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Becoming a little frustrated

T

thekarney

Member
What causes a chip to max out? I see these guys with adequate cooling pushing their chips to 5ghz and above. My chip tops out at about 2.66 and I am sure thats not even stable really. I have a 530wt psu, great ram which has passed memtest86 v3.2 and a zalman 7000 that keeps my cpu at a nice 35c. Why shouldn't I be able to go 10x275?

Can someone explain why my computer would randomly restart when temp is fine, mem timings aren't too tight, and have ample power? Thanks.

btw, my ram runs native at ddr 550 2.5-4-4-8 so I think I have narrowed it down to the processor being the problem. refer to sig for system specs.
 
Let me get thids straight, you are complaining because your winnie won't go up to 5 GHz? Ain't bonna happen. The absolute highest anyone could reasonably hope for on air is 2.8, and most top out at ~2.6 (mine at 2.55 with the stock HSF).

there is a great guide for Ocing A64s stickied in this forum if you wish to check it out. It will guide you through the OC. It helped me alot.

Every chip has a certain number of small defects that will keep the core from reaching an infinitly high speed. All winnies top out around 2.6, some less, some more. It depends on the luck of the draw...
 
Originally posted by: SrGuapo
Let me get thids straight, you are complaining because your winnie won't go up to 5 GHz? Ain't bonna happen. The absolute highest anyone could reasonably hope for on air is 2.8, and most top out at ~2.6 (mine at 2.55 with the stock HSF).
Click to expand...

I wasnt expecting to hit that high. Just curious why some could go faster than others. And to say that air is holding it back is silly. My processor handles full loads overlocked 10x260 at 45c.
 
In each chip there are a certain number of errors that aren't perfectly made in production. These errors usually have almost no effect on the performance of the chip as long as its not pushed farther. Ask yourself this, should anything just be able to go faster and faster as long as it is under its max operating temperature? Should you be able to push a car faster just because its temperature isn't high enough? Is that the only reason something can breakdown? There are so many other aspects to why things work other than being below the max temperature. Go read a story about the people that use phase change cooling. Their chips are STILL WAY UNDER the max temps and they MAX OUT. There are limitations to architecture. I can't name any specific ones because I didn't make the chip. But at least this should help you see that temp isn't all that matters.

2.66 is pretty darn good. Be happy
 
Believe it or not, fast memory will cause you to get a slightly lower overclock on the cpu as the cpu is getting data fed to it at a faster rate. I recently (yesterday) upgraded from 4 x 512 MB Corsair valueram to 2 x 1GB Crucial ballistix and I had to throttle back 1 Mhz on the fsb to get the system running stable.
 
I don't get why you are moaning about a 500Mhz overclock, 25% over your chips rated speed. Thats a lot of extra speed/rating points on a AMD processor.

Edit: Reread your post and see your not really complaning.

Anyway, the reasons could be many things, maybe even a slighlty impure trace on your motherboard or something like that too. Too many variables to pinpoint the main one.
 
Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh... It was late at night and I interpretted the post badly... Basically, there are hundreds of factors that determine where a chip will max out, where temperature is only one. Some people get lucky with a chip that has minimal defects, others get "screwed" and there chip ONLY OCs 300 MHz.

Certain chips can be known to OC well (the mobile Athlon XPs, winchesters, celery D, P4 2.4C etc.), however, a good OC is never guaranteed.
 
Theoretically, if you could get your chip cooled to absolute zero, you could oc it infinitely 🙂. The other posters are correct, flaws in the chip are exposed with higher temps/voltage and that is what limits overclocking. Get yourself some phase change cooling if you wanna hit 3 gig, would prolly need LN2 for anything more and even then, you're never gonna get 5 gig with an amd, all those 5 gig oc's are with P4's.
 
Originally posted by: Dman877
Theoretically, if you could get your chip cooled to absolute zero, you could oc it infinitely 🙂. The other posters are correct, flaws in the chip are exposed with higher temps/voltage and that is what limits overclocking. Get yourself some phase change cooling if you wanna hit 3 gig, would prolly need LN2 for anything more and even then, you're never gonna get 5 gig with an amd, all those 5 gig oc's are with P4's.
Click to expand...

yup.

amd winchesters...

air = 2.6 to 2.8 (if you'relucky)
water 2.8 to 2.9 (if you're lucky)
phase change = 2.9 to 3.1 (if you're lucky)
LN / dry ice = 3.1 to 3.4 (if you're lucky)

so you hitting the speed you are on air is pretty good.

and yes those 5 ghz you see are usually on intel processors
 
while burning in can help some it can take a while and is best done with a high vcore. after burning i was able to go from 1.6Ghz on my mobile barton to 2.33Ghz, now that i have a new board i can post at 2.6Ghz but thats about all, even though im at 2v vcore and 35*C. its simply the chips limit...
 
