What happened to the socket A mobo's?

[Inigmatics]

So last I was here, some of the better things to have was a DFI Infinity or an a7n8x deluxe with soundstorm.

Well I dismantled my watered cooled rig a while back and am now getting ready to put it back together cause I have this 2600 mobile chip and 2x512 bh-5 laying around. All I need is to find a mobo with great bios options to play with that also has a good on board audio as good if not better than soundstorm (since I can't find it).

Maybe even a quick heads up on a cheap video card that I can overclock the heck out of with a proper heat sink and fan combo. It doesn't have to be the best since this is definetly not my main rig. It will purely be my overclocker rig in my den.

Sorry for a noobish what do I buy thread... but I miss the old components that were in production 6 months ago. Now I am left with all this ac 6 channel whatever's that I have no idea how they perform of how high the bios is going to let me adjust the vcore and vdimn.

Thanks in advance.
KC

[stealth17]

yeh i agree with the 2x512 clocks but i say dfi lpb is the best on average. if yo ugeta good nf7 then it will be better but a properly modded and cooled lpb is awesome. just look at SAE had his 2600 to 263*12.5 !!

[thebluesgnr]

The video card for you is the ABIT R9550-Guru. It has dual-BIOS so with a jumper it overclocks to 400/500 (default is 250/400), and it has voltage adjustments (GPU & mem). Some people report sucess running it at 500/600 (9600XT) clocks.

It's a wonderful card for about $80. My next option would be a 6600GT AGP for $210.

[Inigmatics]

Thanks. Those were some good answers. I think I'm going to go with the LPB if I can't get my hands on an inifinity. I might be able to get my old A7n8x deluxe back from the girlfriends mom's computer if I replace hers with something, but I don't think it would be worth the hassle of explaining to her mother exactly why I was tearing her computer all apart because I needed something.

As far as the video card, I'l give that r9550 a try. Haven't had much fun clocking a card since my 9500np.

Thanks again,
KC

[IvanAndreevich]

Get a used NF7-S for 50-60 bucks.

[clockedOut]

I have an Infinity I would sell for $65 shipped. PM if your interested.

[felinusz]

A properly modded out NF7-S will do you very well - they are fun boards if you are willing to crack out the soldering iron :). In particular, NF7-S boards need modified BIOSes before they will perform FSB-wise, and finding the right BIOS for your particular board can sometimes take a little bit of time.

However, for a semi-guaranteed ~240 MHz on the FSB, a DFI Infinity, or DFI LanParty 'B', is far and above your best choice - these boards also offer some very rich memory overclocking features through the BIOS, eliminating the NF7-S's need for software tweaking programs, and modified CPC ON/CPC OFF BIOSes (CPC cannot be changed from 1T to 2T through the NF7-S BIOS). The one gripe I do have with DFI's nForce2 boards, is the poor quality Vcore voltage regulator; many DFI NF2 boards begin to crap out at >1.9V.



don't expect to get insane clocks out of 2*512 on any NF2, though.


yeh i agree with the 2x512 clocks

Au contraire - I have seen many, many most excellent (~255+ MHz FSB - roughly the same as with half gig sets of RAM, although naturally slightly less on average) memory overclocks with nForce 2 chipsets, and Gigabyte sets of RAM.

The trick with the crappy memory controller of the nForce2 chipset, and 2 X 512 Meg sticks of RAM, is running CPC OFF (2T). CPC enabled (1T), a gig of RAM, and nForce2 do not go well together at all as far as overclocking is concerned.

Naturally, a gig of RAM will almost always overclock a little worse then a half gig set, but past this universal, cross-platform, setback you will not really see too much of a FSB overclocking difference compared to a half gig set of RAM, so long as CPC is disabled (2T).

[stealth17]

Au contraire - I have seen many, many most excellent (~255+ MHz FSB - roughly the same as with half gig sets of RAM, although naturally slightly less on average) memory overclocks with nForce 2 chipsets, and Gigabyte sets of RAM.

well yeh but thats like bh-5 and 6...anything else you wount even get close usually. and even then, no guarantee...

[IvanAndreevich]

2x512MB on Infinity -> only 2T.

[felinusz]

well yeh but thats like bh-5 and 6...anything else you wount even get close usually. and even then, no guarantee...

I don't know if this is correct or not. Anecdotal evidence I have, says that it is incorrect :).

There are several NF7-S users I know of on the overclockers forums, who are using 2 X 512 Megabyte sticks of RAM (mostly with TCCD, and BT-D43 chips), who have achieved completely stable day-to-day FSB overclocks around ~250 MHz.

Most of these people are using PC4000 specc'ed non-BH5/6 RAM.

These people needed CPC to be disabled (2T), to get to where they sit now fully stable FSB-wise. This is part of why the NF7-S motherboards almost invariably need modified BIOSes (Almost all modified NF7-S BIOSes come in two flavours, CPC ON, and CPC OFF - there is a reason for this!) before they will start really performing.

[Dissolved]

I have an Infinity I would sell for $65 shipped. PM if your interested.

Read the Rules, Your not allowed to sell anything outside the classifieds forums.

[STEvil]

CPC is too much of a performance hit to turn off.

