Right, what to do next??

[Leemond]

first time overclocking so be gentle.

just in the process of getting a bit more out of my 4200 x2.

firstly i increased the fsb to 230 and dropped the multiplier to 10.

then went to 235 then 240 and it still ok on stock voltage 1.3v.

tested for 30 mins on orthos and see no raise in temp over standard which i presume is because i am still on stock voltage.

do i just keep going untill it fails and then increase the voltage.

also do i need to do anything to my ram?

thanks, lee.

 

[mikeymike]

one thing, in bios u need to lower HT multiplier from the default 5* to 4* otherwise this will start to cause problems before you get much further. this setting barely makes any diff, less than 1% most ppl will tell you, whether its on 5* 4* 3* or whatever really, so dont worry bout losing performance from lowering it because you wont.
apart from that, keep going how you are until you lose stability :]

 

[mikeymike]

on the ram side, depending on what ram you have, and what timings you are currently using, you may need to slacken the timings to keep going higher mhz

 

[spb251272]

To be sure of how far you can go, you really need to identify the limits of each overclocking "component", i.e. the fsb, the cpu and the ram.

FSB first, so put the cpu on a really low multiplier like 4 and put the ram on a really low divider. Then you can up the fsb by increments of about 10 until it fails to boot. Back it down to where it last worked, then try upping it by 5. If it fails again, then go back to the last working value. This will be the limit of your fsb. Some motherboards will let you go further by upping the chipset voltage, but if you're not sure I'd leave them alone.

Then leave the ram on a low divider, put the cpu on it's max multiplier, and start with the fsb on default. Now try to up the fsb, 10 at a time, until either it fails to boot, or you reach the max fsb value you achieved previously. If it fails to boot before you reach your max fsb, you can try to up the vcore one increment at a time, and see if it boots. I personally wouldn't go any higher than 1.5V on the vcore with an x2 unless you have very good air cooling, or watercooling/phase. You should then be able to determine your cpu's limit.

Now for your max ram speed. knock the multiplier back down to about 4, put the ram on a 1:1 divider, and apply the tightest timings that the ram is capable of. Now start to up the fsb until it fails to boot, or you reach the max fsb value you achieved previously. it fails to boot before you reach your max fsb, you can try to slacken the timings on your ram, but make sure you have the 1T/2T setting at 1T, as you'll get a fair performance loss at 2T. now just keep trying different timings to get it to boot, and then keep upping the fsb until you can go no further.

Now you can try to run the cpu at stock multiplier, the ram at 1:1 and then up the fsb to the lowest of the max values you have just achieved. This will then combine the 3 best settings into your overall maximum.

Hope this helps