P5W DH Owners - A Question...

b4z · 18 Aug 2006 at 17:32

my friend is looking to upgrade his HTPC;

he wants to get an E6300 or E6400

and an Asus P5W DH

and GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2

my question is;

whats the FSB max have these boards been doing/capable of,

so i can give him a guestimate on how high his cpu can be overclocked

will it do (400x7) 3.0ghz [e6300] or (400x8) 3.2ghz [e6400]

or is this irrealistic to expect 400fsb from this board?

and so is it just better to advise he get a Gigabyte DS4?

Jokester · 18 Aug 2006 at 18:18

They all should do 400MHz as far as I'm aware. You're probably looking at something like 430-450MHz max with a bit of luck.

For the 6300/6400 chips the DS4 seems to be overclocking better though.

Jokester

kitten · 18 Aug 2006 at 19:44

My P5W is at 400 fsb 1:1 ratio and is stable. I have a 6400 @ 3.2 GHz.

A review I have read states that it tops at around 420-430 fsb. The reviewer suggested that this was limited by the maximum voltage BIOS allows for the Northbridge. Who knows what he changed in BIOS though :confused:

He supplied no details of other BIOS settings. Maybe a BIOS upgrade or volt mod will surface that will support a higher NB voltage. Or maybe just manually setting a few other BIOS optoins will allow to clock further. I'm not ready to experiment just yet. Reaching 3.2GHz was easy.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6300.html

The reference to FSB is on page 8

monkeypants · 18 Aug 2006 at 20:05

Also a thing to note, brought to my attention by Devious, is that there appears to be a zone (around 410/415 maybe more, or less) where the board will not POST, jumping about 15Mhz or so usually works when you reach this wall.

No idea if it's still affecting new boards though.

Jokester · 18 Aug 2006 at 20:08

I didn't have any problems booting all the way upto 440MHz, so maybe it was just the earlier boards.

Jokester

b4z · 18 Aug 2006 at 23:56

ta for replies

fornowagain · 19 Aug 2006 at 01:54

kitten said:
Maybe a BIOS upgrade or volt mod will surface that will support a higher NB voltage. Or maybe just manually setting a few other BIOS optoins will allow to clock further

There's a special bios that ups the MCH to 1.85v, but it only works on P5W's with a certain hardware revision, can't find out how to indentify the revision. Theres a variable resistor mode takes it to 2.2v iirc. And finally a pencil mode for writting a smd resistor.

The Asgard · 19 Aug 2006 at 09:15

An HTPC case won't allow much air flow so you will be limited on clocks if you want a quiet system. I have put my little monster 3.5G 6300 in an HTPC case and I couldnt get rid of the heat at 2.8 on my DS4 even undervolting. I currently run at default because of the heat issue

My advice would be go for the cheapest board with decent sound I use a P5W DH and a DS4 and I would say the DS4 would be a better option for the HTPC, less heat generated by the chipset and cheaper too.

Rememeber Quiet means little heat if you want to appreciate those films