Overclocking help

Lumeycom

Lumeycom

Lumeycom

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31 Jan 2008
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S Wales
its been an awful long time since i upgraded my old rig (p4 2.8 m0) but I was 'forced' into it due to a failed mobo. Had to do things on a budget unfortunatly but I know theres some headroom in this.

Bios has a whole load of settings that I dont really understand as they are quite new, and foreign, to me so I was hoping for some pointers :)

Abit IP43 with a 2160, 4gb Corsair 6400, 4850 off a 500W OCZ psu

I managed to get 240fsb with a little vcore bump but its unstable, in fact almost anything over 220 is :( These are the options I have available for voltage control, where i believe i'm falling down -

CPU Core voltage - understand this one
CPU VTT voltage
DRAM Voltage
MCH 1.1 Voltage
ICH 1.1 Voltage
ICHIO Voltage
CPU GTLREF Voltage

Now what on earth are all of those?

Thanks :)
 
cpu vtt - adjusting vtt controls the reliability of signals between 2 points, higher vtt ensures signal is strong and no drop off in voltage! higher fsb frequency may require raising vtt.
dram - memory voltage! higher frequency may require more voltage, more voltage means extra heat.
mch - is the northbridge voltage. you may have to up this to acheive a stable oc.
gtl ref- gunning transceiver logic voltage setting to squeeze out the final mhz from a quad core. heat would be an issue at this point anyway unless you had a good cooling setup.
 
E2160

Thanks for the contiued help :) Just wish things were as simple as they used to be :p (I sound like unlce albert no?:p)
 
if you have added voltage to the cpu it may be that the northbridge may require some juice! you may have to add juice to your ram as well. but i would start of with the northbridge..
 
Well no matter what I do I still cant get past 225fsb so I'm getting to think that the mobo must not be capable. Not much info around on P43's so its difficult to gauge :(

Only other thing I can think of is that my PSU only has a 4pin CPU connector to the motherboard rather than an 8 - Could it be a lack of power? Its a 500w OCZ so I would have thought it would be ok?
 
Lumeycom said:
Abit IP43 with a 2160, 4gb Corsair 6400, 4850 off a 500W OCZ psu

I managed to get 240fsb with a little vcore bump but its unstable, in fact almost anything over 220 is :(
Click to expand...
Hey Lumeycom,

that seems like nice kit there, I am thinking maybe the board is running the memory faster than the FSB so when you overclock there may be a problem?

ABIT IP43

Intel® P43/ ICH10

Haven't used that board myself by it looks pretty good to me, can't see that holding you back from basic overclocking. Any chance you can post up some CPUz screens, particulary the memory tabs. I would have thought you could leave most voltages on auto to start with?
 
Seems your right :p

cpuz1.jpg


cpuz2.jpg


cpuz3.jpg


So i need to go an find a memory divider of some sorts i guess? Will reboot and have a look through the bios once i've finished this bit of work :)

Thanks for the help so far :D
 
No probs, it seems that is the usual problem when people first start, they keep pumping vCore but it gets them no where! :o

Have a dig around in BIOS for memory speed, its probably set to auto, change it to 1:1 sync for your basic clocking tests. Not sure how this is displayed on ABIT boards but on ASUS it shows you the DDR2 speeds i.e for 225MHz-FSB there would be an option called *DDR2-450* that would be 1:1.

Once you work out your CPU MHz vs vCore you can come back and play with the memory some more, good luck! :)
 
Well i've only got 3 options in the bios for memory

Auto
800
667

Seems that my ram craps out at 450 in cpuz.

so i tried it on 800 and that gave the same as Auto, popped it on 667 and have so far got to 2384mhz with the ram running at 441. Had to give it a little vcore, vtt and mch to get it there but seems ok.

Fingers crossed it will be stable but I'm guessing there is not much more to give as i'm about at the ram limit and I cant see a way of lowering it versus fsb anymore :(

Am I on the right track now?

Thanks again

Lumey

ps - gonna go find out about prime now, seems to be the 'stability' checker. Its running seti/boinc ok at the moment though.



Edit - is there a program that can show me actual voltages in windows? The abit widget that came with the mobo doesnt seem to like vista64 much :( I'm a little suspicious that i'm a fair bit lower voltage wise that the bios says as I cant check it under load in the bios.
 
Last edited:
Lumeycom said:
Auto
800
667
Click to expand...
Yeah 667 would be the lowest memory divider there. I'm wondering is there an option to change the FSB-Strap. If there is it will probably be on auto, there should be 200/266/333/400 options, have a play with them and find which one offers you 1:1 memory ratio.

If you can't change the FSB Strap you will have to work with the 667 option, loose timings and memory voltage (vDimm) will be all you have to work with.

Heres hoping you can access the other memory dividers. This is the only disadvantage with low FSB chips and thats the board offers quite weak memory divider options.
 
Found them :)

FSB STRAP TO NB it was marked at.

200 = 1:1
266 = 2:3
333 = 5:6

Got it on 266 at the moment, FSB set to 300 and it 'seems' fine. Ram is at 450 in cpuz and 2700mhz. Not bad for a cpu i bought for £5 :p

Will take a look at that HWmontior now, thanks :)
 
Good stuff, just a few BIOS flicks and your back in business.

356MHz x 9 would be nice for a 3.2GHz speed, you may need up to about 1.4vCore, the same for NB and have a fiddle with your memory straps, at least you know your good roughly up to DDR2-900.

You may need to drop the memory divider down to 1:1 to remove the sticks from the equation while you figure out the voltage needed for just the CPU, once thats sorted you can twiddle the memory a bit more, basically just concentrate on one aspect at a time so when something goes wrong your list of suspects is rather small.

Glad I could help! :)
 
I'm glad too lol :)

Seems my actual voltages are a little lower than the bios says setting wise (according the HWmonitor) so I've got a little headroom there too.

One odd thing is it shows my +12v as 6.58v? must be wrong lol :)
 
cpuz4.jpg


That seems to be it. Running prime now ok, tried at 3200mhz but it did the bsod trick once at the desktop, dont really want to put anymore vcore in than it has currently or i'm gonna be heating my room :p
 
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