Cpu and Board.

[XCERPT]

I am looking into buying a Athlon Xp 2800 Barton.. and a Abit NF7-S and i was planning on OverClocking it.. Now i heard people have the 2500+ barton and have it overclocked up to a 3200+ .. i was wondering If a 2800 will show better results . or should i go with a 2500+ ??? also any board Suggestions would be appreciated..


Thanks,
John

[Fatguy3]

Overclocking is like the lottery. Most 2500+'s can get up to 3200+ speeds with good cooling and a good O/Cing mobo. Getting a 2800 might give you a better chance at seeing 3200+ speeds, but I doubt you would get more than that with regular cooling, as the 3200+ is the fastest Barton they'll ever make, so you could see some more performance, but it wouldnt be much.

So if you are on a budget, like 99.9% of all overclockers are, Id save yourself some money and go with a 2500 with a good heatsink and you'll probably be able to overclock it up to a 2800 ot beyond. However theres always a risk you get a wierd chip that wont go past 2600 speeds. Like I said, its a gamble.

As far as mobos go, I have 2 suggestions. The Asus A7N8X Deluxe is a great board with a TON of features, and excellent overclocking. Also, the Epox 8RDA3+ is an awesome O/Cing board with a little less features but costs a little less. At the very least get something with the nforce2 chipset, as its the best out for AMD Bartons.


Also, make sure you have a good power supply, at least 400 watts. Good memory (Id get 2 sticks so you can use the Dual Channel option) running at pc3200 400 mhz, so your memory wont limit your overclocking.

[jamie_horwood]

if you go to Toms Hardware and search for the cpu you want. also search for the mobo you have. toms hardware will tell you the pros and cons, speed charts and what speeds you can achieve.. plus an in depth review. this is where i found out that if you want to overclock the barton 400 or thouroughbred 333bus, the only nforce2 motherboard capable enough to run at 400 bus speeds stable enough without trouble is the a7n8x mcp igp and mcp-t. make sure that you don't also buy the a7n8x deluxe revision 1.04. only the revision 2.0 boards are stable at 400 bus speeds and beyond. an i think the best setup for dual channel high scores experience tomshardware replied is 2x256 xms corsair twinx as they are also quailified and tested by asus.
The 128-bit TwinBank DDR Memory architecture doubles the DDR 400 (PC3200) bandwidth. System bottlenecks are eliminated with balanced architecture and peak bandwidth up to 6.4GB/s.
i hope this has helped you

[polar]

Well , I 'm new to this forum but I have overclocked a few chips.

And the 2500 all that I have had will do 3200 speeds at a decent voltage.
I just bought one last week from new Egg week 0346 and it runs 200X11 2.2 1.75V.

Which is up from the 1.65 stock Voltage.

So you have a good chance of getting a 2500 up to 3200 speeds if the situation is right, Good PS,Ram ,MB and Installation.

[Arsenal11]

Weird, Im running my 2500 at 2.2, and I didnt even have to touch the voltage. Then again, I haven't gotten around to messing with my RAM timings yet.

[Wiggo]

Weird, Im running my 2500 at 2.2, and I didnt even have to touch the voltage. Then again, I haven't gotten around to messing with my RAM timings yet.

You were very lucky then.

[sirwriter]

I run my XP3000 at 200x11.5 at 1.675. It would not boot at the stock voltage setting at 200x10. I've never tried to OC beyond this point on this chip. It has run stable now for two days so I leave it where it is. I agree with Wiggo, if you can run at that speed w/o touching the voltage you got a good board. Probably never duplicate it with another one.

[Sovereignty]

if you go to Toms Hardware and search for the cpu you want. also search for the mobo you have. toms hardware will tell you the pros and cons, speed charts and what speeds you can achieve.. plus an in depth review. this is where i found out that if you want to overclock the barton 400 or thouroughbred 333bus, the only nforce2 motherboard capable enough to run at 400 bus speeds stable enough without trouble is the a7n8x mcp igp and mcp-t.

That's because THG is a piece of trash biased site and will never say anything bad about Asus or Intel. Ever.

A7N8X is a bad nf2 board. New NF7/NF7-S's will run ~225fsb, older ones can go anywhere from 230-260, and the DFI Infinity has seen upwards of 270fsb.