I actually flashed an A8V BIOS to my A8V-X hoping it would work (since the boards are incredibly similar) to get the voltage controls, but it wouldn't POST with that BIOS so I had to go back to the stock one.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-24, 15:39:

Well, with this platform it is impossible to get exactly what you'd want. It is either low, or too high. I either need better memory which'll work at ~450, or have to be content with what i got here.

So far from what i am seeing here is that the same memory which worked on nforce2/s462 at 400/2.5/3/3/7 and could OC by at least 10% up to 440 with the same timings with no issues barely works at 400/3/3/3/8 on S939 and will not handle even the slightest OC. And i thought nforce2 had quirky memory controller...

You may need to increase latency, but the board probably doesn't allow to select higher than 3. AMD memory controller is not as good as NVidia's. On my s754 Athlon 64 I run DDR400 (2x1GB) with timings 2.5-3-3-8 though.

There existed 1GB DDR500 stick A-DATA Extreme Edition Vitesta. DDR500 - 3-4-4-8, DDR400 - 2.5-4-4-8. It is supposed to be a kit of 2x1GB.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-24, 17:51:

You may need to increase latency, but the board probably doesn't allow to select higher than 3. AMD memory controller is not as good as NVidia's. On my s754 Athlon 64 I run DDR400 (2x1GB) with timings 2.5-3-3-8 though.

There existed 1GB DDR500 stick A-DATA Extreme Edition Vitesta. DDR500 - 3-4-4-8, DDR400 - 2.5-4-4-8. It is supposed to be a kit of 2x1GB.

I can increase timings, but it does not help. It really, really does not like going above 400. May be different memory would help, may be it would not. All those faster kits are basically just binned and overclocked, nothing officially rated higher than 400 exists, AFAIK. Also the sticks i am using are technically 400/3/3/3/8, so the fact they at least work at nominal settings is good already.

If i want to OC i have to drop the divider one step though, no way around it. Because of how it works it ends up being something like 315 too, instead of 333. I could try dropping CPU multiplier a bit (it is possible) and increasing base frequency further to raise memory and HT closer to nominal values, but that requires further experimentation - there are a lot of variables to fool around with.

As pictured it is still noticeably faster than with nominal 2.2Ghz CPU, 1Ghz HT and 400 memory...

You need to find a way to activate DRAM divisor 12. You are running with 14. 2400mhz with divisor 12 leads to ddr400, your nominal ddr speed. It will be an indirect setting as you probably have DDR speed in BIOS setup just like AM2, not multiplier. It was also influenced by HT multiplier in AM2. Try increasing base frequency while lowering CPU multiplier to keep frequency the same.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-24, 19:18:

You need to find a way to activate DRAM divisor 12. You are running with 14. 2400mhz with divisor 12 leads to ddr400, your nominal ddr speed. It will be an indirect setting as you probably have DDR speed in BIOS setup just like AM2, not multiplier. It was also influenced by HT multiplier in AM2. Try increasing base frequency while lowering CPU multiplier to keep frequency the same.

It is configured a little differently here - i can choose divisor in relation to "FSB" in BIOS, so it is 1:1 for 200, or 5:4 for 166 (which obviously ends up being 160). There are no options in between, so i have to set it to 5:4, which means i need to set "FSB" to 250 for RAM to be 200. It works out the same way with HT too. So theoretically i should be able to then set CPU multiplier to 10 and get nice and round 2500 (CPU can do that), but... it does not work. Does not even post past ~240 FSB, even with very low multiplier, so it is not the CPU - it is the motherboard. PCI/AGP frequencies can be set separately so it is not that, but i suspect something is getting overclocked and does not like it...

Tried actually using the system a bit... and i can say i am quite happy with it. I was able to run a few things that have issues on later cards and comparing things side by side with 7600GT - finally see improvements in how AA/AF works on GF8 compared to GF7. Temperatures are fine, noise is great...

Downsides:

Had to swap out X-fi card for another audigy4, though it initially seemed that everything was working fine - issues with nforce4 PCI + X-fi were there and quite annoying. It is curious how creative blamed nvidia, yet audigy works just fine in the same conditions...

SSD is randomly detected as SATA150 or SATA300. Does not seem to affect things too much, but i do not like this. Going to replace it with Intel520 i was finally able to find...

