• 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.

Opty 146 max VID shown as 1.45V - how can I up this?

scottyd

scottyd

scottyd

Associate
Joined
8 Jan 2006
Posts
13
Hi all,

I've seen screenies of people getting over 3000Mhz from Opty 146s on air with exactly the same stepping as I have. My temps are fine, well lower than 50deg after a while on Prime95.

I'm getting 2800Mhz on 280FSB with 10x multi, runs stable at 1.4V or 1.45V. Won't go past 286FSB without falling out of Windows so I'm thinking I should up the voltage to 1.5 or even 1.55.

Systool and CPU-Z show my Max VID as 1.45, and if I set it above this, there's no change. Sticks at 1.45. Am I missing a setting somewhere? Changing CPU Voltage in BIOS (ASUS a8n SLI mb) makes no difference. If I set CPU Voltage to 1.5 for example, it will boot with 1.4.

I'm presuming by the way that VID is the same as VCore is the same as CPU Voltage - please tell me if I'm wrong.

So in summary, how can I increase my CPU Voltage to 1.5 or above?

Cheers,
Scott
 
Thanks Alex, I have an Asus a8n sli motherboard, it has options to change the CPU Voltage, but it doesn't seem to work if I put the voltage above 1.45V.

If I set the voltage to e.g. 1.5V in BIOS, it will be set to 1.4V by the time it gets to Windows.

Anyone think I'm missing a setting somewhere like "Enable Vcore value change"???
 
what RAM are you using?
to get above a certain FSB on my 144 opteron, I had to use a divider on the RAM, as it's not top class stuff.
Is your hyperthreading set to x3 instead of x4?
theres numerous reasons it won't go higher.
A friend of mines running the sam board as you, and I remember him saying the voltage won't go all that high on them.
 
Yep, done all that, I'm running Ballistix but knocked the divider down just in case, and the HTT multiplier too. I've a feeling the voltage might be mis-reported in a couple of programs. CPU-Z seems to show it as I expect (up to 1.55V which is what the BIOS is limited to without taking a soldering iron to the motherboard) but systool shows it as still 1.4. Weird.

Still can't get above 286FSB (2860Mhz) though. I might check to see if I've applied the thermal paste properly. Failing that I might sacrifice a chicken.

If anyone has any bright ideas not involving chickens - let me know!
 
This may be a limitation of your board mate.

The Asus A8N boards are excellent, however they are renowned primarily for their stability, not overclocking. Sure, they clock well, but to get the most out of an Opteron you need an out-and-out overclocking board.

For this, you can't beat DFI. If your budget won't stretch to a DFI, look at Epox instead.

You're trying to run a very high HTT, and your 286MHz limit is probably the board falling over, and not the CPU, thus no amount of volts will fix it.

Hav
 
Gotcha - thanks Havana for a great response. I'll stick where I am and stop fiddling. Until I get a new board of course...

Cheers all
 
Actually, one quick thing - I have reduced the HTT multi to 3x, which is way less than 1000 (258 if my maths holds up). So I wouldn't have thought the HTT was a limiting factor.

Does the FSB itself affect something on the board, I just thought it was a virtual setting?
 
With A64 it changed a bit from the old Athlon XP days.

Athlon XP had:
FSB
Multi

A64 has:
HTT (FSB basically)
HT Multi (Hyper Transport Bus multiplier)
Multi

The CPU speed & HT speed are set by different multiples of the HTT, e.g. if you'd set HTT to 250, CPU multi to 10x & HT multi to 4x you would have:
HTT: 250MHz (RAM = 500MHz unless on a divider)
HT: 1000MHz
CPU: 2500MHz

Changing the HTT affects the RAM speed (DDR RAM speed = 2 x HTT/divider).

Hav
 
Havana_UK said:
This may be a limitation of your board mate.

The Asus A8N boards are excellent, however they are renowned primarily for their stability, not overclocking. Sure, they clock well, but to get the most out of an Opteron you need an out-and-out overclocking board.

For this, you can't beat DFI. If your budget won't stretch to a DFI, look at Epox instead.

You're trying to run a very high HTT, and your 286MHz limit is probably the board falling over, and not the CPU, thus no amount of volts will fix it.
Click to expand...
Hi,

Why is that? My friend has an ASUS A8N-E that is quite happily running at 321HTT+ and from what I read all ASUS boards will hit 300HTT no problem, of course you will need a good supporting cast and have the know how on to set it all up correctly.

Patience is the key, the blame game is easy!
 
Thanks both above. I'll test it I think by dropping the CPU multi, mem divider, HT multi and see what I can get the FSB up to. Time to start isolating things.

Or I could forget it and just use the thing.

Also, I've just read somewhere that the Maximum VID is nothing to do with the actual CPU Voltage BIOS setting - which is why CPU-Z is reporting the actual CPU Voltage (up to 1.55V as stated in the BIOS) and other programs are reporting a max of 1.45V which is the Maximum VID. Someone more technically savvy than me (not hard...) can explain the difference if they want!

So, slight red herring on the original premise of this topic, apologies, but lots of good advice received anyway, for which many thanks.

Cheers
Scott
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom