My CPU/FSB will not clock over 220mhz? Please Help!

keogh · 23 Mar 2007 at 22:57

Hi,

I had a post further down here where I asked this question, but its not got any response, so I wanted to start another with a more sufficient title. I'm a newbie at all this by the way, so sorry if I sound stupid below.

After many hours of aggro, I finally got my 2x1GB RAM to: 2-3-2-5 1T (CL-RCD-RP-RAS CMD) which is the best I could get it. Changing RCD to 2T crashes my PC on boot, so thats not happening.

The problem I am having now is my CPU will not overclock beyond 220x11, whenever I go to 221+ I get a "Boot Failure" after my ASUS screen? The temps are fine, as they sit at 41c ish idle according to my Hardware monitor in my BIOS. Any ideas how I can get it above?

Also, whenever I set my vcore (CPU voltage in my BIOS) to, for example, 1.450v or even higher, my vcore stays at 1.36-1.38 according to PC Probe even on loads? I cannot seem to get my vcore to raise? Is this right? Should it raise if I set it to a higher value? Or would the setting of 1.450v be the max, and it would only go to that if it needs to?

The spec of my PC is:

ASUS A8N-SLi Premium [w/ Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ [w/ Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro]
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200 Twinx
BFG Geforce 7800 GTX OC [With Zalman VF700-CU]
Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type-R 580W ATX2.2 PSU

And the settings I've changed in my BIOS are:

CPU Frequency: 220mhz
PCI Express CLock: 100mhz
DDR Voltage: 2.75v
CPU Multiplier: 11x
CPU Voltage: 1.450v
Hyper Transport Frequency: 3x

Think thats all ive changed (apart from the DRAM Config mentioned at the top).

Heres a quick screenie of Everest Overclock stats if that makes a diff:

I'm more than happy to give more screenies of CPU-Z, Orthos etc.

Please please help me if you can, I wanna get this CPU moving.

Thanks!

Gashman · 24 Mar 2007 at 00:43

i hit brick wall at around 245Mhz on exact same motherboard, only way i got round it was watercooling chipset and voltage regulators and increasing chipset voltage, did the trick, also try updating to most recent BIOS, claims they fixed 'overclocking' issues

Edit: also up your HT multiplier to 4x cause it likes to stay as close to 1Ghz as possible usually, if it goes too high or too low it gets abit grouchy

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 01:13

When you say you hit a brick wall... what happened? How did your machine "throw a wobbler" if you like? Did you get the "Boot Failure" problem I am getting?

By HT multiplier you mean HTF (Hyper Transport Frequency) right? Just wanna make sure, so many different names for things

EDIT: Uped Hyper Transport Frequency 4x, and thought I'd try uping my FSB to 221mhz, but still get the "boot failure"... surely I am doing sumin wrong... its gotta go higher than 221mhz right? And when I reach the peak I am expected instability (i.e. crashing, slowdowns etc) not a "Boot Failure" message?

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 02:24

Ok I updated the BIOS to 1014, and I set my FSB to 221MHz and it booted into Windows. At this point I thought, great, the BIOS update and sorted it!

Went back and set it to 230MHz, and on boot this time It froze on the ASUS screen

Tried setting it to 225MHz, and this time got past the ASUS screen then the post screen and then I get a DOS "Missing Windows File, Repair your copy of WIndows etc etc". I'd seen this before, so I went back and set it to 220MHz and here I am.

My PC will not go beyond 220MHz, but I still think its cos I'm doing sumin wrong.

Anyone have any other ideas?

...damn its late!

MoodyB · 24 Mar 2007 at 10:08

Lower your ram timings to 8-3-3-3.0 and set the divider to 166mhz. If the Pc boots now, then your Corsair can't handle 219fsb with 5-2-3-2.0 timings.

edit :

Download the app attached to the 1st post below :

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?referrerid=&t=49898

This will let you see what speed your ram will be running at with different fsb / divider settings

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:07

Ok after a lot of fiddling (quite an enjoyable experience... yet scary also

) I have reached my peak I think, cos anything over and my PC crashes in windows.

Below is a capture of most of the stats:

Now these where taken whilst the PC was under load using Orthos and Photoshop of course (we all know how RAM hungry that is).

My spec again is:

ASUS A8N-SLi Premium [w/ Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ [w/ Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro]
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200 Twinx
BFG Geforce 7800 GTX OC [With Zalman VF700-CU]
Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type-R 580W ATX2.2 PSU

I know thats the max CPU speed I can get, cos lowering my RAM to its lowest and getting to my max vcore, 2.6 kills the machine, so Im happy with the 2.5. What I am slightly worried about is the RAM?

I have managed to get it to 2-2-2-5 1T as you can see, but I am running it on 166mhz and thats giving me a Frequency of 184.9... is that good for 3200? I didn't want to go ver 210 as suggested by defcon, and this is the best I can get with getting my CPU at its max. If I run a multlplier of 10x then to get to this CPU speed my ram will be running at 215mhz (ish) so too high.

Does that look good? Or should I change sumin?

I'd appreciate your input.

thanks

Steve M

Cob · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:35

It looks fine.

But I would raise the HTT multiplier from x3 to x4. 705mhz is very low. Raising it to x4 will leave it at a far better ~904mhz.

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:38

I did exactly that just after I posted, but it then crashed my machine? I thought that was strange, cos it was still quite a way from 1000 but it didnt like it. As soon as I booted CPU-Z/Core Temp and then upon booting PC Probe, blam, it died?

Could anything else be contributing to that?

Cob · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:47

Try 2-3-2-5 with the HTT on x4.

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:51

But is it worth losing performance in my ram by uping my tRCD? Seeing at you don't get any performance gain from the HTF... do you?

MoodyB · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:54

keogh said:
I have managed to get it to 2-2-2-5 1T as you can see, but I am running it on 166mhz and thats giving me a Frequency of 184.9... is that good for 3200? I didn't want to go ver 210 as suggested by defcon, and this is the best I can get with getting my CPU at its max. If I run a multlplier of 10x then to get to this CPU speed my ram will be running at 215mhz (ish) so too high.

At 184mhz, I'd expect the ram to easily run at the 5-2-3-2 1T settings you had it at earlier. It should do 215mhz since's it's a good brand of ram, so try it at the 8-3-3-3 timings. If it works, lower them to 7-3-3-2.5, and keep going lower bit by bit

You might need 2.7v / or 2.8v to run 215mhz+ with tighter timings than default though.

edit :

As it's an Asus board, make sure ' PEG Link Mode' and ' Legacy USB support ' are both disabled. They have both been known to cause instability when overclocking the cpu for whatever reason.

And watch your temps. Almost 60c on the 2nd core isn't ideal, so once you get it all stable, see if you can drop the vcore down a little. You'll only get the pc resetting itself due to overheating when ( if ?

) the weather gets warmer over the next few months.

Cob · 24 Mar 2007 at 16:55

keogh said:
But is it worth losing performance in my ram by uping my tRCD? Seeing at you don't get any performance gain from the HTF... do you?

It's debatable whether you get any performance improvement from keeping it at 2 tbh.

Run some benchmarks at both settings and see how it goes.

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 17:06

MoodyB said:
At 184mhz, I'd expect the ram to easily run at the 5-2-3-2 1T settings you had it at earlier. It should do 215mhz since's it's a good brand of ram, so try it at the 8-3-3-3 timings. If it works, lower them to 7-3-3-2.5, and keep going lower bit by bit You might need 2.7v / or 2.8v to run 215mhz+ with tighter timings than default though.

edit :

As it's an Asus board, make sure ' PEG Link Mode' and ' Legacy USB support ' are both disabled. They have both been known to cause instability when overclocking the cpu for whatever reason.

And watch your temps. Almost 60c on the 2nd core isn't ideal, so once you get it all stable, see if you can drop the vcore down a little. You'll only get the pc resetting itself due to overheating when ( if ? ) the weather gets warmer over the next few months.

'PEG Link Mode' only has options of Auto | Slow | Normal | Fast | Faster.. what should it be set to?

EDIT: I was talking rubbish above, there was a disabled option... and I have set it to that! ta

keogh · 24 Mar 2007 at 19:20

Ok I am finished now and Im not changing anymore settings... must have rebooted 40000 times the last day or two.

Ive ended with:

CPU: 2583mhz (258x10)
HT Link: 775mhz (so gone up a bit)... Seems to crash @ 900mhz of more
Ram: 2-3-2-5 1T @ 215mhz on 2.75v

Tried to get 2-2-2-5 1T via changing the DDR voltage to 2.80/2.85 and 2.90 and it crashed after boot, so tRCD will not go lower at 210mhz+

Overall most things have gone up, and more important I went for the x10 multplier to get my DDR frequncy up.

I'm happy with it until I upgrade my machine

Thanks everyone for your help, appreciated!

Steve M