[MaxxxRacer]

STEvil, i did lots of tests with cpc on and off and i didnt see a difference. I did rather scientific tests. Using sandra, everest, and 3d01, and superpi to test. I ran each test 4 times. If there was any deviation in the scores I would run it 6 times and remove the high and low score and average them out.

After all of that, I found that all of the bios out there didnt change a hole lot at one clock speed. I cant say what they did for max clock, but at one clock speed between cpc on and off there was no real difference. I found all the bios to be within 1 or 2 percent of eachother. T hat is between the high and the low.

[STEvil]

you sure you were using correct bioses? For everyone else it seems to be a ~300mb/sec hit in sisoft for example.

[jumanji969]

DFI Infinity/Lanparty are GREAT out of the box overclockers. Easy high fsb and more memory tweaks than you can shake a stick at. NF7 is a solid board to, takes a little more tweaking and changing things to get the high fsb but its definetly attainable. For $26 though I love my NF7 to death.

[perry_78]

From what i can saw about my rather lousy AXP 2500+ (AQXEA - locked), on the Abit NF7-S revision 2.0 it did 210*11 @1.85 stable, using a D26 Manta Ray BIOS. The DFI LP NFII B Ultra did 220*11 @ 1.8. If might just be my horrible luck with a bad board, but i prefer the DFI.

Though most WR on Socket A are with Abit NF7-S rev. 2,0.

I'd try out both boards and see which one works :)

[felinusz]

you sure you were using correct bioses? For everyone else it seems to be a ~300mb/sec hit in sisoft for example.

Yes, CPC OFF does cause a large and very signifigant performance hit.

But, if the performance loss is made up for through the higher FSB, then it's better to run CPC OFF.

When you have a gig of RAM that won't do 200 MHz stable with CPC ON in your NF2 board, but does ~240 with CPC OFF, you really want to run CPC OFF ;). Situations similar to this example are fairly common.

[viddax^2]

I run both the NF7-s 2.0 and Dfi NF2 Ultra Infinity for a long time with 2 barton mobile 2500 IQYHA and a AQZFA Barton 2600...

If i have to get one conclusion, it would be... if you wanna have fun, get an infinity.

I did a review comparing both boards, but it is in spainsh, so you wouldnt understand anything...

See ya :toast:

[Inigmatics]

Well as it is I'm packing right now for the move on friday. This weekend I have to move everything into the new house as well as moving 2 reef tanks and 2 freshwater fish tanks. So that is going to suck. Then I dive into a long communte monday morning. I'll be staying at a hotel all week for orientation week. When I get back, I'll probablly have to help the girlfriend finish unpacking my stuff and help her figure out where it goes. So as mid feb rolls around I'll be ordering a DFI most likely. I used to hit like 220 FSB on my old A7N8X Deluxe, but I always figured I was volt limited cause I hadn't volt modded it. Sad to say but my bh-5 hasn't even seen higher than I think 2.8v. I think the DFI should help me get past that. I think I was hitting 2.4 or 2.5ghz. I'll be happy with 2.6 or 2.7 year round on water with it.

I'm a bit worried about that hd controller. Aren't they suppossed to be easy to mess up and corrupt HD's on the DFI's?

I think even 230 x 11.5 on this 2600 mobile would be satisfing enough. Of course more is good, but I'd be happy enough.

Well thanks all for partisipating. I'll let you all know how it turns out once I get the web hooked up at the new house.

KC

[tictac]

If you plan for overclock.... FSB.... than go with DFI .....
bad things .... DFI Sil 3114 SATA controller is slower than NF7S 3112 SATA controller :hehe:

If you just plan for normal usage NF7S best bang for buck
especially......... when you have 2 Raptors as HDD
Sil 3112 ... kick ass :hehe:

[thebluesgnr]

VT8237 kicks even more ass!
hehe

[kapster]

On my NF7-S rev 2. I ran my xp-m at 10.5x245 ~2.6 stable with cpc ON.

this is with 2x512mb tccd. running one of trats later bios's

now i ended up giving up on CPC off as it was not worth the loss of bandwidth.

I am most sure you can go higher with cpc off. ive seen screens with fsb's in the 270s

[G0DZILLA]

Who's ass is that Ingmatics its dam hot :)

[Inigmatics]

It's hers.... http://www.playboy.com/playmates/pmoy/pmoy2004/

[Rave]

When you have a gig of RAM that won't do 200 MHz stable with CPC ON in your NF2 board, but does ~240 with CPC OFF, you really want to run CPC OFF ;). Situations similar to this example are fairly common.

I'm having this exact problem with my 8RDA+ V2.1 and 2x512 of TwinMOS CH-5. It'll memtest fine at 225MHz 2-3-3-11 in DC but Prime95 craps out immediately at anything over 200MHz. I tried it in single channel mode- no difference. Right now the board is Priming away happily at 235MHz DC with my old 2x256 of bog standard TwinMOS PC3200 so I know it's capable of some half decent speed. Has anyone ever made a CPC-off bios for the 8RDA+? If not, is it possible to boot at 200MHz and then disable CPC/ increase FSB in software?

Cheers,

Rich :¬)

[G0DZILLA]

It's hers....

She is hot :)