E8400 BIOS setup questions

[GSDog]

Hi all.

My new rig arrived today;

Intel C2D E8400 (E0 stepping)
Asus P5Q Pro
OCZ 4GB PC2-8500 RAM
EVGA GTX260
Enermax Modu82+ 625W
Windows Vista 64bit

I haven't built/used a rig like this before and I am new to overclocking.

I'm a little bit confused about the BIOS setup. Here is what the settings are at the moment;

CPU Ratio settings; 9.0
FSB Freqency; 400MHz
PCIE Frequency; 100MHz (is this correct?)
FSB Strap to northbridge; 400MHz
DRAM frequency; DDR2-800MHz
CPU Voltage; Auto (what is the stock voltage for the E8400?)
DRAM Voltage; Auto

I know it's running at 3.6Ghz and it's stable. I will be pushing it further when the system has been running for a while, hense the reason why I bought the 8500 RAM.
What should the PCIE frequency and CPU voltage be?

Is there anything else I should change in the BIOS?
The timings are at the default 5-5-5-18 for this memory.

Also, I noticed in CPU-Z that the Core Speed seems to be 2400MHz most of the time and jumps up to 3600MHz. I take it this is normal and it only increases when under stress?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey GSDog,

your moving pretty fast there but seem to have a handle on things. Personally I would have left everything on auto and observed how the board set things up first, then slowly but surely start tinkering.

Two things off the bat, first put the FSB strap back on auto for the moment, 400-Strap is the slowest, default for your CPU would be 333, 266 would be even faster etc but auto is best to start.

Secondly if you feel system is stable where your at them get that memory running faster, you can do that in BIOS, choose the DDR speed thats nearest to 1066MHz.

Prime is a nice quick test but IBT (Intel Burn Test) is also very useful as it can flood the system/memory bus with a lot more data and therefore it's a bit quicker mostly to hose out smaller errors hiding in the shadows!

The speed fluctuation u are seeing is EIST, an INTEL power saving tech, I always leave it enabled myself but it's ok to turn it off during any troubleshooting if u suspect its causing a problem, however it's never been the cause of any instability issues in my experience.

The chips programmed voltage (VID) can be read from apps like Realtemp and Coretemp, it's usually dialled a lot higher than the chips actually needs to run at stock, hence people can increase the MHz quite a lot without increasing voltage, I normally go the other way and first undervolt the chip to see how low it can go and still run 100% stable stock speed, horse for courses!

Good luck and keep us posted

 

[GSDog]

Hi Big.Wayne.

Thanks for the reply.

You're right, I am taking this a bit too quickly. I actually accidently clocked it to 3.6Ghz
For some strange reason I thought the stock FSB should be 400MHz hense the reason why it was running at 3.6Ghz.
I think I know the basics it's just things like the PCIE frequency and the FSB strap that's got me stumped.

Anyway, I've now put everything back to auto and put the DDR frequency to 1066. Over the next few days I am going to really stress the PC to make sure it's 100% stable and working as it should be.

I'm going to do my first bit of gaming on this rig and I will run Prime95 overnight.

Thanks again.

 

[Big.Wayne]

I think I know the basics it's just things like the PCIE frequency and the FSB strap that's got me stumped

I'd say you can 99% forget about PCI-E frequency unless your trying to break a 3D-Mark record, a lot of people will just change PCI-E frequency to 101MHz or something like that but I've never needed to adjust it myself.

The FSB strap is pretty important setting and understanding it took me years until the penny finally dropped. It's the name Strap that acts as a curve ball and doesn't help the user understand it's function at all, I can clear away quite a bit of fog by calling it FSB-SPD, very similar to memory SPD

If you can understand what memory SPD is and how it works then you are 99% of the way to understanding FSB-STRAP (SPD)

In the screenshot below you can see the SPD settings for my new OCZ Plat kit, it has different timings programmed to run at different speeds, set by the motherboard . . .

You can see that the lower the MHz the memory is running then the lower the timings are too, in an ideal world you would want as high MHz as possible with the lowest timings (as I'm sure you know), however it never works out that way and normally involves a trade off between MHz and timings, again horses for courses.

Now imagine that the various FSB-Straps are effectively doing the same thing, the 266-FSB strap will have a set of associated low timings, the 333-FSB strap will have slacker timings and 400FSB strap slacker still.

In an ideal world you would want as low an FSB strap as possible combined with as High Front Side BUs as possible e.g 200-FSB strap while running an actual 500MHz-FSB . . . however tis would be akin to running DDR 200MHz memory (2-2-2-6) at 300MHz (2-2-2-6) basically it's unlikely to happen and if you want the higher MHz then you have to slacken off the timings.

In the real world you normally have to let out the FSB-Strap if you want to attain a nice high FSB unless your a clocking master with uBer cooling on the northbridge and an understanding of every BIOS setting.

