help me please with some o/c problems

[TooRude]

ok im totally confused, but maybe thats cause im really new to overclocking but my issue is my 2.8c set to 250 x 14 (3.5ghz) requires my vdimm to be 2.8v. is that normal for ddr500 ram? i figured since its already rated to 500 that setting fsb to 250 id have a perfect 1:1 and my ram wouldnt be overclocked at all thus not needing anymore voltage or to screw with my timings. my vcore is at stock voltage which is pretty nice (30cap m0 step chip) and whenever i was hitting instability or instant shutdowns raising vcore didnt help at all ie. id get to the same point regardless in booting up before itd shut itself down. so I just figured the only thing left that could be causing instability are my ram settings so i slowly started raising voltage until i could finally get through an hour of prime95 with no errors. my temps are really good right now with a watercooling setup I peiced together so i know temps have nothing to do with it. idle sits at 39 and full load doesnt go over 43. I really was just hoping to get some help from others with a similar setup as mine that have gotten higher overclocks. I want to push this system beyond 3.5 hoping to top out at 3.7 or so but before i do i want to make sure im choosing the right voltage settings and such. agp/pci is fixed and this is on an ABIT ic7-g max2 ram and such in topic summary and its rated at 2.5-4-4-7. any help or ideas to help me get the most stable o/c out of this setup would be greatly appreciated

 

[MrK6]

If 2.8vDIMM is what keeps it stable, use it. THat's perfectly within RAM specs and wont harm it. However, you'll going to want to raise your tRAS number (the 7) to 8 at least, 9 might be even better, as it is the window for access time in the RAM. A low setting closes it before the RAM is done, which might be why you're having stability issues at lower vDIMM. Test and see.

 

[TooRude]

thanks, im gonna benchmark at this speed and then loosen timings and if i can reach higher clock ill benchmark again. cause it may be better to use my ram with better timings and sacrifice some mhz heh

 

[boshuter]

Nice chip you got :thumbsup:

I'd lower the ram timings or just let SPD set them until you find the limit of your cpu, then you can start playing with the ram to see just how far it can go. I'm not sure what the highest vdimm your board has, but it won't be high enough to hurt your ram, I'm running 3.1v with my modded P4C800E and my Corsair ram likes the high voltage. P4's benifit more from tight timings than AMD systems do, you may be correct that it's worth a few mhz to be able to run tighter timings. The only way to know for sure is to try it both ways and bench it to see what works best.

Let us know how it works out.. I have a 3.0c 30 cap cpu sitting here waiting for when I have time to play with it. It was supposedly running 3.75 at default vcore so I have high hopes :beer: