My first CPU Overclock: 1.8A SL68Q

[CrazySaint]

I found out why the onboard sound on the EPoX board sounded so "flat". I was looking at the list of possible volume controls in the Windows "Volume Control"...one of them was "3D Depth" so I turned it on, unmuted it and the sound came to life

 

[THUGSROOK]

 

[Insane3D]

Nice o/c CrazySaint! Welcome to the wonderful world of overclocking. I just snagged one of these 1.8A's from Newegg to go with my idle Epox 4BDA2+. I'm hoping for at least 150mhz FSB with no higher than 1.6v. I've got a stick of Corsair PC3200C2 here as well..should be fun.

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Nice o/c CrazySaint! Welcome to the wonderful world of overclocking. I just snagged one of these 1.8A's from Newegg to go with my idle Epox 4BDA2+. I'm hoping for at least 150mhz FSB with no higher than 1.6v. I've got a stick of Corsair PC3200C2 here as well..should be fun.

Thanks, and good luck Be sure to keep us posted of your progress. If your 1.8A is like mine and the one THUGSROOK OC'd recently (both purchased from newegg), then you should have no problems hitting 150MHz FSB at 1.6v

 

[Insane3D]

Yeah, I just sold my 4G4A+ for $100, and my 1.6A for $125, so I'm not really spending too much. I was going to hold off on another P4 setup until dual channel DDR and HT were out, but I have a great board in the 4BDA2+ just sitting around, and no one wants to buy it since it's a couple generations behind, so I figured WTH. I also have a P4 Alpha just sitting around waiting for some action..

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Yeah, I just sold my 4G4A+ for $100, and my 1.6A for $125, so I'm not really spending too much. I was going to hold off on another P4 setup until dual channel DDR and HT were out, but I have a great board in the 4BDA2+ just sitting around, and no one wants to buy it since it's a couple generations behind, so I figured WTH. I also have a P4 Alpha just sitting around waiting for some action..

Sounds good I can't wait to see what kind of performance/OC'ability the DCDDR boards get.

I think I'm gonna stick the Asus board back in here tomorrow. Hmmm...its getting about time for me to decide what TeAm project(s) to join I've pretty well decided on the cancer research one, but I'm not sure which other one(s) I want to join. I'll probably go for either folding@home or one of the distributed.net projects.

 

[CrazySaint]

Hmmmm...quick update. I finally got the FDD working on the EPoX board, and 2.7GHz@DDR400 made it through 2 passes all 11 tests with no errors (btw, how many passes does it need to pass w/o errors to be considered 100% stable, the equivilent of running Prime95 for 12 hours?) and failed Prime95 after 57 minutes (10 minutes longer than my last try) and that was with the USB and FDD controllers both enabled. I turned them both back off and I'm trying again, currently running ~40 minutes with no errors.

 

[Duvie]

I let my memtest run overnight when I tested it at 420mhz ddr or about 5 hours...went to bed late...lowest settings needed though!!!! That was tight though...1.6a running at 158fsb for 2.533ghz at 1.52v and 420mhz ddr fully prime95 tested for 12 hours...

 

[CrazySaint]

Passed one hour and still going strong on prime95 Just when I was leaning towards the P4B533-V...man, its gonna be hard choosing between these two boards

 

[SupermanCK]

Originally posted by: CrazySaint
and that was with the USB and FDD controllers both enabled. I turned them both back off and I'm trying again,

y would enabling FDD be any problem? but whatever float your boat saint.

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: SupermanCK

Originally posted by: CrazySaint
and that was with the USB and FDD controllers both enabled. I turned them both back off and I'm trying again,

y would enabling FDD be any problem? but whatever float your boat saint.

Well, I seriously doubt it made any real difference, but I figured it couldn't hurt Anyway, with USB disabled Prime95 ran for an hour and 20 minutes while I was surfing and running WMP before I stopped it, but it only ran one hour and 12 minutes when I left it after I went to bed with nothing else running - go figure.

 

[CrazySaint]

Prime95 lasted 2 hours and 46 minutes while also running MBM5, several browser windows, and a 100k WMP video stream. That's an improvement, but still not totally stable. I'm gonna re-run prime95 at 2.7/DDR300 and make sure its not the CPU.

 

[CrazySaint]

Prime95 failed after 1 hour and 10 minutes running at 2.7GHz/DDR300. I'm pretty sure its from the board undervolting, mostly from the erratic nature of my prime95 tests. I have it set at 1.625v, it runs 1.6-1.61 at idle and gets as low as 1.54v under load. I'm gonna switch back to the P4B533-V to make sure its not the chip, probably tonight.

 

[Duvie]

I have to say that while my board undervolts it holds steady and only drops .03-.04v while under load....

ie...1.775v in bios equals 1.71v actual and no lower then 1.67v under load....

also when running...1.6@2.53ghz it is idle at 1.52v and only goes to 1.49v at its lowest....

That .06-.07v in drop may definitely be a factor....

I personally would go up to 1.65v in bios for 1.63v idle and see if it holds...that is plenty safe enough...

 

[Insane3D]

Yep, Duvie is right, as long as your actual voltage in Windows is not abov 1.7v, you should be fine. I'm hoping I have similar luck with my 1.8A on my 4BDA2+..


Duvie -

Are you running the 4BDA or the 4BDA2+?

 

[CrazySaint]

Thanks for the posts guys, I've got the P4B533-V back in here for now. It still has that sound issue I was complaining about earlier. Its too bad, because it actually has a "fuller" sound than the 4G4A+ had. I'm running prime95 at 2.7GHz/DDR400 again, will see how it goes.

