Help me OC this Opty 165!

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

Hey guys,

I'm kinda new to OC'ing, but I know a few small basics. I have an Opty 165 (I forget what details), on a DFI Ultra-D board with 2x512 OCZ plats Rev. 2 RAM.

I'm lead to beleive that between these components, I should be able to get higher than the meager 2.25 I'm stuck at. Not real sure what I am doing wrong. I don't know much about RAM timings, but my RAM doesn't seem to like to go very high at all... I'm sure I am doing that wrong too.

I'd be very happy with a 2.5 or 2.6; not interested in pushing past that.

I know my board should be able to push 300+ HTT, and my RAM should run at 270 or better MHz, and the Opty can definitely take it. How can I make these guys play nice with each other?

Also, when I go into BIOS, under the RAM settings, there's like 7 diff. settings for RAM timings, but I always see 4 or 5 numbers i.e. 3-4-4-8 1T. Which fields are these referring to?

If anyone has some good initial settings I can try with the BIOS, it would be much appreciated. My main issue is finding a good RAM timing; I'm not sure what toying with each number accomplishes.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Disclaimer: I have no experience with DFI boards so I might be giving you useless advice

The first thing that came to mind when reading that you're stuck at 2.25, is that you might be pushing the overall HTT speed too far over 1000MHz. There's a multiplier associated with the HTT, from 1x to 5x (usually labled as 200MHz to 1000MHz or something similar). At 250MHz HTT speed you'll want to lower the multiplier to 4x (800MHz) so that your total speed is around (or not too far above) 1000MHz. At least, that's my understanding and was the first issue I ran into when overclocking my Opty 170 a few months back (I was also new to A64 platforms at the time). If you know that your RAM can do at least 270MHz, you probably won't have to run a divider, but you could always try using one anyway to see if that is your limiting factor.

 

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

Thanks for the reply. I did lower that multiplier... I think I'm sitting at 250x4 right now, but my RAM didn't like that so I had to drop it to a 166 divider. The RAM is running about 205 MHz I believe. I found it odd that my RAM didn't like 250 because I've read about a billion posts from people with the same RAM getting it up much higher. One guy has it at 290 MHz! There sure is a lot of trial-and-error.

 

[mpeason]

I have that same proc and I'm running at 2.6 with stock cooling without any problems. I first suggest that you set your LDT/FSB Frequency Ratio to 100(mhz)(1/02), and then find your max CPU speed by setting your CPU/FSB ratio to 9x, and then slowly start increasing your HTT/FSB slowly starting at 240, then booting into your operating system and testing stability with superpi or prime95, if it's stable then start increasing your HTT/FSB by 10-15mhz. If it's not stable then try increasing your voltage (CPU Vid), but be careful with this, try not to go past 1.55v on stock cooling, and always monitor your temps. Once you've found a stable OC, then start increasing your LDT/FSB Frequency Ratio, don't worry so much about the Tras, Cas, etc. Everytime you increase the LDT/FSB boot into windows and run those same stability tests for at least a couple of hours, until you've found the max of your ram. You can then go in and try to tighten your timings, but don't worry so much about these, b/c these don't have as much effect on speed as the mhz do. A great, more in depth guide to O/C'ing can be found at dfi-street.

Hope this helps.

 

[JSFLY]

Try these settings:
Genie bios settings:
FSB = 260 and slowly go up if it boots into windows
LDT ratio=3x (1-5)
FSB multi = 9x (1-9)
Vcore = 1.43 (1.375 X 104%)

Dram settings:
Dividers: 166mhz (5/6)
Dont mess with ram timings just yet, everything else auto, see if that works

Wait is your ram DDR500 or DDR400? Too lazy to look up on newegg but if its DDR 400 set your ram to a lower setting like 133 or 150.

anyways if all goes well with those settings post back and I'll give you some DRAM settings to work with.

 

[JSFLY]

Originally posted by: mpeason
I have that same proc and I'm running at 2.6 with stock cooling without any problems. I first suggest that you set your LDT/FSB Frequency Ratio to 100(mhz)(1/02), and then find your max CPU speed by setting your CPU/FSB ratio to 9x, and then slowly start increasing your HTT/FSB slowly starting at 240, then booting into your operating system and testing stability with superpi or prime95, if it's stable then start increasing your HTT/FSB by 10-15mhz. If it's not stable then try increasing your voltage (CPU Vid), but be careful with this, try not to go past 1.55v on stock cooling, and always monitor your temps. Once you've found a stable OC, then start increasing your LDT/FSB Frequency Ratio, don't worry so much about the Tras, Cas, etc. Everytime you increase the LDT/FSB boot into windows and run those same stability tests for at least a couple of hours, until you've found the max of your ram. You can then go in and try to tighten your timings, but don't worry so much about these, b/c these don't have as much effect on speed as the mhz do. A great, more in depth guide to O/C'ing can be found at dfi-street.

Hope this helps.

His reply is better than mine. That link really helps if you've got the time.