Help me overclock my opty 170

IzaLearnin · 3 Mar 2006 at 23:30

I thought as much, I only know of the dfi nf4 boards that have the high voltage option but there may be others.

You won't need the ddr500 setting as you are increasing the htt which in turn is increasing the speed of your ram. In theory, with the ddr333 divider if you could set a htt of 300mhz your ram would be running at 250mhz (300/6x5=250) which is ddr500.

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 00:10

Ok cheers.

Testing the stability now with the ram clocked at 2.8v. @ 243 x 10

Hopefully it will prove stable but its getting pretty hot in there, so I might leave it until the morning now when I can rig up a temporary fan near the ram and fiddle with the airflow a bit.

As soon as I can sort out the sale of my 3500, I will be buying some watercooling, I got my eye on the Swiftech H20-220 Apex "Ultra" Watercooling Kit.

You say that you think 2.6 is possible as long as its kept cool, do you think thats possible with this kit?

IzaLearnin · 4 Mar 2006 at 00:24

Thats the one i have been looking at but my air cooling only gets noisy when gaming and I can't hear it over the speakers so I can't really justify spending the money. Would be fun to do though.

Whats getting hot - the ram or the cpu? I know the dual cores run hotter than singles so would expect higher temps with modest voltage increase. If you have the stock cpu heatsink then that water kit will be a major improvement.

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 00:29

I have an xp-120 with a 120mm akasa fan.

At the moment the cpu is getting pretty hot, idle its in the 40's and under load its anything from 50 - 75, occasionally it can report in the 80's.

My motherboard (abit av8 3rd eye) has it self a huge stonking great reputation for overkilling temps by as much as 20C higher than they actually are, but I want to play it safe.

The ram is certainally warmer since the voltage increase to 2.8 but I dont think its anything major.

Im hoping the water kit will help me reach these higher voltages while keeping the temps down and get approx 2.6 out of the cpu

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 11:28

Another problem:

I am now at 2450, 2 x 245, ldt 4 x, ddr333, 1.4v core, 2.8v ram.
It seems ok here

But If I go any higher, (2 x 246) the cpu tests run fine, but 3dmark03 and 3dmark05 freeze and lock up part way through, mainly on the 2nd cpu test, but sometimes on other tests aswell.

Any ideas?

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Edit: Based on the fact that it failed while in the CPU tests, I am assuming it is a problem being caused by the overclock, and the cpu being unstable (I may be wrong....you tell me) so I have tried upping the core voltage again, and the problem still continued, I also tried lowering the ldt to 3x fsb, same result. I dont really see how else I can make it more stable.

Is this cpu related, do I need more volts?

IzaLearnin · 4 Mar 2006 at 15:19

Just to eliminate the ram from the equation use the next divider down from ddr333 and run the tests again. If it fails again go back to ddr333 try another increase on the cpu.

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 19:12

I moved the ram divider down to 266 and the same problem occured.

This means that another increase on the cpu will take it to 1.45v is it me or does this seem quite a lot, just to get 2470mhz?

When you look at the voltages some people on these forums are using to get 2.8ghz, putting 1.45v through the cpu to get 2.47 seems a little over the top.

How much further should I go before stopping?

ajgoodfellow · 4 Mar 2006 at 19:14

It does sound like you need to increase the voltages slightly but 1.45V does sound like a lot. You might have got a poor clocker unfortunately - it's the luck of the draw

I'd stop at 1.5V, maybe 1.55V at a push. Just check your temps

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 19:25

Ok it failed again at 1.475v. Im now at 1.5v and the temps are pretty high. I will try and put it under some load but I think it might just get too hot and I might have to abandon, but I am going to give it a go.

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Edit: It failed at 1.5v aswell. Did exactly the same thing. These last few lockups have been during the game tests and not the cpu tests as before.

I am going to have a quick go at dropping the ram divider even lower than I did before, just to make absolutley sure its not that, but I dont think it is.

This might be the highest I can get I suppose?

Would love to get to 2.5, from the 2.47 im at now though, if I could do that I would be happy, then I could buy that nice watercooling setup we mentioned

IzaLearnin · 4 Mar 2006 at 21:00

Shame, still you have the equivalent a x2 4800 (£460.00) for much less! I wonder if it is a heat issue, what load temps are you getting with two instances of prime etc with 1.425v?

lay-z-boy · 4 Mar 2006 at 21:22

0551UPMW

There is the culprit, 0551’s are mediocre, I have the same stepping on my x2 4400, the only way to make it clock high is to shove volts though it.

If I can get 2.8ghz with 1.6 vcore then you should be looking around the same, I need a 0.2v boost to the core at 1.4v to get it dual sp2004 stable from 2.5+

*edit* my temps on a freezer 64 pro are 30 idle and 41 load

sli dr expert - mobo
gskill 2gb hz - mem
psu - tagan 580w u15 single rail mode

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 22:09

Yer its a shame its maxing out this low, but as you say I still have the equivalent an x2 4800 which isnt bad for the money

I would like to just stretch it that extra bit higher if I Can though.

IzaLearnin said:
I wonder if it is a heat issue, what load temps are you getting with two instances of prime etc with 1.425v?

I will do this test now and let you know. I will report back. I have thought long and hard about it being a heat issue and I am undecided. Earlier when on 1.5v I was about to shut down due to extreme temps when just as I moved my arm to go for the button, 3dmark03 "got stuck" the way it has been doing, yet other times it has locked up at very reasonable temps.

lay-z-boy said:
There is the culprit, 0551’s are mediocre, I have the same stepping on my x2 4400, the only way to make it clock high is to shove volts though it.

If I can get 2.8ghz with 1.6 vcore then you should be looking around the same, I need a 0.2v boost to the core at 1.4v to get it dual sp2004 stable from 2.5+

Its good to know that there is hope for the chip if I can really shove the volts through it. In about 10 days I should be able to afford the swiftech 220 watercooling kit so I think I may wait until I get it, get the temps nice and cool and then shove all the voltage I can through it to try and get it above the 2.5 mark. Hopefully if I can keep it cool enough then I can run enough volts through it to get it up there.

Cheers

Nazbit · 4 Mar 2006 at 23:09

ooooook..

The abit av8 has a reputation for having the poorest temp sensors ever marketed on a mobo, so take them with a pinch of salt. When I first bought the mobo the temps were way out, since then bios updates have been needed to recalibrate he sensors on about 8 different occasions, they just couldnt get it right, anyway, running the latest version is better, but I still dont trust them too much....

Temps at 1.425v

Idle = 25 - 29 C

50% load for 60 seconds = 60C

90% + load for 60 seconds = 75C

ajgoodfellow · 4 Mar 2006 at 23:14

Those are rather high - I wouldn't want to see much above 55 degrees under load, but as you say the AV8 is notorious for misreading temps

Nazbit · 5 Mar 2006 at 00:14

My feelings exactly.

I think I am going to try and get the water cooling setup asap, (probs about 10 - 14 days) then once thats installed I can maybe try a few more volts through the cpu hopefully something like lay-z-boy talked about. I dont think I will get as high as him, but I think that my cpu has more to give yet.

Dont really want to push it any further until I can properly keep the temps under control.