I am at an overclocking impasse...

[The Sauce]

Appreciate any help.

System: E6600 (F stepping), Gigabyte DS3 (F9 bios), Firestix DDR2-800 (Micron G9)

The problem:

Default voltages (1.325 Vcore). I can run Orthos (small FFT) at FSB 340 all day. Bump to FSB 350 and Windows won't boot. Clearly this is not a CPU limited problem, but what else could it be? Increasing Vcore does not fix the problem. Any recommendations?

 

[chrismr]

Have you tried increasing the voltage to your northbridge?

 

[The Sauce]

NO i haven't - becauase I have heard from reliable sources that this board can run up to FSB 550 at default voltages.

 

[chrismr]

Well, what do you have to lose by trying? Not every board is the same. Same goes for processors. Some people can get much better results with a similar setup to me than I can.

There are also settings in the BIOS which might interfere with overclocking (Speedstep and things like that?). Can't remember the specific type of options from my setup -would have to look later to give you an idea.

Are memory and fsb linked?

My p5n-e is my first intel board in years, so I am really not familiar with the different settings on these chipsets.

 

[Roguestar]

Increase voltages and see how high you can go, THEN start bringing the voltages back down. Loosen memory timings, raise voltages etc etc, make sure you can get to your desired FSB first before you start shoring everything else up and making ship-shape, not the other way around. Also, try jumping straight to 401Mhz FSB and avoid the nasty memory strap area between 350 and 400.

 

[The Sauce]

I was thinking about going to 401...

Doesn't seem like it's the CPU because it'll Prime fine then with another incremental small bump it sh!ts the bed...sometimes it even hard resets during POST. with the CPU speed almost the same as it was Priming at previously.

What about these BIOS settings:

No execute memory protect
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
CPU EIST Function

I shut them all off.


PS - The RAM is good DDR2-800 which means that at it's preset latencies it should give me a FSB of 400 without any problem right? So I shouldn't have to increase my memory volts for now.

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: Snatchface
I was thinking about going to 401...

Well I did determine that it's not the CPU because I decreased the multi and it still crashes...sometimes it even hard resets during POST. with the CPU speed the same as it was Priming at previously.

What about these BIOS settings:

No execute memory protect
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
CPU EIST Function
Virtualization Technology

I have no idea what those are and maybe they are causing the trouble.


PS - The RAM is good DDR2-800 which means that at it's preset latencies it should give me a FSB of 400 without any problem right? So I shouldn't have to increase my memory volts for now.

Your memory voltage should be fine since you are not overclocking it.

I would turn off those 4 settings you spoke of and also be sure and change the PCI-E setting from auto to 100. I am able to run run at 400FSB with all voltage settings at stock except for the smallest bump possible on the cpu(1.3 is stock, I set it at 1.3125 or whatever the very next setting above 1.3 is). The PCI-E being set to 100 is critical so be sure and do that.

 

[The Sauce]

Thanks so much for that tip. I had that set to auto. I just changed it to 100. Will see what happens and get back to you in a few minutes.

 

[gerwen]

Jump straight to 400 or 401 and see what you get. (although on my S3, 401 seemed to get me 400 anyway)

Keep an eye on temps. You may need to bump up Ram voltage depending on the Ram itself. My corsair ddr2-800 needs 2.1V to run at stock speeds.

 

[The Sauce]

Here is a stupid question. How do I know what my stock memory voltage is? It doesn't say in the mobo BIOS. The only options on this board are not for the actual voltage value itself but rather for incremental increases, such as +0.1, +0.2, +0.3 etc. But i have no idea what I am starting from.

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: Snatchface
Here is a stupid question. How do I know what my stock memory voltage is? It doesn't say in the mobo BIOS. The only options on this board are not for the actual voltage value itself but rather for incremental increases, such as +0.1, +0.2, +0.3 etc. But i have no idea what I am starting from.

1.8v is the default memory voltage for the DS3. My ram requires 1.9v so, of course, I bump it 0.1v.

