Does it mean anything if the L1 bridges aren't closed on a Duron?

[stonythug]

Hey all, I was just curious if you could tell anything about a Durons overclockability based on the fact that the L1 bridges came factory closed? I was just curious because I just built a system with the following components.

MSI K7T Pro 2-A
Duron 650 Retail
Creative Annihlitor 2
256 Kingston Value Ram 256 Meg Cas2 PC100
40 Gig Maxtor ATA 100 7200 RPM HD
Plextor CDRW 12/10/32
Floppy
Antec SX1030B w/300W power supply

The K7T mobo has multiplier and cpu voltage setting in the bios so with an already unlocked duron, overclocking should be easy. I tried overclocking it once and got it up to 750@1.625v just using the multiplier. I wanted to go for 800 but when I bumped it up, bad things happened. At first it didn't want to boot into windows so I ctrl-alt-deleted and went back into the bios and tried upping the voltage to 1.65. This time when it was booting into windows I got a very bazaar error message which said something like
couldn't exec user.exe

and then my computer just shut down. When I turned it back on, the computer wouldn't even post. It would make a series of ticks and then nothing, completely blank screen. The smart LEDs on my mobo diagnosed it as a RAM issue. I tried switching the RAM to another slot and then rebooting, but got the same results. I cleared the cmos which allowed me to boot again, but whatever happened really screwed up my harddrive and stuff. It still wouldn't boot into windows and I couldn't even reinstall windows properly. My windows directory and a couple other directories were all messed up and couldn't be erased so I just reformatted everything and started over. Now I'm back up and running at 650 but I'm afraid to try overclocking again. Is reformatting your hard drive a common consequence of unsuccessful overclocking or was something bad happening here. I want to try again for 750 atleast since it seemed stable but I don't want to mess anything else up. I am using the factory heat sink and fan so it may not be cool enough, but could that cause that hard of a failure? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I want to overclock, but right now I'm happy to just have a functioning system.

 

[Fardringle]

Having the L1 bridges closed on an Athlon or a Duron simply means that you can overclock that chip without having to manually close them. It also means that you probably have an older chip, which may or may not mean that your top speed will be a little limited.

Edit: Oops, got that backwards originally..


Corrupted files on the hard drive can be caused by the CPU instability, although it doesn't happen very often. I would suggest that you raise the voltage to 1.7v and try again. The stock heat sink should be fine if you are only doing minor overclocking, such as taking a 650 to 800Mhz or so. Just watch your temperatures (once you get the system stable) to make sure they don't get too high.

 

[skoka]

Stonythug,

If the L1 bridges are connected that means you can overclock. By increasing the core voltage you can overclock some more. (All this information I learnt in the last few days lurking aroun here. Impressive ain't it?).

Anyway, I had a similar problem with K7TPro2A as well. When you pressed insert while powering up, the BIOS is restored to default and in the boot sequence in all probability your HDD is not the first boot device. It should be HDD0 or HD0 for the Master HDD and HDD1 for Slave.

If you are brave enough you should try it again. If not I suggest get a s/w like Norton Ghost, PowerQuest Drive Image 4.0 or Norton Systems Works 2001 Pro(only the Pro has Norton Ghost). You buy Norton Systems Wroks 2001 Pro for around $25 through pricewatch.com .

All the best.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

If you got a weird windows error that just means more voltage. When you reach a peed where you cant post it usualy means you reached your limit.

 

[ericb]

What would you recommend as a max voltage for the Duron...I'm running 1.6 now @ 29C stable overclocked to 950.

 

[whalen]

You can go up to about 1.8-1.85V if your CPU is staying cool and not locking or having any wierd crashes. More V = more heat, so decrease the voltage as low as possible to get your CPU stable. As far as the L1 bridges go, when they are connected, the multipliers can be adjusted. The ones that are cut were modified by AMD to prevent multiplier o/cing, but can simply be reconnected with a pencil or conductive pen. In no way does it mean that the chip can't overclock.