 

[Insane3D]

Does the P4B533-V have the Cmedia chip?

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Does the P4B533-V have the Cmedia chip?

Yeah, it does. Prime95 just failed after 2 hours. I'm beginning to think this RAM just can't to DDR400. I'm gonna run Prime95 overnight a 2.7GHz/DDR300.

 

[Insane3D]

Try these drivers

They are from Soyo, but they work on any CMI 8738 chip, they are not Soyo specific. The Asus ones are based on an earlier reference set from CMI while the Soyo ones are based on a newer set...give 'em a try.

 

[mechBgon]

Do you mind if I suggest getting a fast video card to go with the fast platform? My ol' GeForce2 GTS-V(alue) happens to get about the same UT2003 Demo Bench scores, and the botmatch scores go up only a couple fps when I do a 25% overclock on the CPU, showing that my video card is totally bottlenecking things.

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Try these drivers

They are from Soyo, but they work on any CMI 8738 chip, they are not Soyo specific. The Asus ones are based on an earlier reference set from CMI while the Soyo ones are based on a newer set...give 'em a try.

Thanks for the link, unfortunately those are the XP drivers and wouldn't work right, so I went to the soyo site and tried to the Win98SE drivers (they didn't have any Win98 FE drivers) and they didn't work either. They would play the windows startup sound, but nothing else, too bad since the startup sound seemed clearer. I tried downloading the drivers from the cmedia site, but they're not much better than the ones that came with the motherboard.

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Do you mind if I suggest getting a fast video card to go with the fast platform? My ol' GeForce2 GTS-V(alue) happens to get about the same UT2003 Demo Bench scores, and the botmatch scores go up only a couple fps when I do a 25% overclock on the CPU, showing that my video card is totally bottlenecking things.

Heh, that's definitely in the works But first I gotta get a decent monitor. My old 350 goes to my Mom (its actually my parents computer to begin with, but I was the primary user of it) and she decided that she wants the 17" monitor that goes with it, so for now I'm stuck on an old 15" CTX monitor I'm saving my pennies for a nice 19" flatscreen, thinking of getting that NEC 991 DiamondTron monitor. I'll probably upgrade my video card to either the R9500 or the "Ti4200 version" of the NV30 sometime around December/January. This CTX monitor actually seems to be a higher quality model than the no-name (literally, I can't find the manufacturer name on it) 17" monitor I was on (which had a noticable "flicker" in one corner).

 

[Insane3D]

Thanks for the link, unfortunately those are the XP drivers and wouldn't work right, so I went to the soyo site and tried to the Win98SE drivers (they didn't have any Win98 FE drivers) and they didn't work either. They would play the windows startup sound, but nothing else, too bad since the startup sound seemed clearer. I tried downloading the drivers from the cmedia site, but they're not much better than the ones that came with the motherboard.

Ahhh..sorry man, I just assumed with a nice setup like that you would be running XP. I wonder if Win98 itself is not your problem. Did you completely uninstall the old drivers before you installed the drivers from Soyo? There has to be a simple solution to this....

 

[Duvie]

Insane3d, I am running the 4BDA mobo with the june bios.....I have an 4G4A+ sitting here that I haven't used and I am likely goin to install it next week...Right now I basically cannot run 400+mhz ddr once I get past 162fsb because of the 3:4 ratio of the i845d mobo...The 4g4a has the ata133, usb 2.0, and ofcourse the 4:5 ratio......

Unfortunately I am a lot like you...waiting for the GB dual ddr mobos to hit the shelves so the 4G4A+ and this 4BDA are short lived...


What GB mobo are you looking at??? Epox looks like a good one, and they have done well in the past with me!!! I am hearing others talk about the albatron mobos, but I really know very little about them as a brand...

 

[Yeti101]

I'm saving for the DC DDR Mobo's too...... Leaning toward The Asus G8X, or the EPoX board, I'll probly just end up waiting for DDRII and The NV30 :\

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Thanks for the link, unfortunately those are the XP drivers and wouldn't work right, so I went to the soyo site and tried to the Win98SE drivers (they didn't have any Win98 FE drivers) and they didn't work either. They would play the windows startup sound, but nothing else, too bad since the startup sound seemed clearer. I tried downloading the drivers from the cmedia site, but they're not much better than the ones that came with the motherboard.

Ahhh..sorry man, I just assumed with a nice setup like that you would be running XP. I wonder if Win98 itself is not your problem. Did you completely uninstall the old drivers before you installed the drivers from Soyo? There has to be a simple solution to this....

Heh, no problem. But don't worry, WinXP is in the works, too Yeah, I completely uninstalled the old drivers and installed new ones several times. I don't know, it could be the OS. The sound on the EPoX board was fine, though (once I found that "3D Depth" setting, that is). But right now it sounds kinda like an FM radio station that's not totally tuned in.

2.7GHz/DDR300 failed Prime95 after 1 hour, 46 minutes...and there's another odd thing, I noticed on Asus probe that with the vcore set to 1.55 in the BIOS (1.6 at idle) the voltage dropped as low as 1.504v under full load! :Q I upped the voltage to 1.575 in the BIOS and it usually cycles between 1.536 and 1.68 under full load with occasional drops as low as 1.52! I would suspect my PSU, except its an Antec True Power 330w, and all the rails look good. I shouldn't be any where near maxing out its power with only one HDD, CD-RW, a FDD, and an old video card.