Help with OC'ing Opteron 144 please.

Zephyrus

Zephyrus

Zephyrus

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12 Oct 2005
Posts
517
Location
Scotland
I ordered my new rig which will arrive tomorrow morning and after reading some of the speed some people have been getting out of their opterons i think i just 'must' over clock this.

Problem is this hardware is totally new to me. I'm used to just upping the FSB on my old 2.4 Celeron and Gigabyte G-SIMLH board :p
So i'd like some advice on what to do with this set up ie what to change and whatnot.

Here's what i have coming tomorrow...

CP-141-AM AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache OSA144DAA5BN / CAB2E 0548EPAW (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-141-AM) 1
£99.95 £99.95
CA-005-HP Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Black UV (CA-005-HP) 1
£54.95 £54.95
CA-027-AN Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case - No PSU (CA-027-AN) 1
£27.50 £27.50
GX-037-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC) 1
£123.95 £123.95
BFG RNF4U nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-000-BG)
Price: £64.95

Oh and the memory is only Corsair value 333 PC2700 i salvaged from my old system and the cpu will be running with the stock cooler/fan for another week or 2 till i can afford to upgrade these.

Even just advice on OC a decent amount without stressing the system too much at least until i get better memory and cooler.

Cheers, in anticipation :p
Zeph.
 
Sounds simple enough :)

Roughly what sort of speed should be the outcome of those settings?

Lol when i first heard about overclocking i spent hours with my old celeron in and out of the bios ;)

Tomorrow morning when City Link ring the doorbell cant come soon enough :D
 
Right everything has arrived and all in one piece :)

But the opty has no thermal paste, is this right? Someone told me on another thread that it would come with the paste already applied :confused:
 
Right finally getting around to being able to play around with this now. Had problems for hours when setting up the tower yesterday due to the RAM i used from my old tower. For some reason Windows was unable to copy some files and kept getting the blue screen during install and having to start again. Maybe i did something to it while transferring between machines :confused: Then to top it off by the time i had everything installed and updated it was time for work :(

Right anyway, having to use an old stick of 512 and a 256 both PC2700 till new memory comes tomorrow. Should i wait to start overclocking till the 1gig stick arrives tomorrow or won't it make any difference? And should i still set the ram divider to 133?
 
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It's corsair value ram i've bought, the old stick i had was the same and never had any problems with it till now and i had it for a while. Only difference is that this stick will be pc3200.

Funny thing is that the stick that caused me problems on the install works perfectly in another pc, havent tried putting it back in the new tower though.
 
New memory hasnt arrived yet. But i want to start overclocking this now. I've gathered together 1.5gigs of pc2700 from other pc's in the house, 1gig stick and a 512 stick.

I'm in the bios just now on the other comp but i dont see a setting for memory divider. I'm in the DRAM configuration screen it gives the info as follows...

Timing mode : Auto/Manual
Memclock Index Value (Mhz) :200Mhz (is this the divider i have to set to 133?)
Cas# latency (Tcl) :2.5
Min RAS# Active Time(Tras) :8T
RAS# to CAS# delay(Trcd) :4T
Row precharge time (Trp) :2T
User Config Mode :Auto/Manual
x Bottom of 32-bit[31:24] IO :B0
x Read preamble value :6ns
x Async latency value :6ns
S/W memory hole Remapping :Disabled
MTTR mapping mode :Continuous

A little help on what to change here would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Zeph.
 
K404 said:
OW the RAM will hold you back.

Cutting to the chase: RAM divider to 133, VLDT to 1.4V if you can in the BIOS, VCore to 1.55-1.6V, up the HT frequency to 300 and lower the HT multiplier to 3. That should be a reasonable start :)

Kenny

BTW...Overclocking gets more fun as you figure it out- the best way to learn is to mess about and learn under your own situations and ways of figuring stuff out what works and why. The fastest way to learn about what doesnt work is to break something though. My wallet learns faster tha my head. :(

K
Click to expand...

