ryanmsmith

In the process of rebuilding a laptop with spill damage, I acquired 3 mobile Athlon 64's - a 3000+, a 3200+, and a 3400+. All are Socket 754. With just a new motherboard, I could replace my setup (a Shuttle nForce2 Ultra 400 board and a mobile Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2.2GHz) for a slight speed boost with the 3400+, or so I thought.

The selection of nVidia-based 754 boards with 3 RAM slots and AGP was pretty slim. I also wanted to make absolutely sure I could use my Zalman CSP7000A-Cu cooler that I've never been able to use due to PS placement - so CPU placement on the board was also a factor. I had to choose between an ASUS board and a Gigabyte board and I chose the Gigabyte - mostly because there seemed to be a lot of room for a cooler.

So far, I've had no luck getting what I want out of this thing. First of all, if the max multiplier for the CPU is X, I can only set it to X-1 (10, in the case of the 3400+, 9 in the case of the 3200+), and that is even with the voltage maxed. If I set the multiplier to what it should be, it doesn't start and I have to clear the CMOS. So, forget overclocking - I can't even get it to run at the rated speed. And, if I let the motherboard "automatically" set the multiplier, I wind up with a speed of 800MHz...

Next, restarting is not possible. I have only been able to shut down completely, then turn the machine back on to get it to boot. This is whether restarting from XP or BIOS.

But, if these were the only problems, I could almost live with it. However, the big killer occurs when asking the video card (a GeForce 6600GT) to do anything 3D-intensive. I can get about 100 frames into 3DMark2003 before it freezes. Every time. Hell, the OpenGL screensaver causes it to crap out if you give it long enough. If I do get control of the desktop back, the graphics are garbled and discolored and the sound sounds as if it is playing back at the wrong sample rate. I've tried various clock rates on the video card with no change in behavior.

The only thing I've changed is the motherboard and processor. The video card, RAM, hard drive, ps, case, etc. are the same as my previous and highly reliable setup.

Configuration:
Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ (Clawhammer)
Gigabyte GA-K8NS Triton nForce3 250 Socket 754 (BIOS rev. F18)
nVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP @ 500/900
2x512 OCZ PC3200 + 1x256 OCZ PC3200 (with heat spreaders)
Windows XP sp2
nForce drivers v5.11
GeForce drivers v84.21
Zalman CSP7000A-Cu

I've got a new Thermaltake 430W powersupply on the way, hoping that some better power might be the solution. Any ideas?

-Ryan

jrabb1920

Are those 754 Mobile cpu's if so that board wont reconize the cpu's and default to 800mhz, I have both.

My mobiles are in DFI nf3 250gb mb, the others are in an assortment of other motherboards.

If there not mobiles then you might have a bad motherboard.

Renegade5399

Make sure you have the latest BIOS on that board. Sound like the 800MHz issue is due to that board not recognizing the Mobile chips. I put together a similar rig for a customer this past Xmas and had to get a regular CPU as even with the new BIOS, the board just didn't recognize mobile chips. Always defaulted to 800MHz. So, try a BIOS flash to the latest version and hopefully it will work. If not, RMA the board for a different one. Also, when using 3 slots of RAM on a socket 754, your FSB wil drop to 333 instead of 400. This is a limitation of socket 754 boards. So, it's best to run only 2 sticks anyway.

ryanmsmith

The board shipped with the latest BIOS, F18. It recognizes at least the name of the chip and displays it during POST. And manually setting the multiplier gets me past the 800MHz problem. Also, the RAM is running at 200MHz. I do see an RMA in the future, though...

-ryan

Renegade5399

What's the vCore at on it?

ryanmsmith

Oh, somewhere around 1.8V - a little above, but I don't remember the extra digits.

-Ryan

jrabb1920

Thats to much vcore for those cpus most I have used is 1.68 vcore and that was a last resort to get the cpu stable, my newark is 2.95ghz with 1.65 vcore and my Turion MT-40 3.0ghz with 1.68 vcore both are on air cooling with max temps under load 45c.