First time OC w/Opty170

[pabs]

So I finally got all the parts together for my new computer and sat down to put it together last friday. After coming to the painful realization that people weren't kidding when they said the P180 is not a newbie's case I finally get the thing up and running.

Specs:
Opteron 170 CCBWE 0543 TPMW
Asus A8N-SLI Premium (1009 bios)
G.Skill Extreme 2x1GB F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX
eVGA 7800GT
S12 600w PSU

Well after finally getting windows loaded up I decided to see how far I could push the processor/ram. First thing I did was to run memtest from the bootable CD and it ran through all the tests at DDR400 5 times with no errors. After that I bumped up the FSB (whats the correct term for this for an A64?) to 240 and checked cpu-z to see that I didn't screw up anything by accident. I ran dual Prime95 (small FFT) last night and it ran for 13 hours with no errors, but after attempting to run SuperPi 32M I got an error after the third loop. Peak temps according to asus probe during load was 38C (loving the scythe ninja, although I was so scared I would crush the proc while mounting the monster).

My question is what are some possible things that can be going on with the system? With timings of 3-3-2-5 @2.7V I ran memtest Test #5 for 4 hours and it found 2 errors (I forget which sectors they were in). Is the ram causing SuperPI to error?

Should I try and loosen timings more? I'm currently at 240x10 (@1.4v I plan on backing it down a bit later) with a 1:1 ratio for the memory, I had hoped for a little better OC than this, so I'm just hoping that I'm overlooking something due to my inexperience.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Read this:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1497607&enterthread=y

Then come back after you follow those instructions.

 

[pabs]

The first thing I read was Zebo's guide. Thanks for the link though. Basically if I get ANY errors in memtest then I have to back down HTT. I ran memtest with htt of 220 and still got errors so I guess I just got unlucky with the ram since so many are easily hitting ddr500 with these chips.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You do realize you can run a divider, right pabs?

 

[Hacp]

Its the memory. Try running loops of either 5 or 8. If you constantly get erros, your memory is unstable.

 

[pabs]

Ok, thanks for all the advice. Last night I backed down to stock speeds and timings and let memtest run overnight and it reported several errors. I guess only looping through 5 times wasn't enough when I was initially testing the memory.

So here are my options now:

RMA replacement to try my luck with a new set

try one of these here

Any suggestions? I'm leaning towards the RMA replacement for now, but since I can probably at least get to ddr500 with the other two kits would they really be worth the price difference? (I got my current G.skill kit during thanksgiving when it was $185)

 

[nealh]

change the ram settings...increase vdimm to 2.8 and 3-3-3-10..run memtest

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: pabs
The first thing I read was Zebo's guide. Thanks for the link though. Basically if I get ANY errors in memtest then I have to back down HTT. I ran memtest with htt of 220 and still got errors so I guess I just got unlucky with the ram since so many are easily hitting ddr500 with these chips.

Are you trying to overclock the CPU or the RAM. ?

Maximizing the CPU is best for A64..

If the goal is to find the max the CPU will do, I would use one stick of RAM, set to 133.
Set HT to 2x and have at it..

Once you find out what the CPU will do, you can go for max RAM...