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Help please: how to overclock P4PE, 2.4 Northwood

Skypix7

Skypix7

Senior member
This is a short-term upgrade until I go to a dual cpu board next year. I'm a heavy Photoshop user and this good old stable board is a bit slow in some of the key ways I use the software.

I'm swapping the 2.4 Northwood for a 3.0C Northwood as that's been highly recommended by Anandtechies for Photoshop.

I'm also looking for the right 3 sticks of 1GB DDR400, any suggestions appreciated.

Overclocking isn't something I do much, but I'm going to follow the suggestions on the Asus site for bumping to 800FSB (asus.com/support/cpusupport/fsb800.aspx) but their instructions seem a little less than comprehensive (although their site is miles better than it was 2 years ago!)

Is there a general overclocking guide I can read to bone up?

thanks for your help
 
Originally posted by: Skypix7
This is a short-term upgrade until I go to a dual cpu board next year. I'm a heavy Photoshop user and this good old stable board is a bit slow in some of the key ways I use the software.

I'm swapping the 2.4 Northwood for a 3.0C Northwood as that's been highly recommended by Anandtechies for Photoshop.

I'm also looking for the right 3 sticks of 1GB DDR400, any suggestions appreciated.

Overclocking isn't something I do much, but I'm going to follow the suggestions on the Asus site for bumping to 800FSB (asus.com/support/cpusupport/fsb800.aspx) but their instructions seem a little less than comprehensive (although their site is miles better than it was 2 years ago!)

Is there a general overclocking guide I can read to bone up?

thanks for your help
Click to expand...

Wow, awesome I have 2 P4PE boards at home and I didn't know they updated them to support 800MHz FSB! Looks like I may be upgrading my sister's PC in the future...


I read their instructions, and here is what seems to be the gist of it. This board is based on an older chipset that wasn't initially spec'ed to run at 800MHz FSB (although people were getting great results overclocking). However, it seems they added "official" support starting with the 1006 BIOS for "C" rev Northwoods (no Prescotts though).

However, since this isn't an "official" 800MHz FSB board to begin with, there's a few stipulations.

First, you MUST be using PC3200 memory (200MHz FSB) since apparently memory ratios do not work on the board at 800 FSB; ie you are stuck using 1:1 (which isn't really a bad thing).

Second, apparently they say only 1 DIMM of memory is supported (at 800Mhz FSB). I bet it could work with 2, but you're taking your chances. Best to play it safe. It's not dual channel anyways IIRC.

So, just flash to the latest official BIOS (1007) and then boom, insert the P4 C and away you go 🙂 .
 
I just realized you said you are going to run 3GB of memory in there. According to the ASUS site, they suggest only running 1 stick.

Since you will be doing (professional?) photoshop work with that much RAM in there, I suggest you pick up a cheap but good Intel i865 motherboard, ie the Abit IS7 for ~$50 and pair it up with the 3.0C, rather than putzing around with the P4PE, which was not originally intended for 800FSB and is sort of an "overclocked at stock" system at 800FSB. With 3GB in there, at 800MHz FSB, I think that's pushing it...
 
Thanks for the link and advice, much obliged...I forgot to subscribe to the topic and didn't see these messages until after I bought 2 GB of memory (2 sticks of Micron for $190 each). Also got the cpu.

Maybe I should just build up another system, but didn't want to do that yet...hmmm.

Thanks Jiffylube, didn't realize you could only run one stick on there with the 800MHz FSB. I've already flashed the bios to 1007, I guess I'll just put the cpu in there first with the memory I have and see how 533 FSB will work.

Then I'll pop in both sticks, try that normal, than if it's stable, bump to 800 FSB and see what happens.


 
Back when I was using an Asus P4PE board I could overclock pretty high and run RAM stable at 400MHz DDR. The problem is that the board was only 100% stable with one DIMM used. Putting two in there caused instability. Your best bet is to get an i865 or i875 board to go along with the 3.0C. If you want to run all 3GB with your current board you could always get the 3.06GHz CPU.
 
For anyone who's following this thread, I popped in the new cpu (P4 3.0C), two gigs of Micron memory, and it runs sweet and fast. (thanks to goku for the idea) Much noticeable speed improvement throughout, especially in Photoshop. It's solved my dilemma in working in Photoshop for now.

I do have both sticks of memory in. I was NOT able to overclock the cpu at all, the system wouldn't even boot. I suspect this is because I couldn't change the speed on the memory...guess I don't know how to do that.

The P4 wouldn't let me change the multiplier, only the FSB. I ran it up to 220, no boot. 210, ditto, so I gave up.

Any suggestions on what I might not be doing right?

It's nice and fast...oh yeah, the cpu with stock Intel fan runs at 35C idle, max I've seen is 45 I think right after boot, but normally it parks around 34-36 when I'm working in Photoshop even. Cool!
 
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