O/C - will my psu be my weak point?

[bob4432]

wondering if i should start to o/c before i get a new psu -> rig in sig. i am planning on getting a 480W antec soon, so should i just wait to o/c?

 

[Furen]

It's hard to know without knowing how much current your v12 rails can handle. If I had to guess I'd say that yes, your PSU will probably hold you back since you have a pretty power-hungry video card as well.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Furen
It's hard to know without knowing how much current your v12 rails can handle. If I had to guess I'd say that yes, your PSU will probably hold you back since you have a pretty power-hungry video card as well.

i think the 12V rail is 16A, maybe 17A...

 

[Furen]

Just one? If so then I can say yes with almost absolute certainty. The Antec TP2 380W PSU has two 16A 12v rails, by the way...

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Furen
Just one? If so then I can say yes with almost absolute certainty. The Antec TP2 380W PSU has two 16A 12v rails, by the way...

yep, just 1 12V rail, it is the 350W blue that is a couple of years old. the 480W i am looking is 2x 18A on the 12Vs

 

[bob4432]

just put in my new psu and messed around with it, just to see what i could get it too without much trouble. this is not prime stable, basically what it would boot to. i will mess with it more later but here are the highest i have acheived booting only and not prime tested so far:

2.6GHz - 8x325
2.8GHz - 9x311 (i did get a bsod after it was on for a bit, something about a usb***.sys issue)

both of these required 1.45V. my board will do a htt of 455, so is it better to do a higher htt or multiplier? also, is it better to run x4 HT (800MHz) or x5 HT (1000MHz)? not familiar with the HT/HTT terminology, will read more...

again, this is what i messed with for about 15mins and was not prime tested at all, just for booting and figuring out the bios...

 

[Furen]

there's no point to running a high HTT since it does not help performance at all (having a high HTT will require you to use a lower HT multiplier so your link to the motherboard wont be faster anyway. You should set your HT multiplier to 1000/HTT rounding down (some mobos can do a bit over 1000MHz but there's really no performance hit as long as your HT link is running at something like 600MHz or so).

 

[bob4432]

thanks

 

[bob4432]

ok, so far @ 2496MHz stock V and prime stable for just 1 after which i stopped it(no errors). max temps for cpu were 40C. i have to run my ram at a pretty slow speed and the way the board has it ram speed options, i am runing the cpu @ 3x277 and 3xht with the ram @ 178MHz because i know my ram will not go higher than 215MHz, which i am pretty sure the next ram option increase puts it over 215(which i have tried to get over but didn't even with 2.8V). is the ram speed that important?

also the reason i am using the 9x is so i can set the multiplier in the bios to "auto" and still use amd's power program, which will throttle down the cpu. if i have it locked at 8x and run a different htt, the power program can not throttle down. the reason i bring this up is because to get the desired result, gogar's calculator may specify a 8x multiplier, but i choose the one that is with a 9x that is highest on the list. is this a problem if the number at the far right on gogar's calculator is ~.01-.03?

any other input, or is this going down a good path?

 

[bob4432]

here is what i settled into -
9x280(stock V)
3xht
ram=210 (+.1V over stock)

this yields 2520MHz, allows me to set the mulitplier in the bios to auto and still use the amd power utility to drop it down when it can to lower the heat emission/save power and give me my 2.5GHz

i ran another couple of hours of prime95 on the blend and had no issues, tonight i will run it again for 10+hours to verify, but this is a pretty good setup.

thanks for the assistance

 

[5t3v0]

Bob
you're lucky you can get that nice oc on stock volts. My 144 takes an extra 0.15v to get 2.5GHz. What stepping is your Opty?

Does that amd power utility work ok on an overclocked system? I was keen to use it but heard it wasnt compatible with overclocking, or is that just when the vcore is not set to auto? Do you have to have Cool 'n' Quiet enabled for it to work?
cheers
Steve

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
Bob
you're lucky you can get that nice oc on stock volts. My 144 takes an extra 0.15v to get 2.5GHz. What stepping is your Opty?

Does that amd power utility work ok on an overclocked system? I was keen to use it but heard it wasnt compatible with overclocking, or is that just when the vcore is not set to auto? Do you have to have Cool 'n' Quiet enabled for it to work?
cheers
Steve

stepping is CAB2E 0545 MPMW

as far as the amd tool, as long as you have the V and clock set to auto, it will change it, when i changed my multiplier to 8 or changed the V, it would not change them. that is why i have stayed at 2.5 although i know i could go higher, just want to have it clock down.

as far as i know, i don't have cool n quiet, i have not seen it in the bios nor did i install it. is cool n quiet in the bios(just switched back to amd after using P4 for 1.7yrs)...?

i d/l this utility off the amd website

 

[5t3v0]

CnQ is enabled through the bios but in winxp you turn it on by setting the power option to 'Minimal Power Management' after installing the AMD driver. I just set it up after posting my last message and am quite impressed with it. It works fine even though I have my vcore set manually. When my cpu is idle it clocks down the multiplier to x5 giving a cpu speed of 1.4GHz and the vcore drops to btween 1.26 - 1.28v. When I fire up Prime95, the multiplier returns to x9 and the vcore to 1.55v. This Epox board is overvolting the cpu by 0.03v at idle so this will really help compensate for that.

So what tool are you using for this? It certainly sounds similar to CnQ but I havent read anywhere that your board supports it.

BTW I noticed that your board has a 1600MHz HT/LDT but that you are running it at 1680. Is that stable? If I go slightly above 2000MHz on my board, it wont even boot windows.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
CnQ is enabled through the bios but in winxp you turn it on by setting the power option to 'Minimal Power Management' after installing the AMD driver. I just set it up after posting my last message and am quite impressed with it. It works fine even though I have my vcore set manually. When my cpu is idle it clocks down the multiplier to x5 giving a cpu speed of 1.4GHz and the vcore drops to btween 1.26 - 1.28v. When I fire up Prime95, the multiplier returns to x9 and the vcore to 1.55v. This Epox board is overvolting the cpu by 0.03v at idle so this will really help compensate for that.

So what tool are you using for this? It certainly sounds similar to CnQ but I havent read anywhere that your board supports it.

BTW I noticed that your board has a 1600MHz HT/LDT but that you are running it at 1680. Is that stable? If I go slightly above 2000MHz on my board, it wont even boot windows.

thanks for the info.

the tool is from this page on the amd site, the AMD Opteron? Processor PowerNow! Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Version (exe) 1.2.2.2 and after i read your post, i messed with it and it appears to just change the settings in the power area of windows. but it gives a little icon in the task bar indicating cpu usage. when i do overvolt in the bios, it doesn't seem to drop the V down as it does when i have it set to auto. then i drops it down to 1.0-1.1 @ 1400 when idle.

as for the m/b and the 1600MHz ht, with the newest bios they upped it to 2000MHz, which i did try and it was stable at that speed.

 

[5t3v0]

Yeah, its the same tool as on my mobo CD but it doesnt give me an icon or gui though. Did you install the dashboard software as well? So it looks like your board does support CnQ.

That was good of Gigabyte to increase the HT. I assume from your memory speed that you've got more than the 4 basic memory dividers too. And I noticed you have a HT voltatge option in your BIOS. Looks like a good board for the price. Some better features than my Epox anyway. I've had 2 Gigabyte boards in the past & liked both of them.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
Yeah, its the same tool as on my mobo CD but it doesnt give me an icon or gui though. Did you install the dashboard software as well? So it looks like your board does support CnQ.

That was good of Gigabyte to increase the HT. I assume from your memory speed that you've got more than the 4 basic memory dividers too. And I noticed you have a HT voltatge option in your BIOS. Looks like a good board for the price. Some better features than my Epox anyway. I've had 2 Gigabyte boards in the past & liked both of them.

for the ~$65 i paid for the board, i can't ask for anything more. i had a dual p3 gigabyte board a while ago and was hoping their quality was still good, which, so far it is. for a cheap board it has quite a few options in the bios, especially since the newest bios supports the 144, 146 and 165. the only areas of issue is the ram V, you can only add .1 or .2, which i think puts you at 2.8V max.

here are some pics i took during the build. as you can see the ram slots are very close, which to some may be a issue. but again, for $150 for the cpu and $65 for the board, even at stock it was faster in many areas compared to the p4 @ 3.0GHz i replaced with it. encoding with the opteron @ stock speeds, the p4 beat it, but not sure how it will go now since i gave the opteron 700 extra MHz. i guess i have a "FX54" on the cheap

 

[5t3v0]

Bummer on the vdimm, 2.8v isnt really enough. I've got my GEIL value ram up to 229MHz at cas 2.0 using 3.05v. My dimm slots are exactly the same as yours but I haven't had any heat issues (yet). I do have a well ventilated case though. Can that OCZ not run at 1T command rate even on 2.8v?

