Overclocking a Asrock 4core Dual Sata2 with Quad core

[scruffy1]

I have decades of experience in IT. Asrock suck. Thats it. If you can get it to work, all power to you. They are consistently poor performers and have terrible reliability. Worst boards ever are PC-Chips, then Asrock, then recent A-Bit (older ones are gold).

Thats my educated opinion. A n00b I'm not.

your mileage may vary - i never suggested you were a noob, only that the ambience of your reply seemed dogmatic enough to sound like one

i also have now closing on 2 decades in i.t. as a consumer and more recently keen overclocker

i have had no prior experience with asrock, but based on the current experience with the only one i possess it's 100% satisfactory


of my 5 (or 6?) asus boards one died suddenly and inexplicably; that's 17% unreliable isn't it ?

my abit nf7-s seems solid but it's just for playing with overclocking socket a really; i have read their 939 efforts are less marvellous

whilst you're welcome to offer your opinion, you'll need to recognise that opinion is just that, not fact

how long ago did the asrock experiences put you off ? have you tried them since ?

meantime, i'll just enjoy mine while it lasts

[therufus]

When did my Asrock experiences happen? Last year. We replaced several mainboards with Asrock branded equivalents in some PC's we manage simply because that was all we could get. Several had dodgy bioses, noises coming from caps and one didn't boot at all. These were all brand new.

We use Gigabyte and Asus exclusively at work and I won't say they're faultless (there is no such thing), but our failure rate is very impressive.

[scruffy1]

When did my Asrock experiences happen? Last year. We replaced several mainboards with Asrock branded equivalents in some PC's we manage simply because that was all we could get. Several had dodgy bioses, noises coming from caps and one didn't boot at all. These were all brand new.

We use Gigabyte and Asus exclusively at work and I won't say they're faultless (there is no such thing), but our failure rate is very impressive.

ouch !

i'll be listening closely to my motherboard then it's already at least 2nd hand and been voltmodded as per the forum (by the previous owner), so i guess the chance of early death has already passed it by

seeing as i have the side off every other day fiddling with something, i'll notice if the caps go bad

sorry to hear about your bad run; i must say that so far my experience with this board has been nothing but great

[Padre]

have to admit, compared to my Albatrons and Abit boards, this one seems realy stable (knock on wood) and considering im running an IDE PCI controller, plus the onboard IDE' not to mention the sata controllers with adapters running IDE HDD's as well, on all on a "lowly" 480w antec PSU its still running pretty good..

Havbent overclocked it coz for the life of me I have no idea what half these ssettings are so if it aint broke, im not gna try fix it..

unless of course anyone whos cluey is down south west sydyney feels like poppping around for a tweak theyre more than welcome..

[urban_s0ulja]

did u make any progress with the oc mate?

[Padre]

thats a big negative capt'n

[Drinnan]

I believe the mulitpler is at 9 This is greyed out in teh BIOS and cannot be changed. 9x266 gives me the 2394, but CPUZ shows me that its running at 2304
The stock speed (auto selection) is set to 266
I did try to change this and will try to increase once again after I sort out some work Im doing.

In any ase, messing with anything stopped windows from loading up, so ive left it all default, tweaked the PCI bus to async and changed the Ram setting to 667 DR2 (this board supports DDR1 and DDR2)
Ill try to change the ram power setting to "normal", however LOW is apparently standard for 667khz... and this is what its set to

I dunno.. im sick of it.. i jut wana get my work done.. lol

The reason your cpu is reading 2304 and not 2394 is because when using a quad core on that board you lose about 5% performance, if you had a dual core which the board was really meant for then you would get a proper 2394mhz reading and be able to overclock it easy, trust me i know because i have the same board and cpu and it says this in the manual.
It's good when overclocking dual cores but the best i can get the default 9x266mhz to is 9x267, anything more and its very unstable. It will load windows a little higher than that but will crash when doing certain tasks.
Just remember you will still not have 9x267mhz you have to take off 5% from 267 before you multiply. CPU-Z says my core is running about 2.4ghz and my bus speed is 9x266.7 even though bios says its 9x267

Hope that clears up any confusion to wether the board is any good. As far as i'm concerned i wished i had known then before i bought the board what i know know. I'm saving up for a new board. Did you also know that the pci-e memory bandwidth is only 4x? not the 16x that its meant to be just to make it compatible with the onboard agp and pci-e slots

[Padre]

"The reason your cpu is reading 2304 and not 2394 is because when using a quad core on that board you lose about 5% performance, "

Yeah the board inherantly underclocks... i believe its for compatibility reasons, but there is apparentlya way to get this going above that number...
I jsut dont seem to be able to find it, coz all references are to other boards which dont have half the settings this does...

