Duron 1800 Applebread O'Clocking for a new O'Clocker

[episodic]

Ok,

I'm experimenting with OC'ing for the 1st time.

My setup is:
ASUS A7V8X-X
Applebred Duron 1800mhz
256 Kingston PC2100 ValueRam

From a previous poster my mother board "doesn't have pci or agp locks, it has dividers, so you will have to jump all the way to 166 or 200fsb, so the pci bus will stay at 33mhz. "

Right now my FSB is 133x2 (266). Adusting up in smal increments changes the speed of my PCI bus, which I am taking is not a good thing for stability. Althought it seems to run at 145/36 fine (1957mhz). Should I be content with that?

I can make the jump to 166 according to the BIOS - which Means that the FSB would run at 333. What I am curious of is will this be detrimental to my RAM or my proessor in a big way? What is the worst that will happen if it does not work? And my vcore defaults to 1.5 volts - should I 'up' this? If so how much?

Thanks!

 

[BlueWeasel]

The worst thing that could happen is the system wouldn't post. This doesn't mean it's dead, all you would need to reset a jumper to clear the BIOS. The board manual will show you where it's located, and how you need to do it.

I've never OC'ed a Duron, so I don't know how far you could go with that chip. If 1.5v is the default voltage, you'll probably have to bump the voltage up slight for stability (0.05v or 0.1v). Also, you may have to increase the RAM voltage as PC2100 is only designed to run at 133FSB. The default RAM voltage is 2.5v, so I'd try raising it to 2.6 or 2.7v if needed.

 

[Shimmishim]

People are too afraid sometimes to raise the voltage... but don't be afraid!!!

The durons are pretty durable chips... you can raise the vcore up to 1.85 and you should be okay...

even your memory... you can raise it to the max to push it to the max....

people run their ram at 3.3 to 3.4 vdimm volts and i have yet to hear of someone kill their ram due to high voltages...

i was running my ram at 3.4 but backed it down to 3.2 because i'm not running 250 mhz fsb anymore...

also with the issue of out of sync agp/pci... it shouldn't be too much of a concern... okay... maybe for some things like the hard drive... but other than that... i think things should be okay...

i have a nforce3 board w/o pci lock and currently running 260 mhz which is like 43.3 and my tv tuner card works perfectly fine

 

[episodic]

So just so I don't read between the lines, I am going to attempt this later.

Move the voltage core to 1.6 instead of 1.5.
Change the FSB to 166 instead of 133. This will push my FSB to 333 mhz. This should O'Clock my 1.8ghz chip to 13.5x166 or 2241 mhz. Does this sound like a reasonable O'Clock?

I've tried changing the multipler settings (ie 13.5, 14.0, 14.5, etc) - these don't change anything, and I'm guessing this is what you guys mean when talking about 'locked' processors.


This is where I'm confused. Is it necessary for my PC2100 Kingston Value 266mhz ram to work at 333 mhz? I really don't understand that part.

Thanks so far (I'm not home yet, so have not got a chance to try it). . .

 

[episodic]

Ok, I lowered the RAM settings to the quickest possible. Unfortuantly (maybe it is hidden somewhere), can't seem to find the place where you can increase the RAM's voltage. I increased the voltage from 1.5 to 1.6, then set the FSB to 166 (333mhz) to attempt the 2250 overclock. The board would not post, it just reentered the bios. So it looks like I'm stuck at 145/36.

I've got the fever now, I was wondering about the mobile athlon's they have. Can you install a mobile in a regular board? Seems kinds strange to do so, but if it works . . .

 

[AkumaX]

the mobile athlons are just regular athlons with lower default voltage

raise your duron 1.8 voltage to like 1.85v and try it again

 

[episodic]

Tried 1.85 still no post. I did up it to 149/37 - I ran prime 95 for the last hour, seems stable there. I've got 7694 MIPS benchmark in Sandra, which seems awesome compared to some P4 3.0 ghz models only a little ahead . . .

I think I'll stay here and be content . . .

 

[myocardia]

It's not posting at 166, because you have PC2100 Value Ram. If you had PC2100 HyperX or XMS, it probably would. BUT, why did you lower your ram timings? You were supposed to raise them to 3-4-4-11, not lower them.

 

[episodic]

I thought lowering your RAM timings made it go 'faster'? When I lowered the timings without O'Clocking my Sandra and Prime 95 Scores improved.

I read on some webpage about overclocking that you should lower your times first, then overclock as much as possible with the most aggressive timings. What I read said that you could raise timings to get more O'Clock, but the faster RAM timings would actually be better than whatever extra amount you could O'CLock.

I don't know if this is wrong or right, just what I read . . .feel free to correct me.

 

[Falloutboy]

its most likely your ram holding you back not your cpu, by raising the timings you let the ram overlcock more. another 15mhz-20mhz outta the ram more than makes up for the fact of the slower timings. also if you got an unlocked chip try raising the multi that should help too. before my current chip I had an applebred that did 2.3 and I was able to unlock the rest of the cache. was a great little chip till my powersupply blew up and took it with it.