I was disappointed at first with 2.5GHz but when you do the sums, its a 39% overclock and a far bigger bang for buck than any other processor can achieve. I worked out that to get the same bang for buck on an Opty 146 (based on UK prices), it would have to be overclocked to 3267MHz! No chance.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
Bummer on the vdimm, 2.8v isnt really enough. I've got my GEIL value ram up to 229MHz at cas 2.0 using 3.05v. My dimm slots are exactly the same as yours but I haven't had any heat issues (yet). I do have a well ventilated case though. Can that OCZ not run at 1T command rate even on 2.8v?

I was disappointed at first with 2.5GHz but when you do the sums, its a 39% overclock and a far bigger bang for buck than any other processor can achieve. I worked out that to get the same bang for buck on an Opty 146 (based on UK prices), it would have to be overclocked to 3267MHz! No chance.

the ram is running at 1T, but it is the performance series meaning at most i can get is 210-215 out of it, so that is why it is only at 210. ocz told me that was about all i could get regardless of how much ram as they said the performance series doesn't do well with more V anyway.

the reason i stopped at 2.5 is because i wan't the throttle feature to work. @ 2.6 i need to add .025V, which means the power program can't cut back the V...

i feel the 144 is one hell of a bang for the buck cpu.

as far as case, i switched back to a smaller case, now i am back into a original antec lanboy. pretty small compared to the full size cases i have been using, but the thing seems cool (temp wise) even thougth i only have 1 80mm in the front, i modded the case to put a 70mm in front of the hdds and a 80mm out back, then the 120mm in the psu and the 92mm in the zalman hsf setup.

getting a 146 to 3.2GHz would be hard, i haven't read of anybody doing it on air, or even liquid but i would think you could, maybe

 

[5t3v0]

In both your screenshots of the BIOS Intelligent Tweaker page, it shows your "CPU / DDR clock Ratio" as "2 / 2". That's the reason I thought you had the ram at 2T. Its a good job you dont have GEIL memory on that board. These sticks love voltage. They're rated up to 2.95v out of the box!

I'm surprised the CnQ works with my manually adjusted voltage. I'm glad it does though. Its a really good feature.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
In both your screenshots of the BIOS Intelligent Tweaker page, it shows your "CPU / DDR clock Ratio" as "2 / 2". That's the reason I thought you had the ram at 2T. Its a good job you dont have GEIL memory on that board. These sticks love voltage. They're rated up to 2.95v out of the box!

I'm surprised the CnQ works with my manually adjusted voltage. I'm glad it does though. Its a really good feature.

sorry, there is another option for 1T or 2T in a "hidden bios settings", you need to hit ctrl-f1 after your are in the bios to get to it, real pita

 

[5t3v0]

I remember that now. So annoying. Why do Gigabyte do that?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
I remember that now. So annoying. Why do Gigabyte do that?

i wish they wouldn't. it took me forever to change my agp aperture from 32MB to 128...

 

[bob4432]

to completely tidy this thing up, which option should i set for a torture test and deem it "stable"? i have tested the ram before i my p4 machine, so should i do the small or large ffts? thanks in advance

 

[5t3v0]

bob, to test my memory, I ran memtest overnight - about 20-30 passes depending how long you spend in your bed, and then the same, about 8 hours, of Prime95 large or blend FFTs. Small FFTs only stress cpu and L2 cache I believe. I'm not saying this is the right amount, its just what I used. There's so much conflicting info out there but generally everyone agrees that the longer you run these tests, the better. In the end it comes down to what you're comfortable with. I dont like leaving these things running for days as I feel it's just wasting hardware life. Silly really considering I'll have upgraded long before anything dies of old age.