Help me recover from a bad overclock experience.

[mikepeck]

I recently bought a gfd for my classic athlon 700 in hopes to pump up the speed a little. The gfd is the kind without a power supply connector. I have an epox board and have been running it at 110 mhz bus with no problems. I then put on the gfd and cranked it up to 750 (100 x 7.5) and it would boot into win2k just fine and it seemed stable. So I cranked it up to 800 mhz and it would boot into windows but it would crash after that. 900 would post but that's it. I believe it is a cache problem, I tried disabling the L2 just to see but when I boot into windows, I run wcpuid and it says 1/2 cache divider. I went to h-oda.com to try to find the cache program but had no luck. I tried mathlon but it didn't seem to work. Does win2k even use the config.sys. Can someone please help me solve this problem.. What can I do for the cache situation? or anything else in general that might help?

Thanks,

 

[mikepeck]

anyone?

 

[Cybordolphin]

Mike... There are lots of reasons for this. The first one I would investigate is the RAM that you are using. What is it? Is it "approved" for an Athlon system...? Are all the rest of your components?

If you can't get into windows .... it's usually a ram problem (generally speaking).... if you crash (blue screen) in Windows.... it's usually voltage.

These are what I would check first. Then consider the BIOS settings on the Video card.

Let us know how things go.

By the way... this is not a BAD experience.... this is part of the fun and learning experience of overclocking. BAD is frying a component, etc..

 

[Sugadaddy]

I don't think it's the ram, since it's running @100mhz... What power supply do you have, and what do you use for cooling your case and cpu?

 

[mikepeck]

I have athlon approved pc133 ram that did 143 cas 2 stable. I have an athlon approved 300 watt power supply. I also have plenty of case cooling (3 fans) plus I had the side open when I was doing this. I also have a temp guage and the cpu never gets over 85 degrees F. The rest of the components shouldn't be a problem because I was just using 100 mhz bus. And they were even stable at 110 when I was using that. I do believe it is a cache problem since the cache isn't rated for 400+ mhz opperation...

Thanks!

 

[Sugadaddy]

You're probably right since the cache on a 700 is @1/2 of the cpu speed. Here's a page with programs to change the l2 multiplier: hereyougo.

 

[odog]

what kind of HS/F do you have?

are you using thermal grease between the plate and the HS?

 

[mikepeck]

I don't know the brand of the heatsink but it seems to do the job very well since it has never gotten hotter than 85 degrees F at 100% load. It is a dual fan and I did use thermal grease (arctic silver on order).

 

[Cybordolphin]

Why don't you go ahead and list all the parts you have in your system..... maybe we can spot the weak link?

Also what ram are you using... (the brand).

I have had PC133 Cas2 that won't do 133Mhz unless changed to 3/3/3 in bios. I know that you are only running at 100FSB.... but a list of all your components still might help.

 

[mikepeck]

Okay, Here goes,

Win2k system

Epox Slot A board with the latest Bios
128 MB MUSHKIN w/SIEMENS Infineon PC133
ATI All in Wonder Pro AGP 8 mb
3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 PCI (boot up card, then the ati takes over as primary when windows is booted)
Promise Fasttrack 66 RAID 0
2 IBM 15 giggers ATA 100 (boots off the raid)
1 WD Expert 18 gigger (disabled until windows is booted)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 ISA
Linksys 10/100 network card
Plextor 8/4/32 IDE
Toshiba 2x DVD
Plenty of case ventilation

The reason I don't think it is the memory- I have run it at 143 cas 2 with no problems. I have tried the following overclocking solutions:

110 mhz bus + 33 RAM X 7 (no gfd), 1/2 cache, defualt volt. = completely stable
100 mhz bus + 33 RAM X 7.5, 1/2 cache, default volt. = seems stable in windows
110 mhz buss + 33 RAM X 7.5, 1/2 cache, 1.75v and 1.85v = boots sometimes but not stable
100 mhz bus + 33 RAM X 8, 1/2 cache, 1.85v = posts but doesn't boot all the way
100 mhz bus + 33 RAM X 8.5, 1/2 cache, 1.85v, posts
900 mhz, no post.
I have tried to disable the cache in bois but whenever I do that, it doesn't boot into windows.

Thanks for helping!