My first proper overclock :)

[Mark A]

Hi,

Well i bet you've all seen this millions of times but this is the first time Ive overclocked properly and I'm pretty pleased with it so far.

I tried overclocking my old CPU (3200+ winchester) and managed to get it to 2200 from 1800, any further and it BSOD on me .

I plucked up the courage to update the bios on my Abit AV8 from 17 to 24 as 17 didn't support Sandiego. I got myself a 3700+ from OcUK as they're so cheap to see if i can overclock it any better than my old chip.

Well I'm a noob but i think i have the basics so this is what i have done so far:

Locked AGP and PCI slots to 66 and 33
changed HT to 4x from 5x
raised Vdimm voltage to 2.7 from 2.65
raised cpu core to 250 from 200
Put ram on a divider @ DDR333

Giving me 2750mhz

At the moment my HT is now running at 1000mhz again so i think I'll have to lower it further to 3x. I think the ram will clock to about 214 (Geil value 1gb matched kit) so that should be OK for now.

I'm on air at the moment and the temp idle at the moment is 36oc.

I think my chip is a KABE2 what do these clock to?.

Mark

 

[IceShock]

well, idle temps arent really usefull to be honest, even if it was -10 idle and went up to 1000c under load and roasted it would be no good

i advise you get "prime or orthosbeta" to test the chip to 100% load

and monitor the temps with "core temp"

there usefull overclocking programs


oh and if it goes above 60c under full load, you need to cool it down more. or lower the speeds or voltages.

i guess really it wouldnt melt untill way higher, but its best to keep it below 60-65 at maximum because in long term it will start to wear its life time down.

which i learnt when i had a perfectly good amd 4400 dual core and its life time was about 5 weeks after i started seriouse overclocking

oh and by the way, changing core speeds etc cant really do damage because it just wont boot into windows or anything if it cant handle it.

its only when you put the voltages up a lot it gets dangerouse.


alltho if it wont boot into windows or is unstable at high core speeds it needs more volts anyway but theres a limit which i allso found out with my amd 4400x2. i took it to 3.3ghz on air at 2.75v and pop!


oh and btw this should be in the overclocking section, not "cpu" section

 

[Mark A]

Thanks for the info, I'll check it out tomorrow. So far Ive just tested it using the FEAR benchmark a few times. Got much better FPS than with my 3200+, i think the 1mb cache will be making a difference as well?, is it the equivalent of 200mhz?.

Temp after exiting FEAR benchmark after a good few mins was 58oc. I think that will improve slightly when the AS5 has had a chance to settle down. I think my 3200+ Winny was slightly higher temp than that but i had to raise the core voltage to get that stable at 2200.

I dont think i'll be going crazy or anything, I might just go a bit higher if i can so that my ram is running at around 205mhz as its @196 at the moment. I might have to give the HT more voltage because that will then be running a tad over 1000mhz. From what ive gathered the HT clock speed doesn't give any real world difference in performance anyway so shouldn't be a problem to drop it down to 3x?.

According to Everest home Ive got a 25% clock .

Ooops, i saw the "***The Official 6320/6420 Overclocking Thread*** " and assumed this was the section for overclocking. If a don could move it that would be great, thanks.

 

[IceShock]

good luck with it.

btw the 1mb catche will be helpfull yes for overclocking.

and it will give better performance slighty


and you cannot compare catche with MHZ as you did ask if 1mb over 512k would be equiverlant to 200mhz.

its just like ram memory really, more of it you have the better it will be under full load when you have a lot of things running

 

[Mark A]

Thanks . Ive edited my above post. I'll have a tinker tomorrow and also check out the programs you suggested.

I'm looking forward to moving to conroe in the near future, just need to save some pennys and wait for some decent games to appear then I'll take the plunge. Ive had this rig for over 2 years and when i built it i couldn't afford the 3700+ Sandy so had to get the 3200+ Winny, when i saw them for £35 i just had to have one lol.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Well i bet you've all seen this millions of times but this is the first time Ive overclocked properly and I'm pretty pleased with it so far.

Well not quite one million but not far off

I plucked up the courage to update the bios on my Abit AV8

You brave man you!

I'm a noob

a nOOb on the overclockers.co.uk forums!!

I'm on air at the moment and the temp idle at the moment is 36oc

Air is my fave, also as mentioned if your gonna quote temps, make sure its the max load temp, thats the relevant one, but if you wanna be as informative as possible then include your min/max temps like so:

33°C/48°C

i advise you get "prime or orthosbeta" to test the chip to 100% load

I'm not sure Orthos works too good on a mono-core? was it Stress Prime 2004 your thinking off maybe?

 

[IceShock]

yep maybe. i didnt know how good orthos was on single cores tho anyway, iv never overclocked a single core hehe

 

[Mark A]

You brave man you!

, It was brave for me as I'm not made of money so if it doesn't post or anything after Ive changed it I'd of been pretty miffed. I don't possess a floppy drive and i don't have any floppy disks so i couldn't do it the safe way and had to rely on the dodgy windows based program = plucked up the courage . Ive read loads of horror story's over on the abit forums so i was reluctant to do it.

Ive got to do a bit of encoding in a minute so i can monitor the max load temp when i do that.

 

[IceShock]

updateing bios in windows is dodgey?

iv allways done it in windows lol, done it about 30+ times in the past without thinking twice about what could happen.

even when i got this brand new rig i updated it imedietly lol.


i dont own a floppy drive

 

[Mark A]

updateing bios in windows is dodgey?

iv allways done it in windows lol, done it about 30+ times in the past without thinking twice about what could happen.

even when i got this brand new rig i updated it imedietly lol.


i dont own a floppy drive

Yeah but the Abit AV8 is a very problematic unstable board and many people on the Abit forum have needed new bios chips from updates gone wrong. The proper way to do it is by making a bootable floppy and doing it in dos but i don't have a floppy drive and I'm not about to buy one just for that so just took a chance.

Ive finished encoding and the temp never went about 49oc.

 

[IceShock]

if you need more help just let us know! happy to help

 

[Mark A]

I downloaded the latest version of Prime 95 and it failed within a few mins , yet it encoded for over 2 hours . Ive dropped the CPU clock back to 240 from 250 for now, I'm going to retest it in a minute.

I tried to get it stable by upping the CPU core voltage to 1.375 and the NB to 1.70 but it didn't work. Temp was nice and steady at 51oc so i don't think thats an issue. Anything else i can try?, should i raise the CPU core voltage up a bit more?.

 

[IceShock]

you wont need to change the NB voltage yet i wouldnt of thught.

just try upping the Vcore a tiny bit to get it stable

 

[IceShock]

oh and because your on amd make sure the HT speed (i think thats what its called for AMD) doesnt go over 1100mhz, if it does lower the HT x



dont be worryed to up the voltage a bit but dont go crazy, anything over 1.6v is a danger zone really i popped my motherboard at 1.75V with a amd4400x2 the motherboard couldnt handle the volts, but i think the cpu survived tho lol

 

[Mark A]

Thanks.

Ive gone back to 240 for now and ran prime 95 its passed all 5 tests twice so i assume its prime stable?. So I'll keep upping the core till it fails then up the voltage abit more?. Then run prime for a few hours to make sure it really is stable.

Yeah regarding the HT its @ 4X so should be running at around
960mhz, when i had 250 clock on it would have been running at stock speed of 1000mhz. Would it be wise to reduce the HT multi to 3x?, as Ive read that it doesn't really make much difference to performance anyway.

The temp during Prime was steady at 51oc, is this an OK temp or should i speed my case fans up a bit?. My case fans (Akasa Ambers) are currently running at 5v.

i popped my motherboard at 1.75V with a amd4400x2 the motherboard couldnt handle the volts, but i think the cpu survived tho lol

 

[l33t-krew]

really sorry i hijack here, but what is a safe level of voltages for a Pentium 4 3.4ghz 65nm on a 680i cooled by a Zalman 9700 Aero @ Full.

Cheers

 

[IceShock]

run prime on the cpu stress one for about 30 mins between changing overrclocking settings then when your happy with a setting, run it for about 3 hours +

somtimes it can take over 24hours for it to find a error but if it doesnt up to 3 hours its normally stable

 

[IceShock]

really sorry i hijack here, but what is a safe level of voltages for a Pentium 4 3.4ghz 65nm on a 680i cooled by a Zalman 9700 Aero @ Full.

Cheers

not sure, but a core2duo processor (65nm) would reach anything above 3.6ghz with no more than 1.5v useually.

most people dont even need 1.4v

 

[l33t-krew]

im on 4.5ghz atm on 1.4v. Is this safe to be on? Can I go higher? What is a good program for measuring my temp & voltages. The motherboard monitor is saying the cpu @ 4.5ghz is at 35oc. That seems alittle low

 

[Mark A]

Cheers IceShock. Ive got it up to 245 so far and its prime stable for 1 hour 20 mins so i'll nudge it up a bit more.