Lastly I believe that while the FSB Strap and it's internal Northbridge timings used to be programmed for you, on newer boards you get access to nearly all the seperate parameters themselves regadless of FSB-Strap (tRD etc).

That's it for the minute, quite a bit to take it there but I feel I covered it in principle using the least words possible!

 

[GSDog]

snip

You explained it all perfectly, now I understand it.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to stress the PC over the next few days but I will be back here asking for advice when I start to fiddle around again no doubt.

 

[GSDog]

I left Prime95 running overnight and it found an error.

Everything is a stock settings. The system hasn't crashed or anything either... How do I see the stress.txt file?

 

[Big.Wayne]

Is that manual settings or auto settings?

You don't need to see a stress test file, the fact prime has stopped means it found an error.

Is that with full set-up defaults in the BIOS?

 

[DominicStar]

In an ideal world you would want as low an FSB strap as possible combined with as High Front Side BUs as possible e.g 200-FSB strap while running an actual 500MHz-FSB . . . however tis would be akin to running DDR 200MHz memory (2-2-2-6) at 300MHz (2-2-2-6) basically it's unlikely to happen and if you want the higher MHz then you have to slacken off the timings.

In the real world you normally have to let out the FSB-Strap if you want to attain a nice high FSB unless your a clocking master with uBer cooling on the northbridge and an understanding of every BIOS setting.

That's helped me understand things a lot better too. Is it be better to drop the CPU FSB a little to try and get the RAM closer to its default mhz?

eg. I run my E5200 at 272 FSB x 12.5 = 3.4ghz, meaning I have to run run the RAM at 1.25 ratio at 680mhz I think to keep it under 800mhz. Would it be better to drop it to 266 FSB at 1.5 ration and run the RAM at 798mhz?

 

[Lt Goody]

My E8400 is running at 3.6ghz and so far i've lowered the vcore to 1.16v and it is stable.

 

[GSDog]

Is that manual settings or auto settings?

You don't need to see a stress test file, the fact prime has stopped means it found an error.

Is that with full set-up defaults in the BIOS?

All settings on auto except DDR Freqency is at 1066. It seems to run IntelBurnTest OK.

 

[GSDog]

I was just playing CoD4 and the screen went grey/black with the sound repeating. I restarted and the screen was still black/grey colour and the motherboard made a long beeeep followed by 3 short beeps.
I ran Windows memory diagnostics tool and it said;

Hardware problems were detected. To identify and repair these problems, you will need to contact the computer manufacturer.

When I got back into Windows I got this message;

I've now gone back into the BIOS and set everything to auto and I'm going to see if it crashes again.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Ok, so the system is on full auto with the exception of the DDR2 speed which you manually set to 1066MHz . . . and it fails prime . . .hmm?

I think the cure for that may be a small tinker in the BIOS, perhaps the vDimm isn't high enough, anyhow again your on the right track and thats too reset BIOS to full auto (including the DDR2 speed) and run the system for a few hours (stress test, gaming etc).

I suspect full auto will be fine and that the memory will default to DDR2-800 speeds, good enough for a couple of hours of light relief before you start tinkering again.

The system should be 100% stable at stock, it normally always is stable but a bad component will make itself known even at stock speeds!. I always like to run an hour of two of memtest to make sure the sticks are running fine too.

So assuming system and components are all good to go I would probably try and get the memory running faster than 800MHz. If the FSB-Strap is still on auto you should have a list of different speeds available to pick, work your way up from DDR2-800 towards DDR2-1066, hopefully the only other option you may have to adjust is the vDimm which you can manually set to 2.0v-2.1v or whatever it says on the memory product page.

Sometimes you don't need to manually set memory voltage as the board should pick the info up from the sticks SPD info but sometimes it fluffs it and hence the manual vDimm adjustment is required.

That should keep u busy for a few hours, next step is up to you, you can either take vCore from auto to manual and slowly lower it for a cool and cheap running stock MHz speed or you can start cranking the FSB slowly and see how your CPU and other hardware plays, adding vCore, vDimm, vNB and changing memory strap, timings and other settings as you go, lots of small steps and you should be fine!

 

[GSDog]

snip

Thanks.

I set it all to auto and just played CoD4 and Farcry 2 for about 3-4 hours and it was 100% stable.
I went back into the BIOS and set the DRAM frequency back up to 1066MHz and this time set the voltage manually to 2.1v as someone else suggested increasing the voltage a bit.
Timings are 5-5-5-15.
I then ran memtest86 for two hours and it passed with no errors. I will run Prime95, IBT and maybe memtest86 again overnight and see what happens.

CPU temps are around 45-50C under full load and 30C idle. GPU temp hits 78C full load and around 56C idle.
Are those GPU temps OK for the GTX260?