Working with this hardware is... interesting. It is horribly, unbelievably buggy. Practically nothing works as it should. I can only imagine the frustration bumping into bugs like this back in the day when all the stuff was expensive and it was not possible to just try a few cards and see what works better, like it is now. Did not have so much issues/bugs even on earlier stuff, like on S462 everything pretty much just worked, apart from nforce2 memory issues....

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-24, 20:36:

It is configured a little differently here - i can choose divisor in relation to "FSB" in BIOS, so it is 1:1 for 200, or 5:4 for 166 (which obviously ends up being 160). There are no options in between, so i have to set it to 5:4, which means i need to set "FSB" to 250 for RAM to be 200. It works out the same way with HT too. So theoretically i should be able to then set CPU multiplier to 10 and get nice and round 2500 (CPU can do that), but... it does not work. Does not even post past ~240 FSB, even with very low multiplier, so it is not the CPU - it is the motherboard. PCI/AGP frequencies can be set separately so it is not that, but i suspect something is getting overclocked and does not like it...

Interesting. My Gigabyte GA-K8NE has a setting called "CPU/DDR clock Ratio" with options 2/1, 2/1.33, 2/1.5, 2/1.66, 2/1.83, 2/2. I can configure DDR speed very precisely. Manual doesn't list many options in MB Intelligent Tweaker but BIOS does have them.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-27, 13:22:

Had to swap out X-fi card for another audigy4, though it initially seemed that everything was working fine - issues with nforce4 PCI + X-fi were there and quite annoying. It is curious how creative blamed nvidia, yet audigy works just fine in the same conditions...

That's bad luck. I use Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-27, 14:44:

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-27, 13:22:

Had to swap out X-fi card for another audigy4, though it initially seemed that everything was working fine - issues with nforce4 PCI + X-fi were there and quite annoying. It is curious how creative blamed nvidia, yet audigy works just fine in the same conditions...

That's bad luck. I use Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.

Not really bad luck. This was to be expected. I would not have got x-fi card at all if i initially expected to use this motherboard. This was a common issue and one i've seen back when this hardware was new too. Creative blamed nvidia, nvidia said nothing, there were some talks about driver or bios fixes and also reports of the same issues on non-nforce boards...

I do have Audigy 2 ZS, it is a nice card, but relatively uncommon, pricey and also compatible with W98, so i've used it in W98 build...

This audigy4 cards are much less fancy, basically a cheap version, but they still do everything they need to. The only reason i wanted x-fi card is to try those few games which support EAX5 and this build seemed fast enough for that, but... well, may be i'll stick it into LGA775 system i have, though i'll have to somehow bypass the issue of onboard NIC being dead and only one PCI being available. Or may be i'll use it in the second, AGP, s939 system...

Ideal solution would be getting pci-e x-fi titanium, that would allow me to use SLI too if i wanted (PCI card makes that impossible), but i can not find one locally which is not like $500. Will be one more thing on the list of stuff to look for...

As far as I know, on K8 CPUs RAM speed is always based on CPU frequency divided with limited integer values (ie. 12, 10, 8, etc.).
Because there is no direct link between HT Link base and DRAM clock base - you can't have a "nice" fractional multipliers, and CPUs with .5 or odd multipliers will create issues for at least one of "stock" RAM speeds (stock = 400/333/266 by default).
Example of mess it can create : https://hosting.photobucket.com/albums/r306/C … 1337/DDR2_2.jpg

On all K8 CPUs during OC, you always have to take check :
1) HyperTrasport (too fast will make board unstable, going for 600 or 800 speed is fine if 1000 can't be attained) [CPU<=>NB].
2) Chipset link (chipsets for AMD K8 like to utilize seperate HyperTransport for linking north and south bridges together (so called "NB<=>SB"), which may require the same adjustment as "CPU<=>NB" link when overclocking usual base HT link speed (some boards allow bit width selection on this connection too).

agent_x007 wrote on 2025-08-27, 22:41:

As far as I know, on K8 CPUs RAM speed is always based on CPU frequency divided with limited integer values (ie. 12, 10, 8, etc. […]
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As far as I know, on K8 CPUs RAM speed is always based on CPU frequency divided with limited integer values (ie. 12, 10, 8, etc.).
Because there is no direct link between HT Link base and DRAM clock base - you can't have a "nice" fractional multipliers, and CPUs with .5 or odd multipliers will create issues for at least one of "stock" RAM speeds (stock = 400/333/266 by default).
Example of mess it can create : https://hosting.photobucket.com/albums/r306/C … 1337/DDR2_2.jpg

On all K8 CPUs during OC, you always have to take check :
1) HyperTrasport (too fast will make board unstable, going for 600 or 800 speed is fine if 1000 can't be attained) [CPU<=>NB].
2) Chipset link (chipsets for AMD K8 like to utilize seperate HyperTransport for linking north and south bridges together (so called "NB<=>SB"), which may require the same adjustment as "CPU<=>NB" link when overclocking usual base HT link speed (some boards allow bit width selection on this connection too).

