Few quick overclocking questions

[fish99]

Just playing round with my first attempt at overclocking my CPU here, see sig for specs. I'm new to overclocking so I'm just trying something modest to start with.

So, A64 4000+ San Diego (Freezer 64 Pro)-
FSB up to 233, multiplier at 12x
RAM down to 166 Mhz (ddr333) (194 MHz with the higher CPU FSB)

CPU-Z shows CPU running just over 2.8 GHz at around 1.5V. 3DMark06 3890, SuperPI 1M 31s, Doom 3 timedemo (1280*1024 ultra) 102.7 fps.

1st Question - the vcore is going up to 1.5v max (using cool'n'quiet btw so it's varying) but I didn't change it. Is the board (A8N5X) upping the vcore automatically? It's set on 'auto'.

2nd Question - SuperPI is down from 35s to 31s, which is nice, but no improvement in Doom 3 or 3DMark06. Would I be right in thinking I'm completely GPU limited then (X1800 XT 256mb), and would I also be right in concluding that if all I'm interested in is gaming performance, then I may as well not overclock the CPU and have lower temps and smaller electric bills. In other words it's not gaining anything in gaming performance on my system with my video card.

I understand Doom 3 and 3DMark06 aren't indicitive of every game btw, some may well use the CPU more and benefit from the extra CPU speed.

3rd Question - I've heard people talk about a 'divider'. Do they just mean slowing the ram down to keep it within limits? So if you up to the CPU FSB 16% you have to slow the ram down roughly 16% to keep it running at 200 MHz and keep the system stable. My board doesn't seem to have many options for ram speed - 300/333/400 etc but not the inbetween settings.

Thanks in advance
Simon.

 

[fish99]

Cheers Been playing round some more and got the chip stable at 250 MHz FSB, so 3.0 GHz which is in excess of FX57 speeds and very nice for a £90 CPU Hits 52 degrees under load which seems fine to me. That's at 1.5V vcore.

For now I've left cool'n'quiet on since I can't see any sign of it doing any harm. I'm gonna get one of those power usage metre things next week so I can check if the PC really does use significantly less power with cool'n'quiet on, and if not I'll turn it off. I hate the idea of it using tons of power when I'm just browsing the web though.

Had to drop hypertransport to 4X and ram speed down even further, but I'm thinking of getting some PC4000 ram next week (I'm buying new 2GB ram anyway, it's just a question of whether to get PC3200 or PC4000), so that would let me run CPU and ram both at 250 MHz which would be pretty awesome

Also overclocked my X1800 XT 256 mb to a modest but nice 689/797.