Picked up a new mobo

[Doom]

Hi folks. I've just picked up a new mobo and installed it. I was wandering if it was a good buy. It's a chaintech 7njs zenith, nforce 2(I was surprised how much better my pc runs with that). Got it for £85

 

[sean.ferguson]

little late even if it is really 😛

personally i care too much about names, so as its a Chaintech i would go for it...

either Asus or a real high spec Gigabyte for me really

 

[LeeJend]

"(I was surprised how much better my pc runs with that). "

You were obviously happy with the price. And you're surprised at the performance improvement.

Do you really care what we think? 😉

Just enjoy it!

 

[Taurus]

good board.

 

[Doom]

Does anyone know how high a processor the mobo can handle?

 

[Heeter]

3200+

Heeter

 

[Doom]

Ok thank's. Do you think it'll be worth upgrading to that from my 2800?

 

[Taurus]

Ok thank's. Do you think it'll be worth upgrading to that from my 2800?

no way. unless you're filthy rich and don't mind spending $200+ to get 5% more processor power.

just overclock yours. 200fsb and multiplier of 11x.

 

[Doom]

Cool. Thank's lad. I was trying to sus out how to overclock but could'nt get my head round it. Tried your suggestion and now the cpu is running at 3200 with a temp if 52.0c (just 2 deg more than when it was on 2800). How on earth did you manage to figure that out? Next question though. Is it worth while upgrading my ram from 1024mb of 333 to 1024 of 400?

 

[TheBlueRaja]

NOPE

But you could try DECREASING your multiplier for your CPU and INCREASING your FSB to get the most out of your mem.

E.g 10 x 200 FSB = 2000 CPU 200 FSB 400 DDR
9 * 222 = 2000 CPU 222 FSB 444 DDR

BUT your mem might not go that far, which is about the ONLY reason why you should consider upgrading your mem, however see how far you can push what you have, although i take NOOOO responsibility if you fry your board. 😀

 

[Doom]

Tried that but did'nt work. What do you think of these?

TwinMOS 1GB (2x512MB) DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Kit (MY-007-TM)
The new DDR 400 dual-channel kit comes with a pair of modules that have all been verified in the dual channel environment and proved through testing to achieve high performance and stability especially when working with Pentium 4 / FSB 800MHz devices which support dual channel DDR. TwinMOS DDR 400 dual channel kit is your ideal choice for powerful performance.


Full Specification

Price: £107.50 (£126.31 Including VAT at 17.5%)

 

[TheBlueRaja]

Your already running at PC3200 speeds, your FSB is at 200Mhz.

You wanna spend 130 quid to get a few more Mhz? Hmmm, not sure its such a good idea. JMO...

 

[Doom]

my god your 3dmark score is damn high. All I can get overclocked cpu with a geforce 4 ti 4600 is around 11500ish. Are radeons that good?

 

[LeeJend]

Yes. At least the 9700 Pro, 9800 PRO, 9800 XT are.

I'm getting 11060 out of an XP2100 with single clocked 266 Mhz DDR and a 9500 PRO. The 9600 PRO won't give you that kind of bang.


And I suspect his 9700 PRO is overclocked to get 17426 out of it.

So Blue is it overclocked?

 

[TheBlueRaja]

Yup - would be much of an O/C'er if i didnt, but not by much tho - the core was running at 400 and the memory at 340 i think.

There was no artifiacting.

TBH - the score is mostly due to the MOBO, the FSB and memory timings, voltage settings etc.. The ABit board is a O/C'ers dream.

As to your Radeon question, i bought my 9700 about a year ago off ebay for 190 quid. What a bargain, its an awesome card.

 

[Dubbin1]

Tried your suggestion and now the cpu is running at 3200 with a temp if 52.0c

Sounds like you better start doing something about your temps. Find yourself a better heatsink and fan soon. Even 50°C is high for a stock HS and fan.

 

[Taurus]

Is it worth while upgrading my ram from 1024mb of 333 to 1024 of 400?

i didn't know you had pc2700. if that's the case, you should put your fsb back to 167 so it and your memory run synchronously (both at 333). it will be more efficient. then just increase your multiplier to, oh, 13.5x. you can even try 14x and 14.5x if you want. 😉

 

[Doom]

Your right. I took it back down again to 2800 and my 3d mark performance seemed better (150 points better). So your saying to get a better perfomance out of a 2800 overclocked to 3200 that ram would be better?

 

[TheBlueRaja]

Taurus,
Im not arguing with what you say, as i just want to get it straight in my head, but if he is/was running at 200 FSB, and his memory is running at 3200 speeds (i.e. DDR 400), then isnt it sync'd at that speed? If not can you explain it as i never did grasp the sync thing fully.

Incidentally i notice you have your Row-active delay set to 2, its faster at 11 actually. Use Sanda and see what i mean, your memory bandwith will go up, its a quirk of the Nforce 2 boards.

 

[Taurus]

doom and raja: i'm assuming his pc2700 memory is set to "auto" in his bios, thus it will always run at 333mhz. so when the fsb is pushed up to 400, it and the memory are then running asynchronously and a buffer is implemented and latency goes up.
if he got pc3200, then they could both run at 400mhz in harmony.

doom:, you could try overclocking your pc2700 to pc3200. it's not uncommon. up to you. change your memory setting to "100%" or 1:1 so that it will be synch'd with your fsb. then move your fsb up in 5-10mhz increments. and see if it'll make it to 400 (200 in bios, probably). remember to lower your multiplier so your cpu's core doesn't become the limiter.

raja: interesting, i'll try it.... but do you mean RAS (Row Address Strobe) or RCD (RAS to CAS access)?
[edit] nevermind, i gotcha. well, i changed it and got a ~0.5% increase. the RAS 11 test was done after a fresh restart, so that might explain the small change. but, at the same time, it sure didn't go down like you would think from setting a much higher latency.

do you have some more info on this? i'll try it on my friend's 400fsb a7n8x later.