A8N32-sli deluxe, ram choice, oc'ing help etc..

[lkgadv]

Need some advice, as I have not tried overclocking yet, but with the upgrade want to push things a little bit.

Current: AMD FX-60/Thermaltight XP-90c/92mm 65cfm
Epox 9NDA3+
512x4 Crucial Ballistix DDR 400
His x1950pro IceQ3 Turbo Agp/TT Purepower Xpress 250w +12 21amp x2
PC Power and Cooling Silencer 610

Changes: Asus A8N32-Sli deluxe
eVGA 8800 Ultra
512x4 Crucial Ballistix DDR400 or
1024x2 Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR500 or
1024x2 Mushkin Redline DDR500

Learned that with the amd64 chips, the timing shifts to 2t something like a 30Mhz decrease or something when using all four memory slots.
I would like to overclock the FX-60, seems with air should be able to get between 2.8 and 3.0 stable with acceptable temps, and not cook it.

Would I be able to overclock the Ballistix 512x2 to counter the 2t timing and achieve greater than ddr 400 speeds?

Or would I net better going with a DDR500 1024x2 kit?

I have not installed the Asus 8AN32-Sli Deluxe yet. Not even sure I grasp the overclocking bit. I think for instance running ddr500 at stock = ram 250, cpu fsb 250x10=2.5, x11=2.75, x11.5=2.87 etc...not clear on the HTT setting, can I leave at 200x5, or 2000 or do I adjust to match cpu/ram?

If possible could somone provide settings for the Asus sli deluxe, crucial ballistix ddr400 512x4 and FX-60 say for a should be stable 2.9Ghz cpu speed and probable fastest ram set up? I can throw Orthos, Prime-95, Super Pi 3dmark etc..at? Would save me some time, being new to OC'ing would take me forever, with the growing scarcity and volatile pricing of ddr1 especially ddr500 1024x2 kits would like to decide and snag some quick.

Thanks in advance for any counsel.

[simple_inhibition]

i would personally run the 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracers with that motherboard. however it doesnt hurt to try overclocking what you have first

if you go with the 2x1GB kit of tracers try the following setup:
CPU FSB 250mhz
CPU Multi 11x
Ram Ratio 1:1
HTT Link Multi 4x

try that and stress test it since your putting a slight overclock on that cpu. OCCT is a good quick cpu stress testing program. it runs for 30 minutes. i use it as my base stress test and eventually run Orthos once i find the max stable overclock with OCCT. usually have to lower your o/c or increase voltage with orthos even though it passes OCCT.

you should also find out your rams highest speed by dropping the cpu multi to its lowest number, leave the ram at 1:1 and drop the HTT link multi to 2. most DDR500 should be able to get around 260 or so with 4-4-4-8 1T timings, it may even go higher. really depends on that particular kit of ram.

when you find your rams max speed, set the fsb to it, the cpu multi at 11, htt multi to whatever will get you at or below 1000mhz (theres not much if any of a performance hit if the htt runs below spec) and stress test it. depending on your cpu you may have to give it a little more voltage. just remember, dont over do it! bump it up in small increments and then stress test it. i dont recomend increasing the voltage much past 1.45 with that cooler. i have the XP90 ALCU with a 92mm panaflow and it can get pretty toasty.