amd 2400+ with gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra

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I would like to squeeze a bit more from this chip, however I am concerned about pushing the PCI / AGP bus speeds up to much. Unfortunately this motherboard doesn't appear to be able to reset the ratios from the FSB to the PCI / AGP, which means that these leap to 41/72 ish as soon as you bump the FSB to 137MHZ, therefore would it be worth while increasing the bus to 135 / 136 and boosting the multiplier up to 16? ( default at 15 but the 7VAXP-A U can flip switches to change it) to oc the chip to just over 2.1 ghz? Of course then heat will become an issue? How have people dealt with increased PCI / AGP ratios without damage to the hardware?

[Alfonse]

So the board doesn't offer 166/66/33? What do you have for RAM?
Heat won't be an issue unless you turn up the voltage, but it's possible you'll need to up the voltage in order to attain a higher multiplier.
Increasing PCI and AGP speeds won't "damage" anything, but it will cause things not to run pretty promptly. I think there was also a recent case of corrupted data due to a sped up PCI bus.

[jurtje]

What Alfonse said, just try increasing the FSB in little steps until weird things start happening (make sure you have good backups as always ;).

Nvidia cards can run high AGP frequencies with less problems than ATi cards.

Usually a higher FSB gives a bigger advantage than a higher multiplier, but if you aren't able to raise you FSB anymore, it'll certainly help to up your multiplier.

I'd also like to invite you to read my overclocking guide (http://forums.ocia.net/viewtopic.php?t=464&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0).

[silenze]

133 / 4 = 33mhz pci
137 / 4 = 34mhz pci.. you're in the green..

I ran my 2400+ all day at 147Mhz FSB (2,205Mhz) on a board with no PCI lock, that put the pci bus to 36Mhz, most will run this.. it would do 160Mhz FSB (2,400Mhz, 40Mhz pci, about the wall for any board..) at a higher voltage (got too hot) wasn't too stable..

I don't remember the voltage at 2.2 :(

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Thanks for all the info guys. I am looking at getting a x800xt PE if they actually ever come into stock, so didn't want to push the AGP bus too much and also don't want to risk cooking any devices, esp the HDD! Has anyone any suggestions on the max limit you can safely push the AGP with a ATI card? This will determine what FSB I can run. So if I push the multiplier right up will heat be a major??

Thanks for the help :wink:

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opps forgot to say, have 1024 pc2700 RAM which is only running at 166 so upping the FSB won't affect that until 166. I can't seem to get the FSB higher than 165 in the bios (which I flashed in case they had made any changes!) So if I bump the multiplier I should also up the core voltage?
Defaults are 133 FSB, 1.7 core voltage 15x multiplier. If the multiplier goes to 16x then maybe .05 increase in voltage?

Cheers

[Alfonse]

Slow down.
-Upping the AGP bus can't hurt the video card, but it may cause things to not work properly.
-Overclocking anything can't hurt the hard drive.
-If the PCI bus is too high, then you might get some data corruption. The PCI bus was never any good for overclocking.

What are your temps currently? The only way you're going to know if something will cook is if you know what your temperatures are. What are you running for a CPU cooler?
Pretty much the only way you will cook something is by turning the voltage up too high.
Getting 166fsb x15 would be pretty badass, and would almost certainly require upping your voltage.
For starters, why don't you try turning the FSB up a point or two at a time, leaving the voltage right where it is, and see where you get.
I have no idea what your cooling is, or what your temps are, so that's what I would suggest.
You should really also read this:
http://forums.ocia.net/viewtopic.php?t=464

[clean_lines]

Temps are as follows (MBM 5) : Celcius
CPU - 51
Case 37

Current chip cooling is the sink / fan which came in the amd box, but will be replacing over the next day or so with a Thermaltake Volcano 12, so this may be why the cpu is running a bit hot....

The case has 2x front and back 80mm fans

The mb senses the chip bus, which seems to be why I can't boost it further than 165, I assume that it changes the pci/agp ratios when a 333 chip is put in.

Thanks again!