My P4 2.8C and Corsair Memory

[Andvari]

I just built a new computer and have a few questions about my processor and ram.

Here's a brief rundown of my system:

ASUS P4P800 Deluxe
P4 2.8C 800mhz FSB w/ HT
2x512 Corsair XMS TwinX
Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb

I ran 3D Mark 03 and got a 5712, which seemed good since my system isn't OC'ed at all. But while looking at the results, it said my FSB was 200mhz. I thought I had an 800mhz FSB?

I ran WCPUID and here it is: http://www.auburn.edu/~goldema/wcpuid.JPG I see a System Clock is 200 and System Bus is 800. Is the 200 what is shown in the 3DMark?

 

[fredtam]

Yes . The 200Mhz FSB is quad pumped. 4X 200Mhz + 800Mhz.

 

[sman789]

with that setlled, start overclocking everything now

 

[Andvari]

Heh, I've never overclocked before, and really wouldn't know how other than messing around in the BIOS. But I don't want to end up harming my new expensive system!

Speaking of BIOS, 2 new questions!

http://www.auburn.edu/~goldema/cpuz2.JPG
My AGP Aperture is at 128. I bumped it up to that from its default of 64. What would be the optimal setting for that?

http://www.auburn.edu/~goldema/cpuz3.JPG
And now in regards to my memory. It says 200mhz Frequency... But my RAM is DDR400. Is it multiplied by two also, or do I need to change some setting? And what about that 2.5/3/2/6? Is that good?

Feel free to give me some good overclocking tips since I basically know nothing about it heh. What all can I mess with anyway? Processor? RAM? Vid card?

 

[sman789]

only way to really damage your system is prolonged usage of high voltage to ur proc...
you cant really do anything bad now that the hardware setup is done

128mb is perfect for the agp
ddr400 runs at 200x2 so yes thats right.

Ocing ur machine is pretty simple....it depends how high you wanna go tho....keep it 1:1 ratio and raise the FSB for low overclocks

or 5:4 for higher oc's

3:2 you'll prolly never need

 

[fredtam]

Lock your pci frequency.

 

[Andvari]

I don't know what those ratios mean, nor how to lock the PCI frequency =p And sorry about that previous post, I didn't realize the links weren't, well, links. As far as the voltages, might I need to up the voltage if I were overclocking anyway? If not, what purpose does it serve?

 

[fredtam]

First off the speed of your cpu is going to be 14x whatever you set the FSB at. Right now you are at 2800Mhz which is 14X 200. If you were to go into the BIOS and select user defined and set your FSB to 230 your new cpu speed 3220MHz or 3.22GHz. I suuggest you go up in small increments.

The ratios are the ratio between the cpu and the memory . When you are at a 1:1 ratio your cpu and memory are in synch. When you get into higher overclocks your ram may not be able to keep up and you would change it to 5:4 to allow for the memory to run slower. This means if you raised your FSB to 250 (3.5GHz) your ram would be running at 200Mhz. This means you would have to achieve an overclock of 3.2GHz for your ram to be running at its rated speed provided you are using DDR400.

As far as voltages go you may need to bump up the vcore in order for your cpu to be stable at higher speeds. Do that in the smallest increment your BIOS will allow until the cpu is stable. You will have to do this with the ram voltage also to get your memory to run at the higher speeds.

You may also have to relax the timings on your ram to get them to work at higher speeds. Look around for the timings others are using to achieve the OC you want.

The PCI/AGP ratio should be locked. If these settings get too far out of spec your add in cards will not work properly and it will not detect your hard drives.

 

[KhanAlf]

Originally posted by: fredtam


The PCI/AGP ratio should be locked. If these settings get too far out of spec your add in cards will not work properly and it will not detect your hard drives.

What does the agp aperature actually do/set? I have been trying to oc' my computer slowly but I crash every now and again. Problem is that I dunno what exactly is the problem; is it my ram, mobo, heat, vcard, etc. I am now tweaking one component at a time to try to isolate the instability.

Anyway, learning about the bios is hard w/o someone who is there with you. I think I have half a grip on all the possible options but the agp aperature is still unknown to me. What's it's function? For a Ati 9700 Pro AIW, what should it be set to? Is setting it higher dangerous or possibly detrimental in any way?

Thanks for your advice -).

 

[Mickey21]

As worded by Gateway Computers:

"The AGP aperture is a logical memory address range used by the video graphics subsystem. The AGP aperture size is programmed by the BIOS Setup Utility prior to starting to the operating system. The default is 64 megabytes (MB). This is a size that is considered okay for Windows 98. A 256 MB aperture size is added as an option if the operating system has a failure when set to 64 MB.

The programmed size (64 MB or 256 MB) does not represent an actual physical memory size. It represents a range of memory addresses. The graphics controller can use both local (memory on the controller) and computer memory as primary video memory, given the very large video memory size required to efficiently render 3D objects using computer memory. Graphics memory must be physically contiguous. Since Windows allocates memory in random pages, graphics structures rendered in computer memory are not actually physically contiguous. The chipset solves this situation by supporting a memory mapping table called the Graphic Address Remapping Table (GART), and the AGP aperture. GART programming allows memory accesses to the pages within the aperture to be remapped to the physical pages allocated by Windows."

My personal reccomendations would be to set it to no more than half your RAM size amount. Most motherboards dont allow more than 256MB AGP aperture size anyways...

Also found:
"If using an AGP graphics card it is generally advised to set the AGP aperture to half the system RAM - i.e. set to 32MB with 64MB of RAM. That said, with modern graphics cards with increasing amounts of memory, the role of the AGP aperture (which allows the card to share system memory for holding textures) is of decreasing importance. With modern graphics cards with 32MB or more of onboard memory you need not set the AGP aperture above 32MB (although you may need 64MB to complete the 3DMark benchmarks). That said, setting the AGP aperture at 16MB or below can cause AGP to fail to work properly and cause serious performance hits and setting the AGP aperture to a value greater than the available system memory will cause your machine to crash."


You can find a wealth of information at the following link:
http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/aperture-size/index.shtml

Man google is a great tool... You might want to check them out sometime : www.google.com

 

[fredtam]

Originally posted by: KhanAlf

Originally posted by: fredtam


The PCI/AGp ratio should be locked. If these settings get too far out of spec your add in cards will not work properly and it will not detect your hard drives.

What does the agp aperature actually do/set? I have been trying to oc' my computer slowly but I crash every now and again. Problem is that I dunno what exactly is the problem; is it my ram, mobo, heat, vcard, etc. I am now tweaking one component at a time to try to isolate the instability.

Anyway, learning about the bios is hard w/o someone who is there with you. I think I have half a grip on all the possible options but the agp aperature is still unknown to me. What's it's function? For a Ati 9700 Pro AIW, what should it be set to? Is setting it higher dangerous or possibly detrimental in any way?

Thanks for your advice -).

First off set the agp aperture to 128Mb to match your card (9700 128Mb).
Secondly what is being talked about when they say lock the AGP/PCI is the "AGP Ratio" which can usually be found in the same section as the FSB settings. This is the ratio between your CPU:AGP: PCI. If you increase the clock speed each of these settings increase. If it deviates too far from the 66MHz for the AGP and 33Mhz for the PCI bus your add in card will not work. If you set it to fixed this keeps the AGP/PCI frequencies at 66/33. There are other ratios but kepping it fixed is best starting out.

Man google is a great tool... You might want to check them out sometime : www.google.com

How can you reccomend Google if your not qualified to use it. You did a search and the only thing you came up with is some ancient stock answer from Gateway. If you had read the post you would have realized information on the aperture is not what he really needed. He was confused. I hope you don't set up your PC as per Gateway instruction or you would not be overclocking at all. You reccomend a setting because they do. You are not as brilliant as you think you are A$$hat.

 

[KhanAlf]

Thanks for the information. Helps to build a knowledge base about such technical aspects that I would have a very hard time finding anywhere else. I come from a financial/economic background so as interesting as computer science and engineering is, it's all greek to me unless I manage to learn things in digestable bites.

When I go home, I will change my settings to 128. Thanks again