Ignore what i asked about dividers, should have read up before asking :p

I'm having a bit of trouble translating what you told me to my bios.

VLDT - I dont have an option for this in the bios unless it could be called something else.

VCORE to 1.55-1.6 - Would this be the option for CPU Voltage Regulator?

HT Frequency to 300Mhz - options in my bios for HT frequency are.....1x,2x,3x,4x,5x and auto, this would translate to being the HT multiplier?. I have an option 'CPU Frequency' which would let me change to 300Mhz, i assume this is the eqivalent to what you mean?

Forgive me if these are n00bish questions, but i'd like to get everything straight in my head with what i am doing rather than changing values and not having a clue.
 
OK tried firing it up at 2800Mhz, 1.55V and divider at 133... no go, as soon as i started the torture test on prime95 system shut down.

So i put the voltage back at stock... same scenario.

Next time i tried voltage at stock and 2200Mhz and divider still at 133. I completed the benchmark on prime 95 and i ran the torture test for 3mins with no errors. Temps started at 32C and raised to 37C. Should i just keep raising HT frquency now till the torture test fails straight away or should i keep it running longer?

Oh and is the divider on the memory going to lower performance on games?

screen18ua.jpg
 
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Currently its @ 9x286 HTT and multiplier @ x3 and prime been running for a few mins so far. For the past couple of hours i've been raising it by 3 then running prime.

Should i wait to lower the divider again when prime fails? Or should i just lower on next reboot?

Hmm i think i seem to have found myself a new addiction :D
 
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Ran prime for 10minutes on 9x300HTT divider @133 and all was fine. Upped to 9x303HTT and windows froze straight after loading the desktop. So lowered the divider to 100 and tried for 303HTT again but then had lock up from merely running the prime benchmark never mind torture test. So is this as high as i can go with the memory/motherboard i have? Or will upping the voltages help.

[Edit - never mind, gonna drop the HTT by 10 and leave it running overnight and while i'm at work tomorrow and i'll be happy if its stable at that considering the crappy memory i'm using :) ]
 
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Whatever it is thats reading as 127C has been reading that from the start and hasnt moved up or down even a fraction in the whole time, so i'm assuming its a faulty reading?

Prime ran for nearly 8 hours and didnt fail once, i take it that means my system is stable at 2.6Ghz then? :)
RAM divider @133, and voltage at stock (1.39V). Going by the graph on speedfan the temps were between 32c and 41C.
primeteststable9ki.jpg
 
Yep, as soon as i got to 9x303 on the 133 divider and it failed prime i changed the divider to 100 and tried 303 again, but was still no go. The reason i dropped to 9x290 before running prime over night is cos i read that when you find a figure that fails you should drop it down a few and then run prime over night, so i assumed dropping it to 290 would be sensible as i am not losing much anyway.

All this seemed so complicated just yesterday morning lol. I gotta say that you guys on here are very helpful, and a thanks from me for being patient with me :) The volatges are still @ stock, would i get much more out of it by upping them, or should i just leave it for now?
 
Gimme a figure for vcore and vdimm to input before i reboot then ;)
Or is it a case of the same as before.. little by little?
 
@1.55V and 2.8V
9x306 and 133 divider.

wont this be stressing the memory? should i perhaps lower the divider?

All seems to be well but surely the pc2700 wont handle much more.
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In the end i decided to settle for 2.6Ghz @stock volts, probably more out of nerves than anything else :p. To be honest i'm chuffed to bits that i got this speed on my first serious overclock. Once the Missus has stopped emptying my pockets with the January sales (whoever was the 1st person to ever have a January sale has a lot to answer for!) i'll get a good 2Gig Ram kit and something other than the stock cooler and give it a go again as it seems this opty is capable of 200-300Mhz at least.

A couple of weeks ago this system started out as an order of a 1gig stick of ram for my old celeron system, amazing what happens when a sudden twitch takes over your hand when hovering over the buy button on the OC site ;)
 
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