Banging my head against a brick wall

[Draclynach]

Ok well hello everyone

let me start by throwing out my rig specs

athlon 64 3400+ (newcastle) 754 pin
soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR nf3 250gb
2x Geil value 1 gig sticks 3-4-4-8
matxor sata 80 gig
maxtor ata 160 gig
seagate ata 80 gig
pny fx5700ve 256(it's what I could afford)
Koolance Exos black to the cpu

ok my problem is this I've been trying to oc my cpu I upped the vcore to 1.525 set the HTT to 208 and cut the LDT to 3 to stay under the HTT bus speed of 1600Mhz. I keep hitting a wall when I run prime though should I give up or am I actually going to have to attempt to to adjust the memory clock cycles I initally was looking to up cpu to 2600Mhz I haven't adjusted the chipset voltage or the memory voltage as of yet I feel I'm at a safe enough point to turn back if there's no hope for this project.

believe me any and I mean ANY help that can be given would be great

 

[Apokalipse]

I think your motherboard is holding it back

 

[Draclynach]

oik well I spent most of the day looking over any reviews of my mobo that I could find seems that your right my soltek board isn't very good at all for oc'ing think I'm going to break it down and start over I've been an amd guy for along time any imput on where to take my system from here

 

[Sh0r_ty]

lol well first why do u need faster than 3400?

second it might be that ur ram is the problem cos i can't see a mobo maxing out at 208 probebly just been lucky but u definitly won't get past fsb of 250 cos the abit mobos didn't past that and they were the best ocers

k next if u really need an upgrade how much cash do u have to spend on it?

 

[Apokalipse]

nah, even Geil should be getting more than 208.
get a socket 939 system if you can. with an MSI K8N Neo 4, a DFI NF4 Ultra-D, or an Abit AV8 3rd eye (AGP)

the DFI is by far the best for overclocking. all the highest records for Athlon 64 overclocks are on DFI boards.

the DFI and MSI boards are PCI-E, so you'll need a PCI-E video card if you get one. what you get depends on your budget. I would recommend anything from a 6600 GT ($150-$175), to 6800 GT ($320-$380), to 7800 GTX ($550-$600)

the best RAM for overclocking is currently G.Skill's with Sansung TCCD's
most people get at least DDR600 with the Venice, and that's without coolers on it.

for a CPU, the Venice/San diego is the best for overclocking currently. the San Diego is exactly the same, but with more L2 cache. if you can, get the San diego. if not, the Venice.
if you have a lot of money, the Athlon 64 X2 Toledo's are really good. dual core San diego, which outperform Intel's in at least half of multimedia benches. that's not even what Athlon 64's are best at (gaming).