My first CPU Overclock: 1.8A SL68Q

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Detselom

Member
Jun 21, 2002
183
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0
nice over clock sofar : 2610mhz 145fsb 290DDR = 1.55v
should be able to hit 1000 mhz overclock with a bit of voltage for sure.
looks like u have maxed out your video card. The ti4200's are cheap now.

gl and now i am tempted to get one of these babys
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
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Just a quick update, Prime95 ran overnight (well, "over morning" ;)) with no errors or warnings, and I'm gonna leave it running until I get home tonight. :)
 
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Duvie

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
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Great job....If you are failing in 1 minute at 2.7ghz then chances are you cold have done about 2.65ghz at default and means (since your default is at 1.55v) you likley will top out at 2.8ghz w/ 1.7v....

That is 155mhz so you should definitely falsh board to get 3:4 ratio so you can run 416mhz ddr....with 4:5 ratio you wont be 400mhz...
 
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SupermanCK

Platinum Member
Mar 31, 2000
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wow...missed all these fun you are having crazysaint...
i see your vid card is having a limit...seems like everything is the same...CPU power is not doing much for you...
i think you have to change you v-sync off to see difference...you might have not fixed your refreshrate...
go to your video properties and make sure v-sync is off for both OPENGL and D3D...

before flashing bios...make sure you back up the current one...you can simply use the AFLASH.exe found in ASUS's website...check the sticky thread for link
after you have backed up the bios...all you need to do is download the latest bios and unzip it onto a floppy...
and when you reboot, make sure you have bios update enabled in bios...and then press alt+f2....it will prompt you for bios's bin name to flash...oh yeah...make sure you know what is the exact name of your new bios filename..."1011.bin" etc...
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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Prime95 failed at 2.61GHz after 15 hours and 29 minutes with one error. Yeah, my video card is definitely holding me back here - things should improve a bit after I increase the speed on it to 186/186 (from 143/143). Heh, I forgot to turn off v-sync...I'm gonna re-run 3DMark and Q3A benchies (UT2003 didn't get anywhere near my refresh rate, so I don't see much point in re-running it) then I'm gonna flash my BIOS to 1005 and try again for 2.7GHz at default in case the BIOS was holding me back.
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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There was a slight increase in 3DMark (score was 2059 instead of 2051) but no change in Q3A. Now for the BIOS flash...
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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Blah, the floppy drive I pulled out of and old machine to flash the BIOS with won't work (green light is always on and it won't let me access the drive), so I guess I'll have to pull the floppy out of a different machine. I enabled Legacy Floppy in the BIOS and disabled Floppy Type 3, that's the correct settings, right?
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
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Bah, I put in a different floppy drive and it still wont' work...I even tried switching out for another floppy cable. Guess I'll have to use a CD-R, unfortunately, that means I won't be able to backup my current BIOS.
 
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Detselom

Member
Jun 21, 2002
183
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0
"green light is always on" sounds like u have the cable backwards. check both ends, mb and disk drive. on some older cables dont have the blocked pin so u can plug them in backwards.
 
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Painman

Diamond Member
Feb 27, 2000
3,728
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Your BIOS settings look correct (you did choose 3 1/2 floppy and not 5 1/4 right?) :) It does sound like a cabling issue with the floppy, the behavior you noted is what floppy drives do when they're not wired up right. Make sure pin 1 on the mobo connector is wired up to pin 1 on the drive, make sure you're using the cable connector with the "flip" in the ribbon cabling, that's the bootable connector, typically on one of the ends if you have a 3 plug cable. Also in the "boot" menu in the BIOS make sure boot device #1 is the floppy.

You can "back up" your BIOS by downloading it from the ASUS web site, they keep all final BIOS revisions available. This may be a good idea anyway as the image files ae 512k each and 2 cannot fit onto a floppy along with the DOS boot files and AFLASH.EXE.

I'm not sure if you can flash from a CD-R using AFLASH.EXE, I believe it expects the path to/from the image files to be A:\. I may be wrong on that point.

Hope some of this helps, and if you get 1005 into the board I hope it gives you some more room :) It sounds like you're starting to reach the ceiling from the voltage side of the equation though, you haven't mentioned any problems POSTing. My experience with 1002 and my previous 1.8A was that I couldn't reliably get POSTage at 130 MHz or higher FSB at any voltage, and the latest BIOS at that time (one of the 1004 betas) did correct this. Alas, that chip needed too much juice to do 2.4 GHz anyway.

