new user here... anyone got some advice?

[airspirit]

You will start seeing instability as low as 150FSB on some NForce2 boards with the stock cooler. Granted, some also go as far as 180FSB before instability, but overall 166 seems the average limit on the northbridge with the stock cooler. Removing the northbridge cooler involves pinching the clips under the board holding it on and then pulling the thing off (it is stuck on with goop). Installation of the new one involves spreading thermal compound on it, aligning the retention snaps (similar to the originals), and pushing them through the holes on the board. Replacing the southbridge cooler involves simply pulling off the old one and taping a new one down with the thermal tape -- very easy.

Overall, the hardest part is scrubbing the old goo off of the northbridge. That stuff doens't wash off easily.

[phill9700]

but where can i get a decent replacement? i live in england.. anywhere that does this stuff? and what might you recommend to change it with?

[airspirit]

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.p...5996dec5ef1ba8

An English company. Should be perfect for you. This is a direct link to my suggested part.

[phill9700]

thank you so much for the help.. i just hope my cpu overclocks to what i want it too after all of this!!!

[airspirit]

What is your target speed? What is the week code on the chip? For example:

JIUHB 0308VPMW - JIUHB stepping, made week 08 of 2003, midbatch made (earlier is better), earlier microrevision.

List the code and what your goal is and I can prolly tell if it is a reasonable one. Also, what HSF are you going to use to cool this thing?

[phill9700]

the chip is as follows..

AXDA1700DLT3C xxxxxxx 260084

JIUHB 0308RPMW

that is everything off of the chip..
im aiming for 2ghz with a 200fsb.. if anything more is left and is able.. i will be doing that too..
im going to TRY a spanner fan that my girl friends pc has and so does her son.. if the fan doesnt cool very well (im not sure for what reason) but if not, i will try a faster fan or something completely different.. the fan has a copper plate at the bottom and is keeping my other px1800's @ 1.75v @ no more than 40c under full load..

[airspirit]

Consider a better HSF. I would highly recommend the Cooler Master Aero7 or HHC-001 ... very nice kits for not much money, and they are all copper design. All copper is better than Al/Cu insert.

As far as the chip, it is a week 8, meaning it will probably do pretty good. It is, however, an earlier microrevision (R), so that might hurt you a bit. I would be shooting for the 2200-2300 range if I were you. 11x200 should be doable if you have decent cooling, or 11.5x/12x200 if you are extremely lucky, though you will probably have to reduce your FSB a bit to hit those multipliers. Being an "L" chip, you will probably only need 1.8V to hit 22-2300 or higher. 2000 Mhz, though, will be an absolute walk in the park and I suspect you could do that on stock voltage.

[phill9700]

well like i said, if my the heatsink i have said about doesnt work as well as i would like, then i will change it.. but failing that, i will just keep hold of it... i have heard that these are good heatsinks.. so i will just try my luck first.. last time i changed my heat sink, i didnt have a motherboard or cpu.. darn you thermaltake volcano 7+!!!!

that sounds really good, and i really cant wait to try it out.. its just going to take a while with the money side of things..
i just hope its faster than what i had before..

[airspirit]

Um, if you're worried about speed comparisons, what the hell did you have before? A Cray?

ROFL :o

[phill9700]

I had an xp 1800, kr7 a133, 512mb memory and a radeon 9700 pro, and just a few basic extras.

[airspirit]

The speed difference will be sick. Absolutely sick. Between Mhz and FSB differences, you're looking at about a 40% gain or more.

[phill9700]

well my highest score on 3dmark 2001se was 13885 with windows 98.. my highest with xp pro is 13600 something.. a little different, but nothing major.. was aiming for 14k tho with that setup.. what should i be aiming for now? 19600 points??? are you serious???? i love these little guys!!!! sorry... for real?

[airspirit]

Nononono ... not 40% 3dmarks, hehe. That would be disgusting! I'm talking about 40% real use across the board on your core components (CPU speed, bus speeds, DDR latency, etc). Your processor speed will be 50% higher, assuming a speed of 2300/11.5x200, which should be readily attainable at around 1.8V. With the FSB at 200, you are increasing your bandwidth by 50% as well, which translates into about a 30-42% system speed increase. I'm assuming you're running at medium-low timings of 2-4-4-8 right now (typical stock), which would give you at 2-2-2-5 at DDR400 an latency decrease of about 30%. All told, these benefits translate into an overall system performance increase of around 40% or more. Unfortunately, many benchmarks only measure the capabilities of your system in narrow specialty ranges, so your 3dmarks will probably only increase into the 15K range. Overclock your GPU, and it will go higher. What you WILL notice, regardless of what the 3dmarks say, is that because you're using more and FASTER memory, games will run smoother, with a similar increase because of the processor boost. While it doesn't translate into much of a difference in 3dmarks, it will translate into a much bigger difference in real life use.

Edit: after looking at the amount and type of memory in your sig, think more along the lines of 60% overall increase.

[phill9700]

DOH!!
and i thought i was going to be hitting a lot of speed there on my old favourite 3dmark 2001se!!
well would it shock you if i did score 19k???? well i can dream i guess cant i? so how does all other people manage, 18, 19 and 20k scores then in the benchmark? seems they must have a lot of performance increase!!!
well whatever the 3dmark score, it will be nice to know that after blanking the hard drive reinstalling everything (second thoughts, i want a new hard drive anyway, i just buy one and install everything on that one... makes life so much easier any one you'd recommend? i normally go for maxtor.. their ata133 7200rpm 120gig 8mb driver are very nicely priced ) i will have a smoother gaming experience.. and also i will have a base machien that will be so much quickier it will be unreal... 2003 anyone?
thanks for the help bud! oh quick question.. playing GTA 3 on the pcs, have major problem when running the game as its very jerky, even with my 9700 pro and my g3 ti 200s.. any ideas why??? all my pcs have 512mbs of ram and xp1800's (well apart from my new one) and all the other games run fine on all of the machines.. but this one is a bugger for slowing down, jerking all over the place and generally being a pain in the butt for being rather unplayable.. anything thoughts?