 

[The Sauce]

Thanks. Another quick question:

Is Orhtos just supposed to crash out when the CPU is at it's limit? I remember previously from my Opteron overclocking that Prime95 used to just stop running and change from "GO" to "STOP" when there was an error. Now it just seems that it crashes out to a "this program has encountered an error" dialogue box or just hard crashes the system. I didn't think that would reflect a CPU limitation. Am I wrong?

 

[aka1nas]

Well, it means your system is unstable so it's not a good thing. Normally, it flashes a stop error similar to what Prime95 does.

 

[The Sauce]

I haven't gotten a "STOP" error from ORthos yet, and I have run it about 50 times so far. It just crashes out...even if it's just one core that is bad....the other core keeps running it fine. This is making it extremely difficult to overclock this system. I have no idea where the problem is. Just on a lark I bumped the VID and now its running ok...for the moment.

Even earlier when I was semi-stable, it would run for 20 minutes and then hard-reset the system rather than give me a "STOP" error.

 

[aka1nas]

Does it run Orthos without issue at stock?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Lockups and hard crashes are more often ram related. And it certainly sounds like ram voltage is your problem. If your sticks are D9 based they most likely need 2.2v to run properly at the specified timings, and as others have said the default on your board is 1.8. Check what is specified for your ram and if its 2.2v as I suspect set your board to +.4v

*edit*
Is this your ram?
If so it's specified to run at 2.1v, you need to set voltage to +.3v or +.4v

 

[The Sauce]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
Lockups and hard crashes are more often ram related. And it certainly sounds like ram voltage is your problem. If your sticks are D9 based they most likely need 2.2v to run properly at the specified timings, and as others have said the default on your board is 1.8. Check what is specified for your ram and if its 2.2v as I suspect set your board to +.4v

*edit*
Is this your ram?
If so it's specified to run at 2.1v, you need to set voltage to +.3v or +.4v

Yah that's it. I have had it up to 2.1V since earlier in this thread. Hasn't gotten me anything. I don't think that it's the memory because I am having the same problems running 1:1 at a FSB of 340 that I am at 420 with a lower divider... Non the less, I have removed one stick to see and I'm testing now.

...hmm. Dropped down to one stick of D9 and I'm Orthos stable for 15 minutes so far at 7x430. That's my best so far. Might be more of the famous DS3/D9 incompatibility issue? I thought that was fixed with BIOS F7...

 

[The Sauce]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Does it run Orthos without issue at stock?

It runs Orthos stable even overclocked...up to a point. Then it gets extremely flakey. When it hits that point all sorts of weird stuff happens. Either Orthos crashes in Windows and reboots the system, or the system reboots during POST and resets all the BIOS settings. It seems that it's happening around 3.0 GHz. adding Volts doesn't make any difference then. I bumped the VID from 1.325 to 1.4 and it made no difference at all in stability. The highest stable I have been is 7x420 or 9x330 (roughly the same o/c ~ 3.0 GHz) with 1.4V VID. My CPU temp has never been > 34C with the Scythe Infinity.

Oh and another weird thing. No matter what I set VID to in the BIOS it shows up as all wrong in any Windows monitoring programs....they read VIDs all over the place. So I don't even really know if the VID changes are taking effect. Even the Gigabyte EasyTune5 shows VID 1.32 when I set it to 1.4...

I'm really stuck here. I have never been this stuck overclocking before. And I can't figure out where the problem is because none of my monitoring or testing software is acting or reporting properly. Getting frustrated. I've been sitting here tweaking the BIOS and running Orthos all day...

I have a new PS coming - I am going to replace my Earthwatts 500W with a Corsair HX620. IF that doesn't seem to do anything then I think I'm at the point where I will need to either try a new Mobo or CPU...or both.

 

[The Sauce]

Ok, interesting update:

Switched BIOS from F4 to F7 --> F10 --> F9
Increased DDR volts to 2.1V (per recommendations)
Increased VID to 1.4V
Shut off speedstep and similar crap
Played with all different combinations of FSB/Multi

...no change...hits ~ 3.0 GHz and sh!ts the bed.


Now I removed one stick of my D9...Orthos stable 30 min @ 7x430 = 3.010 GHz...

Might have all been a ram incompatibility. Still testing...gonna be a long night.