• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

2900XT Bottleneck Advice

m|Ke

m|Ke

m|Ke

Associate
Joined
23 May 2005
Posts
64
Hi, I currently own the below system (All at stock speed):

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice (Socket 939)
Epox EP-9NPA+ nForce4 (Socket 939) (PCI-Express)
GeIL 1GB PC3200
Sapphire ATI Radeon X850XT 256MB (PCI-Express)
Enermax 485w PSU
Dual 19" Samsung SyncMaster 930BF

I built this around two years ago and now its starting to show its age. I've seen the HD 2900XT on the new drivers and im impressed.

I'm looking to buy one of these but I know there will be a bottleneck with my crappy processor but I'm not 100% sure how this bottleneck works and effects it.
Will my motherboard take an "AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (Socket 939)" with no problems? bios flashing etc? also will this releive the bottleneck?
I cant afford a new motherboard and stuff at the moment so I cant move out of the 939 range unfortunately so im on damage limitation.

Second question is will my 485w enermax run the 2900xt ok? Ive heard it is a power sucker.

Any advice and help would be appreciated.
 
I can afford another gig of ram at a push, the geil I have is around £50 for a gig so I can add another.

I just dont want to pay all the money for the card if im not going to see the power of it showing.

Ive always being scared of overclocking as I dont have the money to replace parts I damage :(
 
both really but with low framerate the game becomes unplayable. I can never tell the difference when they do benchmark image quality comparisons. Why do you ask?
 
can you damage the cpu by overclocking it? since I have no experience in this, is it relatively easy?
 
Sorry for all the questions, but how would I know if I have to flash the bios? the cpu just wouldnt work?

EDIT: looked on the board it says REV 1.1 on the corner.
 
Last edited:
So within my bios it has a cpu frequency and pci-e clock settings as you can see here .
If I increase the CPU FREQUENCY is this basicly overclocking it? will I have to change voltages and stuff? Also will just changing this by 1 each time until it becomes unstable cause any damage?
 
I had a go at overclocking my amd64 3200+ and I had abit of joy but not much.

I incremented in 5 to 10mhz each time. All was well upto 230Mhz with a system temp of 32C and CPU temp of 39C and all default voltages.

Increasing to 235 then gave blue screens so I increased the voltages one by one with the DIMM voltage then the Chipset then the CPU and I managed to get it booted into windows at.
DIMM Voltage = 3.0V (max able to set)
Chipset Voltage = 1.8V (max able to set)
CPU Voltage = +0.075V

(am I correct in thinking by increasing the cpu voltage this will enable more choices in the other ones? I think after increasing the cpu voltage I had 3.1V available on the DIMM)

CPU temp = 40C

A further increase to 240 resulted in windows not even showing the boot screen and with no more available DIMM voltages or chipset voltages I am not sure if I should increase the CPU voltage. I dont want to fry it and I dont know exactly what ranges I should stay within.

I dunno if its worth sayin but the bios says the multiplier is 5x, I am able to change this if I wish.

any advice appreciated
thx
 
Last edited:
im currently running at 230 without any voltage changes and seems stable, completes 3dmark etc and i got a 400point gain from 200.

I looked for HTT multiplier but I was only able to find the HT Frequency in the bios which must be it, this ranges from 1x to 5x, currently set on AUTO, I set this to 4x and tried puttin the CPU Frequency to 240 but still blue screens. The main multiplier was set to 10x by default. You can see bios pictures on this link

Im not sure how to do a dividor, ill have to look that up.

Im not bothered about slight bottleneck, 90% of peoples systems bottleneck unless you cash coming out your bum :) . Its just a case of damage limitation and ive always being interested in overclocking but always being scared :D

any advice greatful :)
 
Last edited:
thx for all the help Dutch Guy.

I knocked the memory down to 166 as you suggested, I then managed to knock the CPU Frequency to 250 and boots into windows fine. 3dmark completes and i have another 300 on the score.

Trying this at 255 and 260 resulted in a message telling me to reset my cpu frequency on boot.
I understand the memory divider now, I was thinking it would be slow with the memory knocked down but this is scaled up with the cpu frequency rise :). Its now running DDR400 @ 208.
Is this my limit now would you say?

CPU appears to be running at around 39C idle and with 3dmark running on load it was around 43C, this is stock cooling. What range of temp should I be staying under, I read one article said 70C but surely that would torch it.
 
I ran that Stress Prime program on blend and went down stairs for 15mins, came back and the program had stopped itself and the motherboard was beeping at me :( .
Think I might have to knock it down abit.

Processor currently running at 2500 MHz with default voltages and memory @ 166 running at 208
 
I just realised I was running the "Stress Prime 2004 Orthos" which is for dual core cpu, could this be a reason why it stopped? or would this of happened even with the normal "Stress Prime 2004" for single core?

EDIT: also fails with hardware error in single core version.

Do you mean turn up the CPU Voltage?

thanks
Mike
 
Last edited:
ok, thx , ill try uppin the voltage later, the cpu is sittin on 43C so id think thats more on the voltage side.
 
Hi, I tested upping the volts on the cpu this morning, I upped it +0.025V and booted into windows and ran prime, it yet again failed with hardware error. It can complete source stress test and 3dmark but fails prime.

At the moment im running on 250x10 with memory at 166 running at 208. I havent decreased the HTT multiplier, its still on 5.

I did do a cs:source stress test though and it looks like my 3200 has being holding my x850xt back a lot. I did a test before hand at stock and I got average 71.8fps and I ran at 250 and got 87fps.

thx
Mike
 
hey,

I lowered the HTT multiplier to 4x and the CPU to 245 so thats running at 980 and my rams runnning at 204. Voltages all default.

I ran Prime again and left it for 6minutes and I had no errors or warnings. On 250 it hardware failed after 1minute.

My only worry was the temperature rose to a maximum of 51C when under full load for 6minutes, is this too high? what range of temps should I be aiming to stay below. Its running at 39/40C idle.

thx
Mike
 
sorry to bump.

anyone know if these temps are ok? whats the limit, I read they can go upto 60 odd C with no problems.

thx
Mike
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom