Components for an OCing Athlon64 System

[ta2]

Hey,

I'm having some problems trying to work out a setup for a good Athlon64 system to overclock. I haven't overclocked before, but I've heard its very easy with just stock cooling on the A64. Here's what I have in mind so far:

Processor: Athlon64 2800+/3000+ -- Much performance difference when OCing?
Cooler: ??? - Must be silent/very quiet. The Zalman one's look great but are very expensive. If there's nothing that comes close to their performance then I'm happy to pay for one.
Motherboard: DFI LanParty UT nF3 250Gb -- Or another board with the same feature set. Review says it's *Great* for overclocking. Would be hard to find a better choice, but I won't rule anything out.
RAM: 512MB ??? - Would rather get as cheap RAM as I can get away with but would this limit my OCing? Should I buy just one stick of 512MB rather than two of 256MB? I've heard one stick is more stable and gives better timings. What RAM would it take to achieve the 2.45GHz I have been seeing on the 3000+ and what could I expect from a 2800+
Hard Drive(s): 2 * Seagate Barracude 160GB (SATA) -- Mainly because they're quiet. Could I have part of each drive in RAID 1 and the rest of each in RAID 0? EG: outcome would be 1 * 40GB RAID 1 + 1 * 240GB RAID 0. Logically this is possible, but I can see there would be a problem if the OS tries to write to both of the 'virtual' drives at once, where in reality it is trying to write to the same one in two different places.
Graphics: ??? - 9600XT @ £77.23 or 9800Pro @ £131.04 - which gives better performance per £?
Other Components: Don't need anything else, since this is sort of an upgrade.

And... just one thing that's confused me:

http://www.dugu9tweaks.net/guides/a64oc/index3.html

On the Athlon64, RAM bandwidth is the most important factor affecting system performance

I have seen many people say that Athlon64 does not benefit as much from increased RAM bandwidth as the P4. Is this true? Does that still mean that RAM bandwidth is the most important factor? Both can be true but I just want to check .

Thanks in advance for having the patience to read and answer this

-ta2

 

[gotensan01]

CPU: overclocking will give you around 200-400 mhz increase from what I have read. Unfortunately I cannot get my amd64 2800+ to overclock yet.

RAM: definetly go with a 512 stick. I bet you will want to upgrade to 1 gig soon after wards. I bought Corsair Value Select pc3200 512mb sticks. It was the 2.5-3-3-6 stock version. There is also a 3 cas version. The first one I bought gave me timings of 2-3-3-6. These are pretty good for value select ram that was fairly cheap. I didn't try any lower than 2-3-3-6 but I don't think it will go lower. Then I bought a second stick from the same place a few months later (newegg). It was same exact model number and everything. Unfortunately the second stick had stock settings of 2.5-3-3-8. I could only get it down to 2.5-3-3-6. Now both sticks have to run in 2.5-3-3-6, not a big deal. Keep in mind that this is almost the same performance as the corsair xms pc3200 series.

Graphics: I bought a ATI Radeon 9800pro 256mb version. I got the right card so I was able to flash to xt. However I have heard that recently it is more difficult to get a correct version that will flash to xt.

 

[ta2]

Thanks for your help, here's what I've decided so far:

:thumbsup:Processor: Athlon64 3000+
Cooler: ??? - Must be silent/very quiet. The Zalman one's look great but are very expensive. If there's nothing that comes close to their performance then I'm happy to pay for one.
:thumbsup:Motherboard: DFI LanParty UT nF3 250Gb
:thumbsup:RAM: 1 * Corsair Value Select 512MB (PC3200)
:thumbsup:Hard Drive(s): 2 * Seagate Barracude 160GB (SATA)
:thumbsup:Graphics: Sapphire 128MB 9800Pro @ £131.04 - Done some research... the site where I'm buying is said to have R360 cores, so I can mod that into an XT.
:thumbsup:Other Components: Don't need anything else, since this is sort of an upgrade.


Finally, anyone know: Could I have part of each drive in RAID 1 and the rest of each in RAID 0? EG: outcome would be 1 * 40GB RAID 1 + 1 * 240GB RAID 0. Logically this is possible, but I can see there would be a problem if the OS tries to write to both of the 'virtual' drives at once, where in reality it is trying to write to the same one in two different places.

The RAID thing isn't really important. It would save me some £££ but It's not that big of a deal. I can live with a pair of IDE discs for my important files in addition to the SATA's.

P.S... Anyone know a UK site which sells the DFI board yet? (has it in stock).

Cheers

-ta2

EDIT: Getting an Arctic Cooling Silencer rev.4 so that my Sapphire beast survives the strain of the higher clock speeds.

 

[cbehnken]

I've gotten my A64 2800 to 2.18 Ghz stable with Prim95 running for 24 hours.

 

[ta2]

Thats interesting... about the same % as a standard 3000+ OC.