Never ever got anywhere with OCing and now I need help.

[RockGuitarDude]

I got a little credit card happy the other day and splurged to get the A64 2800+ with free mobo deal on newegg. I got the Chaintech CT-SK8T800 with 512 MB of Kingmax PC4000 ram.

I immediately overclocked it to 1.98GHz (9 x 220fsb) on stock voltage. Every time I go higher, I corrupt my windows installation. Is this normal? Should I up the voltage and go for more? If you can't tell I really don't know where to go from here so some guidance would be greatly appreciated. How high can I go before PCI/AGP will become a problem?

In the BIOS there is a section for controlling the clock frequency. In there is a thing called spread spectrum, FSB speed, and something to the effect of pci speed auto detect (enable or disable). Does that mean if I up the voltage I can go higher without the PCI/AGP failing on me and that the sole reason for the windows corruption is lack of voltage?

I heard of people saying they were getting 2.2GHz on air with the same setup I'm using....

 

[TotalImmortal]

Many peopel get as far as 2.4GHz with the 2800+ and some volts, i'd be willing to bet that your processor can go higher with volts, that mobo is pritty sh*t and has no PCI lock so you are also overclocking your harddisk controlers, that could well be leading to windows corruption you mented...
If you got a half decient mobo with PCI lock or a PCI 33/66mhz hdd controler then i bet you'd have more luck.
The only other thing i can think of is what cooling you have on the cpu.

Try upping the volts a little and see what happend. If you still get corruption thenit is prob the HDD controlers flaking out, if it solves it then you know it was the CPU, just be carefull if you on budget cooling....

 

[dennisjai215]

1 statement

overclocking is not garunteed

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

pci locks being absent is the deathknell of good overclocking unless you have multiplier adjustment ability via the FX's. The Nvidia 250's would be better suited for overclocking fot 754 boards I would imagine

 

[imported_tss4]

I have the same setup as you except I'm using pc2700 memory. I've got my FSB to 223. I've not had luck going any further than that. My problem wasn't hd corruption, it was my crappy memory. Any faster than that and I got the blue screen. I uped my volts to 1.55 and its been rock solid at 223 though. DON'T use the spread spectrum option. I'm not usre exactly what the PCI autodetect does. My guess is that it somehow adjusts the PCI bus down, but obviously its not that simple.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

I'm waiting on upping the voltage until I get my Zalman 7000-alcu with artic silver 5.

 

[TotalImmortal]

Originally posted by: tss4
I have the same setup as you except I'm using pc2700 memory. I've got my FSB to 223. I've not had luck going any further than that. My problem wasn't hd corruption, it was my crappy memory. Any faster than that and I got the blue screen. I uped my volts to 1.55 and its been rock solid at 223 though. DON'T use the spread spectrum option. I'm not usre exactly what the PCI autodetect does. My guess is that it somehow adjusts the PCI bus down, but obviously its not that simple.

On some mobos htere is an option to run the memory async.. you could adjust the memory down to 5:4 and up the cpu some more if you have the option, also since the mem controler is intigrated there is no or very little penilty for running async unlike athlon xp.