Horrible performance after e4300 / 965P-DS3 Oclock

[NTAC]

Hi there,

I'm trying to overclock this setup and I'm having problems. After I overclock things run very slow. Like if I"m playing a song and I open up a Firefox page the music slows down and stutters big time. If I restore the Bios to defaults it's back to normal.

Admittedly I don't really know what I"m doing aside from just following the numerous guides out there and trying my best.

I didn't know if it was a voltage issue or what so right now I have the FSB set to 250 Mhz and the voltage at the default 1.328 and the problem is still happening.

I have 2 x 1 GB 667 ram and 2 x 2 GB 800 ram for a total of 6 GBs and those are on a 2.0 multiplier.

Uhmm... Let me know what info I can provide to best help, screenshots or whatever. I"d like get about 2.8 GHz out of this thing if possible, I hear that isn't too hard and I think I had it working at some point but now it's giving me fits.

Thanks!

 

[ReefaMadness]

What operating system are you using and have you tried to overclock using just one of the two sets of ram?

Speaking of ram, what are the brands / models and specs (timings and voltage) on the ram that you are trying to use together?

What are you using for cooling?

 

[StrangerGuy]

You try to take out the two 1GB sticks and see if your problem goes away. I have the same board and it doesn't like overclocking with 4 DIMMs filled.

 

[jchu14]

I agree with StrangerGuy that you should find your overclock limit with your faster ram for now.

Is the overclock upping the processor speed like you expect? If you could post a cpuz and CoreTemp screenshot while running stress tests such as Prime95 or LinX.

Maybe the slow down could be due to thermal throttling from improper installation of the hsf. One other possibility would be improper pci bus frequency? Maybe you're pushing the pci bus out of spec too much and your hard drive is flaking out. Some mb can lock pci bus freq, but I am not familiar with your board.

 

[NTAC]

Oh wow, can't believe I left out the OS: Win 7, 64 Bit.

I was a bit skeptical about the ram so I will definitely do that first thing. Does it matter in which banks I end up putting the two sticks of 2 GBs?

Thanks for the help!

 

[TJCS]

Does it matter in which banks I end up putting the two sticks of 2 GBs?

Check the instruction manual, many times it will tell you which dimm banks to fill up first.

 

[NTAC]

Damn, no luck.

So I took out the 2 GBs and left in two sticks of 2 GBs each @ 800mhz.

Basically at FSB 210 I'm ok, if I go to 220 then the problem starts occurring. I can't imagine what would be going wrong at such a low overclock, but something is up.

Any other suggestions? My HDD is on Channel IDE 2, could that be a problem at all?

 

[StrangerGuy]

1. Set memory multipier to 2x. Anything higher unnecessarily limits your overclock.
2. Disable C1E and EIST options.
3. Disable all spread spectrum options.

 

[NTAC]

1. Set memory multipier to 2x. Anything higher unnecessarily limits your overclock.
2. Disable C1E and EIST options.
3. Disable all spread spectrum options.

I think I have that done, not sure about the "spread spectrum" options. Where are those usually located?

UPDATE: Ok, so it seems that if I turn my PC on from a powered off state it works fine. But if I reboot then I enter this funky state of not working right. I can certainly deal with this work around if it is consistent (only tried it about 3 or 4 times), but does this help point in the right direction?

Hmm, that power off reboot thing worked for about 2 or 3 tries now its back to sucking.

 

[ussfletcher]

You could try an RMA on the motherboard, something sounds kinda funky here.

 

[NTAC]

So I pulled out the GTX 260 and put in my old 7600 and the problem has gone away.

Could this be some type of power issue? I have a 700W PSU in there so I figured that would be enough...

 

[ussfletcher]

You could try an RMA on the video card, something sounds kinda funky here.

 

[NTAC]

You could try an RMA on the video card, something sounds kinda funky here.

lol, what do I tell them? Hey your GFX card works great, but when I try to overclock a MOBO you didn't make its causing problems?

Its not my card anyway, its one I'm borrowing from work since we don't have a case big enough for it.

 

[bobross419]

So I pulled out the GTX 260 and put in my old 7600 and the problem has gone away.

Could this be some type of power issue? I have a 700W PSU in there so I figured that would be enough...

What brand/model is the PSU, and how old is it?

 

[NTAC]

What brand/model is the PSU, and how old is it?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/other/atx-psu6/8p6s.jpg

I bought this in 2007.

Is there any way to measure the voltages to make sure that everything is getting what it needs?

 

[ekl]

Your problem sounds familiar. It's a common problem with the DS3. Sometimes the board sets the PCIE-Bandwidth of the 16x-Slot to 1xSpeed for whatever reason. If it does you will experience longer boot-times, slow disk access, sluggish Video, stuttering sound and other odd things.

You can check with for example lavalys everest or any other similiar tool for your pcie-slot-bandwidth. If you see 1x-Speed there you have this common 965p-ds3 problem.

There is no 100% sure fix for this, but you can try the following:

-Enter extended mode in bios (ctrl-f1) and set PCIE-frequency manually to slightly higher or lower than standard 100 ( i used 102 )
-slightly increase pcie-voltage (+0.1)
-slightly increase mch-voltage (+0.1)

Temporarily remove the overclock doing this.

Check with your favorite system-information-tool after each try of changing bios parameters if the pcie-bandwidth changed back to the correct 16x speed.

If it finally did, you can reapply the overclock. Also you can change back all parameters to your liking. In my case the pcie-bandwidth stayed 16x correctly afterward.

Also I did not experience this problem with the new F14 final bios. But this might have been luck simply ^^

hope it helps somehow.

greets,
-ekl

 

[NTAC]

Your problem sounds familiar. It's a common problem with the DS3. Sometimes the board sets the PCIE-Bandwidth of the 16x-Slot to 1xSpeed for whatever reason. If it does you will experience longer boot-times, slow disk access, sluggish Video, stuttering sound and other odd things.

You can check with for example lavalys everest or any other similiar tool for your pcie-slot-bandwidth. If you see 1x-Speed there you have this common 965p-ds3 problem.

There is no 100% sure fix for this, but you can try the following:

-Enter extended mode in bios (ctrl-f1) and set PCIE-frequency manually to slightly higher or lower than standard 100 ( i used 102 )
-slightly increase pcie-voltage (+0.1)
-slightly increase mch-voltage (+0.1)

Temporarily remove the overclock doing this.

Check with your favorite system-information-tool after each try of changing bios parameters if the pcie-bandwidth changed back to the correct 16x speed.

If it finally did, you can reapply the overclock. Also you can change back all parameters to your liking. In my case the pcie-bandwidth stayed 16x correctly afterward.

Also I did not experience this problem with the new F14 final bios. But this might have been luck simply ^^

hope it helps somehow.

greets,
-ekl

I have given up on this and ordered a new setup i5 750, new mobo and mem, but I will try your suggestions just out of curiosity at this point. What you are saying though does make a lot of sense based on the issues I was seeing.

Thanks!

 

[NTAC]

Well you nailed it. Sure enough, checked CPUZ or whatever it is while in my problem state and the PCIe was 1x. 102 didn't do it, so I tried 110, and now its fine. Go figure.

Thanks for your help!

 

[ekl]

You're welcome - happy to help. Nevertheless good luck with your new setup ;-)

cheers,
ekl