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Over-clocking your PC — II
After selecting the most suitable CPU [Athlon64 3200+ Winchester], it is time to deal with the most important part of over-clocking, that is, motherboards. In this part, you will delve deep into AMD Athlon64 and discover what is so different about the motherboards that I am going to discuss. The emphasis in this part will be on selecting best-suited motherboards and chipsets for AMD CPUs.
As mentioned in part-I, over-clocking is entirely dependent on the motherboard, which, in turn, is dependent on other important components, namely the chipset.
Selecting a CPU is not a difficult task but, choosing the most appropriate motherboard is clearly a challenge. Desktop processors come from either Intel or AMD but how many motherboard brands are there in the world? Probably more than you think. In fact, not many people know that ECS is the world’s second largest motherboard manufacturer. There are several brands, which are not found in Pakistan but, are very famous worldwide and so, many opt for Intel Motherboards when buying Intel CPUs.
AMD is not manufacturing motherboards for its CPUs. However, they do have a chipset for AMD64 called AMD-8000, which is not available in the market.
Who makes chipsets?
A motherboard is identified by the chipset on which it is based. Six brands develop chipsets for desktop motherboards namely, VIA, SIS, NVIDIA, ALI, ATI and Intel, out of which four develop chipsets for AMD CPUs. For Intel platforms, all of the above except NVIDIA develops chipsets. Not all chipsets are over-clocking-friendly and not all over-clocking chipsets are best performers, for reliability and stability are also important. These companies manufacture the heart of every motherboard and sell this seemingly small piece of silicon to their partner companies who use these chipsets to construct the entire motherboard.
Chipsets define the performance path of a system. Most importantly, it is the chipset, which determines implementation of various commands and features of a system. There may be just one or a couple of such chipsets present on a motherboard and they are known as Northbridge and Southbridge chipsets.
Northbridge defines data sent and received [FSB] between the CPU, RAM and other parts of a computer. It is the Northbridge chipset, which holds the potential of over-clocking. Southbridge defines the relation between various I/O devices and may add integrated audio, LAN, SATA and other valuable feature sets.
Of course, there are some motherboards, which only have Northbridge and all feature sets are fed into it. In fact, the AMD64 motherboard only carries Northbridge and no Southbridge. Last but not the least, there are a few IGP chipsets. IGP stands for Integrated Graphic Processor. IGP motherboards offer built-in graphics capabilities. This is not a new feature but is definitely worth having.
Partner companies
Companies like ASUS, GigaByte and MSI are not solely responsible for graphic cards and motherboards. In fact, most of the work is done by the five chipset manufacturers mentioned earlier. The latter are partners who implement these chipsets to create a motherboard with the specification they want to choose. Since partner companies cannot modify chipsets, it is safe to say that the performance will not vary too much when comparing motherboards from various brands using the same chipset.
By the way, making motherboards is not easy and a chipset is certainly not everything, as there is simply too much competition (not to mention too many costs) in the motherboard business.
Most motherboard manufacturers also make graphic cards and other PC components. Survival is difficult, as users want the most at an optimum price. They want reliability and good features. In such circumstances, the larger companies must deliver in order to maintain their position regardless of dwindling profits. On the other hand, smaller companies provide competitive goods at low prices to establish themselves.
Motherboard features
A chipset may define a common route for performance and implementation of various features. However, instead of relying on the chipset alone, many board partners add in some nice features to attract buyers, especially when it comes to over-clocking, intelligent system monitoring, integrated audio, Sata, enhanced power control, etc. A certain motherboard may also be revised a few times before it is accepted, a route which is normally fixed by updating the motherboard’s BIOS. One can expect bigger brands to offer some incredible features to help with a good OC. Also, compatibility and reliability are important issues; some motherboards may look good on paper but they may be your worst nightmare.
BIOS
The BIOS of every motherboard is like a maintenance room of a large submarine. From the BIOS, you can do many things which Windows cannot. Only a few brands give away some Windows operable, over-clocking programs. Therefore, if you do not want anyone to use your webcam, you can simply disable the USB port from the BIOS. However, we are concerned with the FSB, voltage, temperature, Ram tweaking, PCI/AGP lock, to name a few.
The Front Side Bus, (FSB), is the rate at which data travels between various parts of a computer. When dealing with AMD Athlon64 CPUs, FSB is displayed as 200 MHz but an effective FSB is four times more than that, that is, 800 MHz. FSB can be increased from the motherboard BIOS.
Many motherboards offer automated, system-monitored over-clocking which means that it will over-clock the CPU automatically according to the CPU-motherboard temperature. Such features are somewhat ineffective and useless for our over-clocking goals, for we want to bring an AMD Atlhon64 3000/3200+ to the level of an AMD64 FX. Increasing FSB increases the data transfer rate, which causes strain on the computer. In fact, other parts like AGP, PCI, hard drives and Rams can also suffer from adverse effects.
