Hey i had a post a few days ago about my oc and you guys told me that i shouldnt go above the fsb of 350 cuz i only had 2700 ddr. Well now i got that Kingston ddr 3500 512 cas2 ram. Well now how high can i take my FSB up to? I was told not to go above 385 no matter what becuase my board doesnt have a PCI lock, is this true? So how high should i put up my fsb? BTW what multiplier/frequency should i put it at. Right now im at 12 x 179. If i want to get to 380 FSB i would have to have the frequency of 190 so should i put the multiplier to 11 becuase i dont want to up my vcore? Sorry for the long post HEres my specs AMD Barton 2500 ASUS A7V8X-X MB 512 DDR 3500 Kingston HeyperX Built by/Manufactured by ATI 9800PRO 128MB 120 GB 7200 8MB Buff Maxtor HD Audigy Gamer 400W PS Windows XP SP1

well before anyone asnwers, be warned that mobo only supports ram up to 3200. The ram might still work but it wont go higher than 3200.

Yeah, he's gonna have to stop at a pci bus of about 38Mhz anyway.

how do i find out when my pci bus gets to 38Mhz? I was told at 385Mhz FSB, that true? On the safe side i was thinking about just going to 370. Also what fsb is 3200?? One last question totally of the subject...how do i find out my barton stepping?

179 means 179mhz system bus (the setting you've adjusted in the bios) which means 358mhz fsb, and 35.8mhz pci bus. Your pci bus is 1/5 of your system bus. I'm not sure why you were told not to try the pc2700 at 190mhz. It might have worked fine and then you wouldn't need the pc3500. A pci bus of 38mhz is safe. At 39-40mhz some hard drives will begin to experience corruption. Hard drives run on the pci bus. That's why 190mhz is a good limit for your fsb. Unless Via has finally come out with a 1/6 pci divider, in which case the pci bus would be safe all the way up to 228mhz system bus. pc3200 memory is 400mhz, actually 2x200mhz. But it runs at whatever speed you set it in bios (dram speed). Some mobos just keep the system bus equal to the dram speed. There is no benefit to running the memory faster than the fsb. 380mhz is a safe limit for your fsb. 11x190 sounds about right for stock vcore of 1.65v. If the chip will not do it, go to 1.75v. No reason not to try 11.5x190 and 12x190. The stepping is the letters and numbers on the cpu itself. This page will tell you what they mean. http://mp3.zonebg.com/cpu/cpu.php#

Thanks alot! Ill see if i can get to 11x190. I dont think 11.5x190 would really make any diff would it? And about the stepping i already have my HS on so i guess im never guna know my stepping. Its a retail version from newegg.com Do you think i got a good one or not?

If you just got it then it is likely good. Yeah 11.5x190 vs 11x190 is not a big difference but there is no magic to 11x190 either. Might as well go with 11x166.