First time overclocking -- Is this an OK setup?

[Cr0nJ0b]

Hey guys,

My first shot at OC'ing a system...I bought an Opty 170 and followed the quick and dirty how to from the forums. I was able to hit a max of 313 on the HTT and eventually settled in at 297 with a 9X multi. I'm stable at 2680MHz on air. HT link is 894Mhz and ram is running at 191.6MHz. I have (2 x ValueRam 400 from corsair) and it set to 2.5-3-3-7-10-2T in Dual channel mode. I had some issues with the memory with 4 sticks...I think that one was bad, so I RMA'd it. I'm running 12 hours PRIME95 with no errors and mermory tests are clean.

I'm thinking about pushing the memory timing and maybe the speed, but when ever I mess with them too much the system won't post and i have to reset it.

thanks for any help.

Motherboard is an ASUS A8N-E
Video card is BFG 7300LE
PSU RAIDMAX 630

 

[myocardia]

No RAM will go lower than it's spec'd timings, assuming you're running it somewhere near it's spec'd speed. And welcome to overclocking-- use a maximum of 2 sticks of RAM, for maximum overclock. With some processors (like A64 dual-cores), you can still overclock with 4 sticks; just not as high.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: myocardia
No RAM will go lower than it's spec'd timings, assuming you're running it somewhere near it's spec'd speed. And welcome to overclocking-- use a maximum of 2 sticks of RAM, for maximum overclock. With some processors (like A64 dual-cores), you can still overclock with 4 sticks; just not as high.

Not quite true....I have 2 Seitec DDR400 512mb modules rated at 8-3-3-2.5@400mhz, but it happily runs at 7-2-2-2.5@400mhz no worries at all...all day long with out any voltage increase and is memtest and 52hrs prime 95 stable.

I also have a large number of Seitec DDR333 512mb modules rated at 7-3-3-2.5@333mhz and yet they will run no worries at 6-2-2-2@333 and 7-3-3-2.5@400mhz.

I think it really depends on the memory.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Stumps
Not quite true....I have 2 Seitec DDR400 512mb modules rated at 8-3-3-2.5@400mhz, but it happily runs at 7-2-2-2.5@400mhz no worries at all...all day long with out any voltage increase and is memtest and 52hrs prime 95 stable.

I also have a large number of Seitec DDR333 512mb modules rated at 7-3-3-2.5@333mhz and yet they will run no worries at 6-2-2-2@333 and 7-3-3-2.5@400mhz.

I think it really depends on the memory.

Not Corsair's Value RAM. It'll overclock some, but it won't run at less than it's spec'd timings. I've never even seen anyone claiming to run it at less than it's spec'd timings.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Value ram maybe, but you didn't specify that you ment value ram. My Mushkin XP4000 is running DDR-520 2-3-3-4 w/3.1v (Uses Samsung UCCC ICs with Brainpower PCB) Supposed to be some of the better combinations out there. It's rated at DDR-500 3-4-3-8

 

[myocardia]

Yeah, but you're overvolting. I actually saw a guy over at forums.amd about ~18 months ago that was running his BH-5 @ 1-1-x-5 (seems like the x was a 2), with 3.4 or 3.5v. He was also overclocking his 165 to 2.9 or 3.0 Ghz, and he was running fairly low 20's in SuperPi 1m, although he was using 3/2 memory divider. But, try that at/near stock voltage. And like BH-5, TCCD/UCCC are exeptions to the rule.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Stumps
Not quite true....I have 2 Seitec DDR400 512mb modules rated at 8-3-3-2.5@400mhz, but it happily runs at 7-2-2-2.5@400mhz no worries at all...all day long with out any voltage increase and is memtest and 52hrs prime 95 stable.

I also have a large number of Seitec DDR333 512mb modules rated at 7-3-3-2.5@333mhz and yet they will run no worries at 6-2-2-2@333 and 7-3-3-2.5@400mhz.

I think it really depends on the memory.

Not Corsair's Value RAM. It'll overclock some, but it won't run at less than it's spec'd timings. I've never even seen anyone claiming to run it at less than it's spec'd timings.

you never said that did you.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Anyway....

Back to me....

So are we all saying that I should be working on lowering the latencies or upping the MHz? I think that in testing I couldn't get much higher than 206 HTT with 1:1, that's why I dropped it back and switched to the lower memory rate. Frankly the memory timing thing really confuses me. Dropping latency is pretty straight forward, but testing the higher frequencies is a pain. I'll have to wait for my RMA sticks to come back to try this again, but even with the two sticks that I have...should I be working on latency of frequency?

thanks

 

[Noubourne]

The two are pretty much the same.

Loosening your timings often allows for higher Mhz overclock. The timings are slower, but if you can get a lot more Mhz out of it, you might actually end up lowering the overall effective latency.

The Everest benchmarking program can help you to measure the latency.

I'm using a divider to keep my ram at 2-2-2-5 and stock Mhz. With another chip I had loosened up to 2.5-3-3-6 (can't remember the exact settings) and got DDR600 out of them with a little extra voltage. I'll probably give that a shot again when I get some free time, but I'll have to do stability testing again on it b/c you never know what the memory controller can handle.