Beyond 155fsb..............

[Finite]

Ok, I set my fsb to 155mhz and my system posted at 1200mhz. I ran it like that for a day or so and then decided to bump it up to 160 mhz fsb and the speed did not increas at all (or at least the bios isn't posting it). Why would the speed not increase from 155 to 160? I tried increasing the "vcore" a little bit but that did not help. How much of an increase is ok with the "vcore"? I still have the fsb set to 160 and everyting is running fine accept fore one thing, I was checking windows XP's "Event Logs" and in the "System Events" section every once in awhile there will be a hard drive controller error (after increasing to 160 fsb) when moving a file from one place to another. Its either something that is such a minute problem that you cannot even tell there is a problem or its a fluke (there are no noticable problems). I will decreas the fsb back down to 155mhz and see if the controller errors still appear and if they do will run a test on the drive (its my IBM 120GXP and only one of its partitions). I can't post the error word for word but its like, hd controller error on HD1/D. Now don't go spouting off about the IBM drives being a POS, the 120gxp is not the same drive that the previous incarnations were and is FAST AS HELL.

So whats the deal with this FSB situation? Is 155 as far as its going to let me go? Should I unlock my processor and if so where can I get easy to fallow instructions for the best method for doing this? THANX

Here is my set up:

MSI K7T266 Pro (bios v. VA1.6)
Athlon 1ghz @ 1.2ghz
256 mb of Gen. ram (ya I know)
MSI GF2 Pro
NIC card
One WD 20gig HD and one IBM 120GXP 80gig HD
Plextor 12,10,32a
Pioneer DVD

 

[rogue1979]

I believe other people have had problems with the IBM GXP's at high fsb speeds, not sure what exact model. Your generic RAM is definatley gonna hold you back from going much higher, up the DDR voltage if you have a setting and back off the memory timings some.

 

[Wuzup101]

My guess would be either the ram or the hdd is holding you back. But I see no reason why it wouldn't report the higher speed if it posted and ran at 160fsb. You could always try knocking the mulitplier down for stability to make sure it wasn't the chip. As for vcore you can probably run it safely at 1.85 if you have decent cooling...and higher if you have options for that or a volt modded board and really good cooling . You could also try to bump the i/o voltage up...like 5% - 10%.

BTW...I enjoy my 2 ibm 60gxp's...I agree...fast as hell...never gave me a problem either running 150fsb in a RAID0 array for a while now

 

[Richardito]

Going for high FSB speeds is just for bragging rights. Above 140-145MHz the system becomes unstable and, in my opinion, unusable...

 

[Duvie]

the posting thing sounds like a bios option...if the menu allows you to pick fsb but doesn't report correct speed of the multiplier times the fsb then it has the problem....stability aside it should at least report it correctly at the bios....I have had system freeze at bootup into windows but still report the speed correctly...

by the way I can't find any multiplier that times 155fsb would equal 1200mhz....

7.5x155=1,163mhz
8x155=1240mhz...

maybe another sign this board is not reporting or clocking things correctly....try flashing to newest bios...


edit: it looks at if you have a 266fsb 1ghz chip so your multiplier should be 7.5, which times 155fsb does not equal 1200mhz...

also you are likely running a 1/4 pci divider and at 155fsb it would put the pci at 39mhz which is up there but by no means to high for many of the newer harddrives...at 160fsb it would be 40mhz....I have ran at that for many months and didn't have harddrives issues or corruption...hardware differs on this front though...

Overall the whole board might have some issues and likely if it can't clock correctly it may be setting pci incorrectly...have you tried using cpuid or sandra to determine fsb and pci speeds???

 

[Buzzman151]

Generic RAM is definatly gonna hold you back. Unlocking the proc would definatly be a big help b/c you can find the "sweet spot" of your proc. Different proc, mobo and ram combos have different perfect combinations of FSB and multiplier. Just do a search on Google on "unlocking thunderbird" or something like that and you'll find many illustrated guides on how to unlock them. If you have any more questions... just pm me.


Drew