"if you had a dual core which the board was really meant for then you would get a proper 2394mhz reading and be able to overclock it easy, trust me i know because i have the same board and cpu and it says this in the manual."

Well i am yet to com any report or note within the manual that says a quad should be put on it..

"It's good when overclocking dual cores but the best i can get the default 9x266mhz to is 9x267, anything more and its very unstable. It will load windows a little higher than that but will crash when doing certain tasks."

yeah well my tasks are PCU intense.. not gaming, were tlaking hardcore maths here HD content and full frame 2k rendering...

"Just remember you will still not have 9x267mhz you have to take off 5% from 267 before you multiply. CPU-Z says my core is running about 2.4ghz and my bus speed is 9x266.7 even though bios says its 9x267"

See its these numbers that really dont do much for me, coz i have no idea, in teh bios, as to where to go to tweak them...


"Hope that clears up any confusion to wether the board is any good. As far as i'm concerned i wished i had known then before i bought the board what i know know. "

I bought it as a go between. I dont want to ditch my 8 200+ GB HDD's, i didnt want to lose my raid array, I didnt want to buy another GFX card (im using AGP) and until the next system is built in 10months, this should suffice for my purposes.
Knock on wood my current build is rock solid for what i do and i didnt want to risk losing that by upgrading everything.. that and i dotn have tiome to dick around with re-registering 20k worth of software

"I'm saving up for a new board. Did you also know that the pci-e memory bandwidth is only 4x? not the 16x that its meant to be just to make it compatible with the onboard agp and pci-e slots"

Im ok with that, coz im only using AGP.
If i was to go PCIe exclusively which is what ill be doing in about 10months, it wil be a dual quad core SLI system with only enough HDD's (3) to work on one or two projects as opposed to 5 (as i am now)
In essence the new build will be strictly for uncompressd HD editing, and that grunt should be sufficient.
For now, the system is as fas as realtime when it comes to rendering HD an thats all i care about.
If i can squeeze 10% more, then i'd be happy, if not, then i'll remain content..

[Sid27]

Hi guys , i have the same motherboard with a P4 631 3 ghz , i bought some 2 x 1 gb ddr2 800 mhz ,Kingmax ,and i can't change FSBRAM , and it runs at 400 mhz . how can i make them run at 667 mhz ? any help is very appreciated

is there any kind of secret menu in bios ?

[Sid27]

anyone ?

[cd_toaster]

tbh i doubt you will have much luck overclocking a asrock mobo. its the budget version of asus, they generally use shitty VIA chipsets which are shit for overclocking and passivley cooled northbridge chipsets. it may be fine for every day use but i wouldnt ever consider trying to OC on a asrock

[Sid27]

thanks for ignoring me you selfish geeks

[DND]

thanks for ignoring me you selfish geeks

there running @ 800mhz.....400mhz X 2 channels (dual) = 800mhz

I'm with "cd_toaster" your pushing S#it up hill overclocking assrock m\b's

[Sid27]

there running @ 800mhz.....400mhz X 2 channels (dual) = 800mhz

finally someone who replies , no they don't run at 800 mhz , they run at 200 mhz x 2

here's a pic from cpu-z , i want to make them run at another fsb ; dram ratio , but i can't find in bios

[DND]

I don't know the motherboard but someone here should know more
whats the FSB on that cpu

if not can you take some pics of the bios settings
there must be something wrong some were to run at 200/400mhz

also can you give us the system spec's

[Sid27]

first i wanna thank you DND

System specs are
Mb Asrock 4core dual sata 2
Cpu : Pentium 4 631 + 3 ghz , 800 mhz FSB , 2 MB L2 Cache
Gpu ; Gainward Nvidia 8600 GT
Dram 2 x 1 GB DDR 2 800 mhz Kingmax
HDD ; 250 GB WD SATA 2

i will post some pictures from bios settings aswell

i really appreciate your help DND

[cd_toaster]

how is the overclocking going?