FIRST OVERCLOCK

[njh23]

Hi,
I have been dabbling with overclocking my new venice athlon 64 3000+. I have a dfi nforce 4 lanparty sli-d motherboard. I am using stock cooling, which might be the problem, but I was just experimenting.
I have increased the htt 5 mhz at a time, testing it each time with Prime 95 for about five minutes. I left the multiplier on 9x, reduced the ldt? to x4 and used a 5/6 multiplier on my 3200 Geil Ultra memory, and put the cpu voltage upto 1.55V. It passed each time but when I put the htt upto 225 the computer resets itself as it gets to the welcome screen for windows XP. The temperature while using Prime 95 was about 56C maximum.
Am I doing anything wrong or do I just need better cooling?
Any help or pointers would be appreciated?

Nick.

 

[interchange]

Those are pretty bad results, but you might try further isolating your RAM from the equation and making sure your CPU is what is limiting you there.

Still, 56C is HOT for a 3000 Venice.

 

[njh23]

Before increasing the HT and the voltage the max was about 45 under Prime 95 test. When you say isolate the Ram do you mean I should pick a lower divider?

 

[Lord Banshee]

Holy CRAP that is a HOT CPU for what it is.

My Newcastle 2800+ 1.8@2.3 with 1.6v hit 56C on burning. There is no way the Venice should come close to that.

Is the Cooler in place correctly? Did you peel the little stick off the thermal pad(i think there was a sticker on it)

Ouch HOT

 

[njh23]

Is that too hot? When I looked on the AMD site it seemed to suggest the venice core could take more heat than the Newcastle core, 70C as opposed to 65C I think? Normally when just playing games it does usually go above 42C and idles at 38C.

 

[njh23]

Any suggestions on what is going wrong and causing the reset?

 

[blckgrffn]

Well, my venice hits 58 C according to my mobo, so, well, take your actual temp readings with a grain of salt... Why don't you try a lower divider and see how that goes? The 5/6 one SHOULD be good to ht 240 though, as then it would be back to DDR400...

Nat

 

[interchange]

Could be a lot of things. We need more information.

What power supply are you using?

By further isolating the ram: pick a lower divider and 2T and stock voltage.

I doubt the DFI would have any HTT problems, but you could set your CPU multiplier to 7 and bump up the HTT until it fails.

The key with overclocking is to isolate and determine where your weak point is.

 

[rise]

you have 3.10 or later bios?

all 4 power connectors in?

 

[Bushman5]

x3 and up voltage to 1.550

 

[njh23]

My psu is a Enermax 600W power supply. I have flashed the bios to the latest on the dfi site and all the power connectors are in.

 

[interchange]

Well so far it just sounds like you got a below average CPU from the batch. It happens.

 

[blckgrffn]

Yep, mine only does 2.4...sucks when the rest of the world is doing so much better, eh? Can't complain about having a 3800+ though, myself... hopefull you can get at least that much out of your chip!

 

[n yusef]

With an HTT multi of x4, and 255HTT, that makes 1020, which is over 1000. Lower HTT multi to x3 and try again. If that works, try to lower your voltage to something that won't have your CPU at such a high temperature.

 

[njh23]

Thanks for all your suggestions, guess I'll have to keep playing around with different settings until I get it right.
There was one other odd thing, on an earlier attempt ,while the htt was at 220,I put the DRAM voltage upto 2.8V, which is below the max for my memory, and when I tried running Prime 95 again it failed, but when I reduced the voltage it was fine. This is without trying to overclock the memory.

 

[Furen]

The thing that raises your cpu temp the most is the vcore. do you really NEED 1.55v? I mean, I have a sempron 2800 running at 8x266 with stock cooling/voltage and it never goes over 45C.

 

[SNM]

Lower your vcore now. While I don't guarantee similar results, my 3200+ can go to ~250 on stock voltage, and that seems fairly typical.
Sadly enough, dividers seem to do funny things in a setup like that. I've got Geil Blue value RAM, a 3200+, and the Ultra-D and am having some seriously wierd troubles of my own. Seriously, just try some other random configs and see if you can get them working. :/
Helpful, huh?
I'd try dividing the RAM and CPU even more, though: To see how high your CPU goes, set your RAM @ a 1:2 divider and shove it @ 2T and *set* the default timings, then go up until you can't go up no more. That should make you reasonably sure of your CPUs max, leaving the mem controller and RAM out of the equation.
Then set your CPU multi as low as it will go, set your RAM at whatever timings you want it to be, and go up until it dies. That's the point at which either your RAM or your mem controller craps out.
Then you have some idea of what the outside limits are for your guessing game.