Originally posted by: thekarney
What causes a chip to max out? I see these guys with adequate cooling pushing their chips to 5ghz and above. My chip tops out at about 2.66 and I am sure thats not even stable really. I have a 530wt psu, great ram which has passed memtest86 v3.2 and a zalman 7000 that keeps my cpu at a nice 35c. Why shouldn't I be able to go 10x275?

Can someone explain why my computer would randomly restart when temp is fine, mem timings aren't too tight, and have ample power? Thanks.

btw, my ram runs native at ddr 550 2.5-4-4-8 so I think I have narrowed it down to the processor being the problem. refer to sig for system specs.
Click to expand...

Yeah you sure got it right, the processor sucks, get an intel they can clock much higher :roll:

I don't know how to feel right now, you seemingly have little clue between the difference between AMD and intel, yet you managed to get your 3200+ to 2.66, 2.5 according to your sig. You bothered to learn how to overclock an A64 (I'm assuming you did it yourself and did knowing something about what you were doing), yet you know nothing about the difference between the P4 and A64?
 
Its restating cause it need more voltage.....It isn't always about the voltage being suplied by the PSU but that the chip needs more to run at that frequency...

Also random restarts in winxp can happen if you have "automatic restarts" still checked (checked by default so unless you urned it off it is ON!!!)...If that is the case it could be masking a memory issue or other BSOD....
 
Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
Originally posted by: thekarney
What causes a chip to max out? I see these guys with adequate cooling pushing their chips to 5ghz and above. My chip tops out at about 2.66 and I am sure thats not even stable really. I have a 530wt psu, great ram which has passed memtest86 v3.2 and a zalman 7000 that keeps my cpu at a nice 35c. Why shouldn't I be able to go 10x275?

Can someone explain why my computer would randomly restart when temp is fine, mem timings aren't too tight, and have ample power? Thanks.

btw, my ram runs native at ddr 550 2.5-4-4-8 so I think I have narrowed it down to the processor being the problem. refer to sig for system specs.
Click to expand...

Yeah you sure got it right, the processor sucks, get an intel they can clock much higher :roll:

I don't know how to feel right now, you seemingly have little clue between the difference between AMD and intel, yet you managed to get your 3200+ to 2.66, 2.5 according to your sig. You bothered to learn how to overclock an A64 (I'm assuming you did it yourself and did knowing something about what you were doing), yet you know nothing about the difference between the P4 and A64?
Click to expand...


Yes I know the difference. Thank you for being so pleasant. I ask for advice and you bring feelings into it, lol. Go roll your eyes at all the soap operas you watch, not me.
 
Originally posted by: thekarney
What causes a chip to max out? I see these guys with adequate cooling pushing their chips to 5ghz and above. My chip tops out at about 2.66 and I am sure thats not even stable really. I have a 530wt psu, great ram which has passed memtest86 v3.2 and a zalman 7000 that keeps my cpu at a nice 35c. Why shouldn't I be able to go 10x275?

Can someone explain why my computer would randomly restart when temp is fine, mem timings aren't too tight, and have ample power? Thanks.

btw, my ram runs native at ddr 550 2.5-4-4-8 so I think I have narrowed it down to the processor being the problem. refer to sig for system specs.
Click to expand...


1st thing is only Prescotts overclock that high
2nd thing they changed the voltage going to the proc and ram to achieve higher clocks
3rd only really good mem can handle that such as OCZ Extreme Voltage
4th is if your fsb is too high it messes up other thing such as the pci bus unless you have a pci bus lock
 
Thank you everyone who posted. I have chosen to go with the 9.5x275=2612.5MHz setup. It runs stable and great performance.

I am curious why people would come on and say be happy with what your processor can do. imo, I would think they are trying to justify their own failure at attaining high overclocks. oh well, thanks again
 
you guys shouldnt complain.

my winnie does 2.2Ghz and even at that is isnt prime stable - in fact stock speed i cant run prime in blend mode for more than 10 mins without error.

i have tried everything!

my specs:

Neo2 Plat 1.36b BIOS
2 x 512 3200LL 2-3-2-6
TruePower 550
9800XT
CM Stacker

week 47 i think it was.
 
I don't see how 2.6 is a failure. Thats a very good overclock, you're nuts if you think you can reach P4 speeds. I don't see where you are going with this you are jumping all over the place...
 
Oh yeah and try to avoid the .5 multipliers they aren't fully supported. If you are running 9.5 x 275 what it really is running at is 261.25 x 10.
 
Originally posted by: Kryptonite
my winnie does 2.2Ghz and even at that is isnt prime stable - in fact stock speed i cant run prime in blend mode for more than 10 mins without error.

i have tried everything!
.
Click to expand...

Did you Prime test it before overclocking?
 
which prime test?

i only use the first prime test because that's the only pure CPU test

the rest put your memory into play and i'd rather test my memory seperately with memtest86+
 
Yeah, Prime test 1 + memtest86 is what I've been using.

These days, it seems like a good idea to test your CPU for 24-hour Prime stability before overclocking. If it isn't Prime-stable at stock speeds, it's not too late to RMA the thing legit, seeing as how you haven't OCed it yet.
 
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