Advice on a 2.8 Over Clock on a Opty 144

[Frost, colonel]

Posted for a mate.
What does he set the Corsair pc3200 XL PT to, because at the moment he can get a 2.6 overclock(want's 2.8) but doesn't know how to further set the Ram ie:voltage, divider and HTT, whilst keeping stability and performance?
The Mobo is a Asus A8N Sli deluxe.

Thanks for any advice!

[Aristocrat]

There is no one value suits all when it comes to overclocking.
Your mate needs to slowly increase the HTT and test with Prime95 to see if the overclock is stable. If it is he increases the HTT again. If he hits a wall then he fiddles with voltages and ram settings.
If he does get a decent overclock he will want to set the ram speed to 333mhz (5:4 divider) so it isn't running too fast. He could also try increasing the ram voltage a little bit to increase overall stability, but I must STRESS only a little bit.
There are ram settings in the bios. He should set ram values (ras-to-cas) etc to whatever Corasair recommends (eg 2-2-2-5) first and maybe loosen them a little but later. (the motherboard manual explains what all the settings are, and if worse comes to worse he should do a google search.)

I'll assume the case has adequate cooling...if not he needs to change that.

In short:
1. Set ram settings to corsair recommendations in bios.
2. Download Prime95 and memtest. (both free).
3. Slowly increase the htt while checking for stability with prime95 (includes monitoring temperature, the motherboard has a program that will tell you the temp).
4. Once you/he hits a wall increase the cpu voltage (if not already at highest allowed level in bios, whatever you do 1.7 volts should be a max...go higher if you dare and/or can). Also set the ram divider to 5:4 (ie 333mhz or whatever it is), and maybe put the ram voltage up a short bit, I wont recommend a level here, the ram you said can handle higher voltages but going .05 of a volt should generally be enough to see a difference.
5. With the new settings repeat 3 until you again hit the limit.
6.On my Asus SLI deluxe I have overlocked my AMD 3500 (stock 2.4 ghz I think) to 3ghz but any higher and stability goes out the window.