Increasing PCI-E for stability?

[Zenoth]

Hey guys,

I've had instability troubles lately. I've isolated the issues to come from my Memory. I just can't seem to find any stable settings. The best one I've found so far will do 3 hours of Orthos Blend test, but then it will fail. However if I use the Small FFTs test (CPU only) it will pass 11 hours of Orthos just fine, and about the same results go for Prime95. I want a minimum of 12 hours of Orthos Blend test to be stable before I use the over-clocked settings 24/7.

Trying the Memory to all available ratios in the BIOS, from going down to 1.7v or up to 2.45v hasn't helped at all. Going from 4-4-4-12 at any voltages mentioned to 7-7-7-24 again at any voltages mentioned still doesn't help... heck, I can't even POST at all when going from 1066Mhz to 800Mhz (yes you read it right, my PC2-8500 can't do 6400 speeds at all). I was thinking the following: 1) The Power Supply is going bunkers about my demands and can't hold it for more than 3 hours in Orthos... 2) My Memory simply sucks quite hard... or 3) My current motherboard's BIOS revision just doesn't like that specific Memory module at all.

Then I've read just a few minutes ago on another discussion forum that usually increasing both the PCI-E frequency from 100Mhz to 105Mhz, and its voltage by around +0.20v to +0.30v will help increase the overall system stability and should also impact the Memory stability.

My question is simple: Is it true?

My secondary question is: Would increasing the PCI-E frequency and voltage potentially and in the long-term permanently damage my Graphics Card?

Thanks.

 

[nullpointerus]

A long time ago, nVidia introduced a feature w/ their 7900 GTX cards and motherboards whereby the PCI-E bus would automatically be overclocked when you had the right combination of card and motherboard.

This "feature" never really increased performance noticeably even in synthetic benchmarks, and it may have caused stability issues (and thus more support problems). It was ultimately abandoned.

But, if nVidia would introduce such an automatic PCI-E o/c on their GPUs, I can't see how a little 100 -> 105mhz o/c on the PCI-E would damage a card like yours.

What I would worry about would be the SATA/LAN/Audio PCI-E devices...

I don't know enough to make guesses about the long-term effects of overvolting PCI-E.

I also have no idea how either setting would benefit your overclocking stability, if the PCI-E bus on your board is truly locked at 100mhz.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OP, what CPU/RAM/motherboard?

 

[Zenoth]

That information is in my signature.

By the way I just tried a new test and again it failed after 2 hours and 8 minutes of Blend test. And the Memory is at 989Mhz (supposed to be 1066Mhz by default), and 2.1v, with timings of 5-6-6-18 2T, and a Performance Level of 9. I just don't get it, and it is seriously starting to piss me off.

 

[Zenoth]

By the way I wanted to know if the timings shown in CPU-z are recommendations? Why is it showing those timings under specific voltages and frequencies?

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2980/memorycg2.png

 

[ionoxx]

I think you have dead dimms. RMA them. Its not normal that at any setting you have issues.

I've had issues in the past with Crucial dimms back in the day when I had PC3200 Ballistix on an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium. My dimms would fry after 3 months no matter what I did with them. My 1st pair I OCed, the 2nd and 3rd pairs I kept at default volt and high latency.

How long ago did you first build this machine and how long after did you start having issues?

 

[Zenoth]

I built my system exactly 10 days ago, and the problems started to show up after 3 days (BSODs all over the pace). Now I get no more BSODs, but I can't Orthos Blend test for more than two or three hours without it failing (but it still doesn't BSOD, it just fails and the system is still responsive, Prime95 also fails in the same way).

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
By the way I wanted to know if the timings shown in CPU-z are recommendations? Why is it showing those timings under specific voltages and frequencies?

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2980/memorycg2.png

They are the ram manufacturer's specs for the DIMMS, and usually they are the specs when you only populate 2 DIMMS on the mobo (if the ram was bought in a 2-pack).

You should expect to be able to do the spec timings at the spec'ed voltages. If you can't then you should expect to be RMA'ed a new pair of DIMMs.

 

[lopri]

Why not try running Memtest at your memory's advertised spec? Also, have you tried LargeFFT?

 

[M1A]

I have some issues but have not had time to check it out more. I have 4x1G sticks of ballistic and in pairs they check ok but all 4 will not and any 2 check ok. I am running at my sig speeds and no crashes but will not orthos with 4 sticks in 2 is fine I can prime all day with 4 in? I believe its a Abit IP35 issue but like I said have not taken the time to explore it more.