If 1005 wasn't so important due to the 3:4 memory ratio issue we wouldn't be having this conversation, we'd be talking about your bandwidth scores :D Good luck :)
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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Thanks for the tips guys, I took out the floppy cable and its not keyed, so I put in a floppy cable that is keyed, and it works now :) Now, on to the flashing :D
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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Ok, we're back in business :D I flashed to 1005, I still can't do 2.7 at default voltage :(, but I bumped it up to 1.525 (1.68 in Asus Probe) and Prime95 is now chugging along at 2.7GHz :D

[EDIT: Prime95 halted after 5 minutes with 1 error...time to up it to 1.55 (1.6v), I guess]
 
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Painman

Diamond Member
Feb 27, 2000
3,728
29
86
2.7 GHz, 150 MHz FSB, 400 MHz DDR... nice round numbers :D

Your CPU can hack it, find its happy voltage and then attack that RAM :)
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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Originally posted by: Painman
2.7 GHz, 150 MHz FSB, 400 MHz DDR... nice round numbers :D

Your CPU can hack it, find its happy voltage and then attack that RAM :)
Click to expand...

Let's just hope its "happy voltage" is 1.6v 'cuz that's as high as I want to go (I want this chip to last 2-3 years minimum, even if its not my primary PC for that long). :) Btw, anybody know why the sound using the onboard audio sounds like its coming out of a pair of 5 cent speakers? It sounds just a bit "staticky".
 
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Painman

Diamond Member
Feb 27, 2000
3,728
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I hear you, I could probably eke another 100 MHz out of my CPU for another .1 volt, but 2.7 is a nice plateau to reach, I'm probably going to stay there myself. I too plan on using my machine for 2 years minimum, and someone else in the family will use the machine for 2-3 years after that, so... I'm not too big on over voltage either. If your chip doesn't do 2.7 on 1.6 or less I'll be surprised, it sounds like it wants to. :)
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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2.4GHz/DDR355 benchies up. At 2-3-2-7 I got 3000 errors in the first 30 seconds so I lowered the timings to 2-3-3-7.

Edited for errors
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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2.52/DDR373 Sandra benchies up. I had to further lower the timings to 2.5-3-3-7. I also had to lower the vdimm to 2.5, at 2.65 I was getting thousands of errors, was probably overheating...which means I probably need to work on my case cooling...
 
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Mikki

Golden Member
Jun 13, 2002
1,488
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Lookin great CrazySaint, nice oc! Yeah, start at lowest settings on memory and go from there. How high are you gonna crank it? You've got some voltage let, gonna try for a gig oc? :)
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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Originally posted by: Mikki
Lookin great CrazySaint, nice oc! Yeah, start at lowest settings on memory and go from there. How high are you gonna crank it? You've got some voltage let, gonna try for a gig oc? :)
Click to expand...

Thanks :) Once I finish with the RAM (2.61/DDR386 Sandras up) I'll probably see if I can take it any higher on 1.6v, but I'd rather not up the voltage any higher than that because this will be my main rig for the next 1-3 (depends on how soon I get the upgrade bug again :p) and it should make a good backup/hand-me-down machine for a couple years after that so I don't wanna overdo the voltage. The specs exactly match THUGSROOK's 1.8A and so far so do the OC results, so I could probably get a hair over 2.8GHz on 2.7v, but I don't know if my RAM will do much over DDR400.
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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2.7GHz/DDR400 Sandras up :D Now let's see if I can tighten those timings a bit...what's a good order to start lowering timings in?
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
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WOW I decided to try lowering each timing, one by one. I started with 2-3-3-7, rebooted and the computer wouldn't even post, I just got a blank screen :Q I figured I'd have to clear the CMOS but I tried rebooting just in case, and the computer booted straight into the BIOS with an error message stating that there was an error with mis-matched frequencies and that the computer had booted into safe mode, so I just put it back to 2.5-3-3-7 and it was fine! I do like this board :) 2.5-2-3-7 and 2.5-3-2-7 both failed (though 2.5-2-3-7 came pretty close with only a few errors)...I think if the RAM could take the 2.65vdimm I could get more out of it.
 
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CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
0
0
I overclocked my video card from 148/148 to 183/183. 3DMark showed an ~20% improvement, but what the heck's up with Q3A and UT2003 showing NO improvement??! There's GOT to be something going on there. Anyway, that's it for tonight, and its pretty much it for this board. I'll leave Prime95 running. Maybe tomorrow I'll stick the 4G4A+ in there :D
 
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