System voltage control on manual

Merlin5 · 21 Aug 2010 at 20:05

I've overclocked my phenom 550 to 3.4ghz with no voltage increase and it's stable. But I'e had to reset the cmos 3 times when trying for a higher overclock and using voltage, because it doesn't post.

The problem doesn't seem to be the vcore, but it seems to lie in going from auto to manual on system voltage control. In this screenshot, you can see where I changed system voltage control to manual, and everything below it from DRAM voltage control to CPU voltage control now says 'normal' instead of auto. All those voltages next to them I didn't alter, that's how they are.

I just tested setting it to manual and leaving vcore at stock voltage

and it STILL didn't post, which means that all those other settings now on manual are affecting the post. So how do I get around that? I need to keep those other settings on auto while increasing the vcore manually, but there's no option to do that once I change system voltage control to manual.

Merlin5 · 23 Aug 2010 at 02:30

Can anyone kindly throw any light on this problem? Could the EPP setting be conflicting with the DRAM voltage once I turn auto off and system voltage is manual? Should I disable EPP which is at 4-4-4-12?

Anyway, I went in to the bios again. I've now got the multiplier to x17.5 @3.5ghz and it's stable as I stressed it with orthos small FFTs overnight. Still at stock voltage. Orthos fails at 3.6ghz though, so I need to increase the voltage now.

I do have easytune6 where I can increase the voltage that way. It shows 1.35v which is exactly what it says in the bios, whereas HWmonitor says 1.34V, so it looks like easytune is accurate. Can I continue with easytune? Maybe increase both voltage and multiplier with easytune, or just increase voltage with easytune and then use bios for the multiplier?

I know software is frowned on though for O/C and there are mostly unfavourable views on easytune6. I also have AMD overdrive which I hear is more stable, but it doesn't load anymore for some reason, just hangs on the initialising splash screen.

Hagar · 23 Aug 2010 at 13:15

The system voltage manual setting 'normal' is the same as 'auto', or should be unless changed in the bios. You could try loosening the dram settings to get a larger OC on the CPU but again if the frequency is fixed at 4 x 200 this should not be an issue.

Try increasing CPU Host clock to 205MHz (x17.5) and see if that improves over the 18 x 200MHz. maybe a .025v or .05v step up may help. This will also slightly OC the other buses

Ht and NB will be 2050MHz and Mem will be 820MHz. You can set the HT and NB multipliers down a notch if you wish.

I would stay with the Bios rather than use utilities to OC.

andy.

Merlin5 · 23 Aug 2010 at 15:32

Yeah but my point is that when I set system voltage to manual, it then shows up a bunch of voltages as you can see in the screenshots. Assuming these are the same voltages as when system voltage control is on auto, why does my pc not post in manual mode, but only posts in auto mode?

Hagar · 23 Aug 2010 at 16:43

As far as I can tell, the 'normal' voltages look right. Your memory is rated at 2.1-2.2v.

I would try taking the clock frequencies from auto and ensuring that the memory is set to 4x (800) and the others are also fixed, PCIe at 100MHz, HT at 2000 etc. This way you will have an idea what it is booting at rather than leaving it to the bios.

Is your bios FB(C2 stepping) or FF (C3 stepping) minimum?

Merlin5 · 23 Aug 2010 at 17:09

My bios is currently FD.

I solved it though.

I disabled the evil EPP and the pc posted with system voltage set to manual.

http://j.imagehost.org/0783/Evil_EPP_disabled.jpg

EPP was putting my ram on auto while system voltage control was on manual and must have been conflicting. Now I can continue overclocking via the bios and start increasing vcore. But shall I try and set my ram as it was set when on EPP, and would that be via DRAM Configuration? On EPP, it was set to 4-4-4-12, and voltage was 2.120v. As you can see in the screenshot above, voltage has gone down to 1.920v.

edit: Done it! I enabled EPP again, went to DRAM settings and it showed all the settings EPP uses, 4-4-4-12 plus a bunch of other timings. I then disabled EPP again, looked at DRAM settings again, and it still kept the EPP settings. Then I went to DRAM voltage and increased it to 2.120v as that's what EPP voltage was. Rebooted, and it's fine, and at 4-4-4-12 again. Brilliant. Now I'm at x18 3.6Ghz, increased vcore to 1.4v and it's stable as I tested it overnight already. So now I'm going for 3.7Ghz.

Don't know yet if it'll need more voltage.