Yes, RAM speed is often "messy" with this CPUs, but... apart from not looking nice i doubt something like 315 would make a huge difference compared to 333.

Also on this specific board (asus a8v) is seems like "via v-link" used between NB and SB may be causing stability issues with higher base clock values because it seemingly gets overclocked and there seems to be no way to prevent it. HT and memory multipliers can be changed, PCI/AGP can be set to 33/66, but there is nothing regarding NB-SB link in the bios...

Ultimately does not matter all that much because i doubt slightly slower memory would make too big of a difference...

RAM speed is messy but some motherboards have more options than others. Locally, there is Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI on sale (of no use to me as I have no s939 cpus). I have checked the manual and it has the same "CPU/DDR clock Ratio" options like mine - 2/1, 2/1.33, 2/1.5, 2/1.66, 2/1.83, 2/2. This setting somehow influences the DRAM divisor you are talking about. DRAM divisor is dynamic, when the CPU clocks down due to cool&quiet the DRAM divisor is lowered.

You can also workaround the lower DRAM speed by OCing the CPU a little bit. 100-200Mhz is usually possible without needing voltage adjustment.

nForce4 is probably more stable than VIA as there is just one chip. My Gigabyte GA-K8NE could go to 250 base clock, I haven't tested higher values.

I will be using Cooler Master N500 case for my AM2+ build.

AlexZ wrote on Yesterday, 14:56:

nForce4 is probably more stable than VIA as there is just one chip. My Gigabyte GA-K8NE could go to 250 base clock, I haven't tested higher values.

Single chip unless it is "SLI X16". Then it is the usual single chip paired with a northbridge for extra pci-e. Everything connected with HT as far as i understand.

And this is, IMO, a good reason to avoid "SLI X16" variant altogether. Something i did not know before doing this build.

Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI is also listed as 2x PCIe x16. There is nothing in the manual about dropping to x8 mode in SLI, but it probably happens without 2nd chip. It is a single chip board but also has a socket for some kind of SLI card between pcie slots. Position of pcie slot prevents installation of fan on chipset cooler and pcie x16 slots are too close for more powerful GPUs. Also 2 SATA ports would be blocked by GPU. It seems it is max for 2x GeForce 9800 GT or 250 GTS.

Yeah your ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe is Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16 unfortunately. Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI is plain SLI.

AlexZ wrote on Yesterday, 15:37:

Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI is also listed as 2x PCIe x16. There is nothing in the manual about dropping to x8 mode in SLI, but it probably happens without 2nd chip. It is a single chip board but also has a socket for some kind of SLI card between pcie slots. Position of pcie slot prevents installation of fan on chipset cooler and pcie x16 slots are too close for more powerful GPUs. Also 2 SATA ports would be blocked by GPU. It seems it is max for 2x GeForce 9800 GT or 250 GTS.

Yeah your ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe is Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16 unfortunately. Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI is plain SLI.

Yeah, sadly this are very common board layout screw-ups, some of them like sata blocked by videocard are still there on new boards too.

At least on the board i have the slots are far enough from each other to realistically use 2 dual slot cards and there is even an x4 slot above top x16, so technically a soundcard can be added. So i guess at least layout can be considered an advantage here. SATA is still blocked by the card in top slot though, at least partly.

Theoretically it is possible to use pci-e switch to get 2*x16, one of those used on dual chip cards like HD3870x2. I am honestly surprised they did not do this instead of adding whole northbridge for this purpose. There were later boards, even on LGA1155 and such, which did this.

But in case of S939 whole idea is kind of pointless anyway - 2*x8 would be more than enough for any cards realistically feasible with this hardware and i am not even sure HT bandwidths is sufficient to support full 2*x16...

I did not really choose this board, it was bundled as a bonus with the CPU so i had no choice here. I have been looking for this CPU for far to long to not get it. It has its disadvantages but it works for now, may be i'll replace it eventually, may be i'll stick with it. Depends on if it cooks itself to death and if i find something i like. Too many boards, like that GA-K8N-SLI you've mentioned, with plenty of their own downsides...