[Mark Larson]

Reading this thread, i feel so damn happy.

I have an EP-8RDA+, a 1700+ and a 512MB stick of Samsung PC3200 bought for $ 73 shipped with heatspreader. I'm currently running 6-3-3-2.5 at 2.63Vdimm at 205Mhz, pushing up further and further... testing with prime95 and memtest86 every step of the way. i hope to get 210FSB soon .

No volt mods, no messy installation of NB heatsink, nothing except plug and pray.

I had 205Mhz with my EP-8RDA too which i bought in early March. This EP-8RDA+ is brand new.

[phill9700]

well im glad you are happy !!!!
im hoping to be when i know more about my job and whether i have it or not!! or else i will have to wait a while to get the memory and the case that i want for this thing!!
well i just hope that someday or one day in the not to distant future, there might be a game out there, that will be able to take my system to its knees.. and when there is.. i will be asking what to upgrade to next!!!
i love playing games, its fun, a laugh and downright stupid!!
right now in gta3 i have 3 tanks behind me chasing me through the streets!!! its just so darn fun!! 6 stars of being bad!! i like it!!
where would i find the prime95 and memtest86 to download so that when i get my pc up and running, i can test it also...

[airspirit]

Mark: You need to replace the Northbridge heatsink. That should allow you to raise VDIMM to 2.9, drop to CAS2, and hopefully bring your other timings to 2-2-6. That will be a big speed increase.

Phil: GTA3 is a bastard of a game, since it is a poor port from the PS2. ATi cards seem to have a few issues with it, though upgrading to the latest Catalyst drivers will help immensely ... some of the earlier ones broke that game. It also uses a lot of memory, so running your memory faster and adding more available will help alot. I'm running it at max settings on my 8500LE now that I have the rest of my system optimised.

19000+ 3Dmarks are attainable through exotic cooling. These are people that are running phase change cooling (Prometia, etc) on their CPUs, high-end watercooling/peltiers on their GPU and bridges, and overclocking their hardware beyond the realm of sanity. This, unfortunately, is out of the range of normal people such as you or I, since we don't have massive amounts of cash to dump on expendable hardware and exotic cooling mechanisms.

With the 9700 Pro on there, you'll prolly see 3Dmarks in excess of 16500 on the overclocked setup we discussed earlier. If you overclock the card, you may see over 17000.

[airspirit]

http://12.18.239.202/heatercores/primer.htm

Read it. Enjoy it. Be edumacated.

[utabintarbo]

Originally posted by airspirit
[url]...Be edumacated.

I always wondered how that was spelled...

[phill9700]

well the game does pause, stop (sometimes) and that really annoys the living hell out of me.. darn thing no matter what i do to it, just wont run properly..
i did have the 9700 pro, which my gf's son has now, shame really.. darn good card, but still, allows me to get something faster then
well, if i can get 16k on 3dmark, i will be happy, anything higher is just a bonus..
i just cant wait to get the pc up and running.. i just lost my job yesterday and it wasnt even my fault!! stupid company.. cuts backs and the like.. so that means i will be waiting more and more till i can get the memory and the case i want.. plus all the fans i want fitted too.. i will be 23 before that happens!! (thats in august by the way!!)
i must say that the ps2 version of grand theft auto 3 - vice city looks very bad to the gta 3 on the pc.. it does really not look very good at all..
the question im having, what os should i install? xp pro or 98?
98 for me was so much 'nicer' and a little bit faster (nout to write home about tho..) 98 just looked bad and wasnt much of an eye catcher... any sugguestions?

[airspirit]

XP Pro is a superior operating system. It still sucks, but it's better than other versions of Windows.

[jtroutma]

Hehhe....

Win2K Pro is THE best OS out there IMO. (Excluding Linux and the likes, of course)


XP blows because of all the extra CRAP that MS shoved into it. (I almost fell over backwards when I learned that MS coded a 45MB avi file directly into the XP kernel! )

Win98 was good for its day, but now that we have 2K, there is no going back.

I guess you could call me a little bias, but can you really disagree with me?

Phill: you should be very very happy with the system that you are building. Take a look at my sig... sounds like you are well on your way to a system very similar.

[phill9700]

well i agree to dissagree!
windows 2k is ok, but its a pain in the ass (more so than xp) as it dont play older games like driver and the like.. i really miss that game..
anyway, it looks better than 98 (2000 i mean) but not as 'nice' as xp.. i dont like microsoft products anyway, to expensive and not worth the paper the manual is printed on.. im not even going anywhere near that cd... to much to say in such a little small space..

well im wondering about cooling to be honest... i have some spanner fans at the moment and they work well, but im told i shouldnt need anything more than that when i have my new cpu up and running.. yes or no? they are good for the money as my gf and her son are using them on their cpus and they arent going above 40c.. what you think? they are xp1800s...
im just looking at this review actually.. what you guys think?

Swiftech MCX 462+ HS & Fan

will see when i get it all working.. with the 8 fans i have planned to be in there

[airspirit]

Look at the Aero 7 from Cooler Master. Yummy.

[phill9700]

cool, thank you.. question tho..
what about water cooling? is it all its cracked up to be? or is it a living nightmare?