2500+ OC question, need some advice from the experts...

[orogogus]

Howdy,

Long time lurker, first time poster. 😛

Anyway, I have a question about an overclock I'm currently messing around with on an unlocked Barton 2500 (ww31 if anyone cares). Yes, I heard about the locking panic and went out to get one (plus new RAM, sink, etc... aye, what a capitalist I am... sigh).

So in the course of the OC (A7N8X Deluxe rev 2.0 and Muskin II PC3500) I ran into a couple of issues and am looking for some quick advice. The system will POST but *not* boot correctly into winxp @210FSB and 11x multiplier and default voltage. It POSTs and boots into windows, but some apps won't run correctly at both 205 and 200 MHZ FSB and 11x multiplier (IE and winamp3 will throw out errors and close, which is annoying!). At default of 166FSB and 11 multiplier everything seems to run just fine... but of course, that's no fun! 🙂

So I guess I'm wondering what I should try next-

1) upgrade the BIOS from 1003 to 1007
2) try a fresh install of winxp on a new drive
3) dick with the vcore settings to see if that has an affect
4) play with multiplier settings and lower FSB (not as desirable, obviously as the FSB OC)
5) get a new fan/sink (using a random 48CFM 80mm with a 900A sink so I figure that isn't the problem especially since these problems showed up even before the processor was under thermal load- ie right after boot and the temp readings in BIOS aren't extreme at all- less than 30C on the chip reading)
6) RMA the processor 🙂

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[WobbleWobble]

You definately need voltage in your case and I think you're shooting for too much on your first overclock.

 

[orogogus]

OK. I'll give it a shot by tweaking up the vcore to 1.7 or higher. Thanks for the suggestion... I was really hoping to avoid messing with the OS (although I do like the feeling of a fresh XP install... so... minty clean 😛)

 

[orogogus]

OK. I'll give it a shot by tweaking up the vcore to 1.7 or higher. Thanks for the suggestion... I was really hoping to avoid messing with the OS (although I do like the feeling of a fresh XP install... so... minty clean 😛)

 

[Harvey]

IMHO, your best first choice in o/c'ing any Athlon is to bump the multiplier, instead of the FSB. That keeps everything aside from the CPU running at standard speeds so you're not pushing anything other than the CPU. Once you find where the CPU runs comfortably, you can try pushing other speeds, but you probably won't gain much extra performance.

Careful with BIOS rev. 1007. I tried it on a friend's machine. The only thing that addresses is dealing with some of the more exotic RAM, and it caused his system to start looking for non-existent files. Going back to 1005 or 1006 fixed it. Check the notes (the More... link) for each rev on the A7N8X Deluxe BIOS page to see if you need what it addresses.