

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              • #8
                What is the easiest way to overclock my A7v333 mobo. I only have a Radeon 7500 64mb ddr video card, and 512mb of 2700 ram. Thanks,
                Nick
                If you are still trying to figure out letme know?

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                • #9
                  The easiest way is by using the FSB. :smokin:

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