Most motherboards provide a generous set of options to take the FSB up to very high levels, only made possible by using something like nitro cooling. For AMD64 motherboards, starting from a default rate of 200 MHz, you are mostly given options to take the FSB beyond 300 MHz, which is impossible to achieve via air-cooling.
However, with careful over-clocking, one can take a $200 CPU to the level of a $500 counterpart.
CPU speed can be determined by multiplying FSB and the CPU multiplier. For example, an AMD Athlon64 3000+ clocked 2.0 GHz or 2000 MHz will have an FSB of 200 MHz, where the multiplier is 10. Since increasing FSB gives rise to heat-ups and other problems, we can increase multipliers to enhance CPU speed.
Unfortunately, AMD locks CPU multipliers so you cannot enjoy an extreme OC. Only the most expensive CPUs like FX-53 has unlocked multipliers. Since we are not buying FX models, the standard Athlon64 3xxx series will only have an FSB to play with and no multipliers. The same goes for the Intel’s CPUs where only the most expensive CPU has unlocked multipliers.
Thus, you can easily determine CPU speeds no matter what is the FSB, e.g., taking a 2.0 GHz CPU to an FSB of 220 MHz will increase 200 MHz to the CPU clock. Our target is to increase the FSB to at least 240 MHz so we can match the speed of an AMD Athlon FX or 2.4 GHz. That will save you $200, if not more.
AGP/PCI lock
PCI and AGP cards work at certain frequencies and are bound to fail if subjected to abnormal frequencies. Sadly, increasing FSB will also increase the frequency of AGP and PCI cards. Without a working AGP/PCI lock, it is almost impossible for Athlon64 3000 to match Athlon64 FX.
Thus, it is essential to fix the AGP/PCI bus in order to achieve a reasonable degree of over-clocking. Most chipsets support AGP/PCI locks but, it is the non-PCI/AGP-lock supporting K8T800 chipset that was previously unsuitable for over-clocking. Today the situation is entirely different. It is also important to note that PCI/AGP locks are embedded inside chipsets, so if the latter supports it, all motherboards using that particular chipset will do the same.
Sata is the leading technology for hard drives. As compared to IDE hard drives, Sata offers more reliability and a lot of flexibility, not to mention options of mirroring and stripping. Yet, there is room for improvement in this new technology, as they are the worst drives for an over-clocking set-up. The safest bet is an IDE hard drive, which is suitable for the job. Of course, SCSI hard drives are much better in this regard, but are quite expensive.
The good and the bad
The earliest chipsets for the AMD64 line were NF-3 150 and K8T800. While the 150 and Pro from NVIDIA were supporting PCI/AGP locks, the chipset was hammered by a slower hyper-transport, even slower than the specified AMDs. Initially, the Nforce-3 was a complete disaster. Next the VIA K8T800, supporting the 800 MHz hyper-transport and all necessary features, was still lacking a working AGP/PCI lock. Although, KT800 was a disappointment for extreme over-clocking yet it was the only chipset at the time to offer best performance at stock speeds.
While NVIDIA Nforce-3 250GB ruled the market for quite a while, along came SIS with the 755 chipset, a working AGP/PCI lock and up to 1000 MHz of hyper-transport. SIS-755 single-handedly established an edge over its rivals. However, it failed to maintain that edge because SIS’s partner companies failed to provide good production boards, a dearth which is felt even to this day.
It has been more than six months since SIS had Gigabyte, ABIT and ASUS as loyal partners for its chipset. Sadly there is not a single, reliable motherboard from big names (there are only Micro-ATX boards from Gigabyte). The only other names are ECS, ASRock and Foxxcon.
Finally, there came the Nforce-3 250GB chipset, which was improved with capabilities of good over-clocking. The NF-3 250GB proved to be just as good as it was on paper. VIA eventually fought back with their K8T800 Pro chipset. K8T800 Pro was supposed to have a PCI/AGP lock. However, all new VIA boards had problems implementing the lock in the beginning. VIA eventually fixed the AGP/PCI frequency and new K8T800 Pro boards are now better over-clockers.
The original K8T800 was a marvel but VIA simply didn’t have much to add in the KT800 Pro chipset. Moreover, the K8T800 Pro only supports S-939 CPUs, so if you choose a Newcastle S-754 CPU, you will only be left with some scarce Nforce 3-250GB based boards.
Hence, both K8T800 Pro and NF-III Ultra chipsets for the new Winchester based AMD Athlon64 3200+ will help us in achieving speeds of an AMD FX CPU.
(Part-III of this guide will provide names of the most appropriate motherboards)
The writer
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