First Overclock

[Keyser Soze]

Hi guys, I posted about a week ago and said I'd post some benchmark scores when I got around to running them. This system is my first attempt to overclock anything and I've played with both the CPU and the GPU. Specs and benchmarks are in my sig. Wondering if it looks OK to you guys, also wondering about overclocking the RAM? Thanks B)

[r_target]

If I'm reading it right your fsb is 240,so your RAM is still a little underclocked.Maybe you can get the fsb up to 255.

[Vampire]

Yeh I recommend you try get your FSB to 250 exactly, then your ram will be running at 200 x 2 (stock speeds) on a 5:4 ratio. Other than that looks good. What are you using to cool that thing?

[Keyser Soze]

Pure copper Zalman 5100. I ran a stress test on it for 15 min or so and it got to about 58 C. I don't know how you got your 2.8 up to 3.5 at 46 C, blows my mind. I'm not too worried about it though, Intel spec is 69 C.

[Vampire]

Thats because you have a prescott "e" chip, mines a northwood "c" chip. Prescotts run a LOT hotter than the 'c' chips, thats how come I get these temps @ 3.5ghz on the stock cooler. I was using the stock vcore at first, but prime95 found an error after about 2 hours... so i upped the vcore, that increased my temps slightly.

[Keyser Soze]

I saw some impressive GPU speeds in your sig. I've got a 9800 Pro, but can't reach anywhere near those speeds. It's got stock cooling right now, what do you recommend for GPU cooling?

[Vampire]

thx

 

I am using a VGA silencer for cooling... Its actually stock cooling, but my exact card is a "HIS Excalibur Radeon 9800 pro 128mb ICEQ", which is a 9800 pro with a vga silencer, they call it "ICEQ". It has some smallish alluminium ram sinks on it, nothing too fancy.

 

Also I use RIVA Tuner to overclock... best program I have found so far

 

Therefore the VGA Silencer is a good choice for cooling IMO.

[Keyser Soze]

I used RIVA Tuner to clock mine as well. About the FSB, I have no idea what it is. I'm new to this and all I did for my CPU is select the 20% auto overclock option on my ASUS board. You can shoot me now, I've admitted my sins

Edited April 27, 2004 by Keyser Soze

[Vampire]

Ok, well I'll try explain it to you. Things are a little different between amd and intel, but since u have a P4 Ill tell you how bout intel.

 

First of all, the Front Side Bus (FSB) is pretty much the main "gateway" for information travel, if you increase it, your computer will go faster. To get the CPU's clock speed, the FSB is mutiplied by the multiple/multiplier... whatever you want to call it. On Intel "c" chips, stock FSB is 200, for example, a 3.0Ghz chip would be running a multiplier of 15 (15 x 200 = 3000mhz) and a 2.8Ghz chip would run a multi of 14 (14 x 200 = 2800Ghz). If you increase that FSB by 5, ie 205mhz FSB, a 2.8ghz chip will then be running at 14 x 205 = 2870Mhz. On intel chips, you cannot change the multiplier, but thats not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Intels chips are "quad pumped", so the theoretical speed of the FSB at stock speeds is 200 x 4 = 800Mhz FSB. Once again... if you increase that FSB to 205, you then get 205 x 4 = 820Mhz and so on... Right now Im running @ 250 FSB x 4 = 1000Mhz FSB. If you increase the FSB too high withouth raising the core voltage (vcore), the computer can sometimes crash. The point where you actually have to up the vcore varies from CPU to CPU and also depends on what motherboard you are using.

 

As you continue increasing the FSB, the ram is also affected. It runs at a set ratio to the FSB. (FSB:DRAM). THIS IS HOW YOU OVERCLOCK YOUR MEMORY. These ratios can be:

 

1:1 - Perfectly syncronised, both the FSB and ram are the same value

5:4 - The FSB is running faster than the memory speed, for example 250mhz FSB:200mhz memory

2:3 or 3:2... I forget - I wouldnt advise using this one, they are just too far apart. Stick with 1:1 or 5:4

 

 

 

Basically, dont use that auto overclock, stick with the good old fashion way, its a lot safer that way.

 

 

If anyone see's anything wrong with what I said plz correct me, I did this in a rush.

 

B)

[Keyser Soze]

I have a pretty good handle on most of that. Not exactly sure how to change that ratio, but I'll look around the BIOS. A couple more questions.....What are the utilities I should have for a manual overclock? I assume prime95 is what most of you use for stability testing. Should I turn the I/O frequency up to 66mhz, or leave it at 33? And when overclocking my 9800 do I just push untill it pushes back? In RIVA Tuner are there any things I should mess with or just the sliders? Thanks alot for any help. I'm going to try to get to 250Mhz FSB tonight. I'll let you know how it goes

[Vampire]

Oh yeh... thats another important point. LOCK the AGP and PCI frequencies ar 33mhz PCI and 66mhz AGP. There should be an option called "fixed" or something similar.

 

On rivatuner (my fav overclocking program), all you really have to do is move the sliders, dont move them too far up at a time though, go slowly and test it with something like aquamark3 (my fav for testing stabilitiy because its a quick benchmark). Try 5mhz increments at first.

[Keyser Soze]

Well, I managed to get my FSB up to 245mhz without touching anything else except for the I/O freqency. My temp is still well within range and my PCMark04 score went up. But when I tried to go up to 250mhz everything went to hell, so I restarted and went back into BIOS and tried to turn up my Vcore voltage. Here's where I get confused, System info says it's around 1.37v but the next setting up from there in my BIOS is 1.6, which I believe is above the max voltage for the E family. I tried it anyway and it wouldn't even POST. Cleared CMOS and started over So right now I'm at 245mhz FSB which puts me at 3.43Ghz. Not really sure where to go from here tho. I don't know what my FSB:DRAM ratio is, I didn't find a way to change it in the BIOS and can't figure out how to use prime95 to get that info.

 

As for the video card, I'm at 420 core / 756 memory right now and still looking good B)