O/C X2 4400+ : Getting nowhere

[Markbnj]

Ok, so I had been running my 4400 at 230 htt x 11, 4x ht, 166 ram, 1.475 vcore, and stable in Windows for several weeks. Passed Prime95 too, although I had been thinking all along that 1.475 was a high voltage for that moderate o/c.

Then the other night the ATI driver installation for the TV Wonder blew up and rebooted the machine. I cranked back the o/c to stock and reinstalled the drivers. I don't know for sure the failure was related to the o/c, but figured it was worth a shot. Driver reinstall succeeded and I left it at stock while I pondered what to do.

Tonight I decided to mess with it again. Set up as described above and seemed stable. Went to 235 htt x 11. Failed to boot windows at 1.475 vcore. Bumped to 1.5v and it booted windows. Failed prime 95. Bumped it to 1.525v and it booted windows, failed Prime 95. I lowered the HT mult. to 3x, and bumped the HT volts by .1. Booted windows, failed Prime 95. Dropped back to stock.

Anyone have an idea of which way to go next? 1.525 vcore seems a very high overvolt to not get a stable overclock out of this thing. HTT and ram speeds are out of the picture, AGP locked. Maybe this chip just isn't going to do anything better than 230.

 

[govtcheez75]

Raise mem voltage. For some reason, I couldn't get my X2 3800+ stable until I got my memory up to 3.1v (but it's running 1:1 at 250mhz at pretty tight timings). You could also try lowering the multiplier to 10 and try upping the FSB. I've had chips that preferred higher FSB over higher Multipliers before. Also, my X2 is more stable with 1.45v than with 1.5v.

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks. I'll give that a try tomorrow night. I assumed that with the ram running 20 mhz below spec that wouldn't be an issue.

 

[govtcheez75]

Keep in mind that you might have hit "the wall". It seems that 2.5ghz is the sweetspot for most X2 chips.

 

[seanp789]

Im volting at 1.52v the large 1MB caches on the 4400 are very power sensitive. if you want stability at higher speeds i would keep the volts up. I have had no problems at that voltage for the last couple months. I am pretty certain it lowers the total lifespan of the chip though. So even if it cuts the life in half you still have about 5 years or more at a heavy OC level.

 

[chinkgai]

Originally posted by: govtcheez75
Keep in mind that you might have hit "the wall". It seems that 2.5ghz is the sweetspot for most X2 chips.

at around 2.5-2.6 is where most users encounter heat problems (around 1.475-1.55v), i think the chips can go farther on better cooling

 

[Hacp]

I personally won't go above 1.5. It seems to dangerous too me, especially since the stock voltage (on DFI) is 1.38... I also seem to hit a wall at around the 2.64 area at 1.43 volts. More voltage won't give enough speed increase. You really have to have two really good cores to get above 2.7 .

 

[Markbnj]

[I personally won't go above 1.5]

Yeah, I feel the same way. Gonna run this chip at 2.53 @ 1.475 and call it a day.

 

[Markfw]

I did. Its been at 2550 for 3 months or more now rock solid at 1.475v, 50c with both core at 100%

 

[argoldst]

Would someone please post their full oc settings using the 4400+. I would love to be stable at 2500. I am running x2 4400 with asus premium sli mb and ocz plat ram.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: argoldst
Would someone please post their full oc settings using the 4400+. I would love to be stable at 2500. I am running x2 4400 with asus premium sli mb and ocz plat ram.

My settings may not help you, since all motherboards are different, and different ram acts differently. But I have PC4000 OCZ, running 232 at 1:1 2.5,3,3,8 voltage = ~1.475 HTT=4, 1T.

 

[seanp789]

Originally posted by: argoldst
Would someone please post their full oc settings using the 4400+. I would love to be stable at 2500. I am running x2 4400 with asus premium sli mb and ocz plat ram.

I have a similar setup. ASUS SLI deluxe and the OCZ plat ram. The 2 biggest obstacles in X2 ocing appear to be heat and vcore. What kind of cooler are you using? If you are using the 1GB modules for your OCZ RAM they are going to be weak in ram overclocking. Be sure to change your ram divider accordingly.

Ok, so as you requested... BIOS settings... These should be similar numbers for you but not exact


PCI bus LOCKED (33.33Mhz)
FSB 227
HTT 4x
Ram divider: 14 (i.e. DDR333)
RAM 2-3-2-5 1T
RAM voltage AUTO
CPU voltage 1.45v

The higher you go the more voltage you will need. higher volts wont kill the chip but as you can see from the other X2 users its not recommended for regular use.

 

[argoldst]

Was your ram numbers for the 1 gig ocz plat? i have 2 sticks (1 gig each) of ocz platinum.

Right now, I am using nos with a 10% overclock (which brings me to 2400).

Originally posted by: seanp789

Originally posted by: argoldst
Would someone please post their full oc settings using the 4400+. I would love to be stable at 2500. I am running x2 4400 with asus premium sli mb and ocz plat ram.

I have a similar setup. ASUS SLI deluxe and the OCZ plat ram. The 2 biggest obstacles in X2 ocing appear to be heat and vcore. What kind of cooler are you using? If you are using the 1GB modules for your OCZ RAM they are going to be weak in ram overclocking. Be sure to change your ram divider accordingly.

Ok, so as you requested... BIOS settings... These should be similar numbers for you but not exact


PCI bus LOCKED (33.33Mhz)
FSB 227
HTT 4x
Ram divider: 14 (i.e. DDR333)
RAM 2-3-2-5 1T
RAM voltage AUTO
CPU voltage 1.45v

The higher you go the more voltage you will need. higher volts wont kill the chip but as you can see from the other X2 users its not recommended for regular use.

 

[Markbnj]

It just makes me nervous to see 1.55 - 1.60 in cpu-z. My wife would not be in to me replacing this chip .

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
It just makes me nervous to see 1.55 - 1.60 in cpu-z. My wife would not be in to me replacing this chip .

Exactly ! You do NOT need to go over 1.475 with good air cooling to get 2.55 stable. I know, I have two of them at the same speed !

 

[chinkgai]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: Markbnj
It just makes me nervous to see 1.55 - 1.60 in cpu-z. My wife would not be in to me replacing this chip .

Exactly ! You do NOT need to go over 1.475 with good air cooling to get 2.55 stable. I know, I have two of them at the same speed !

thats a pretty general and confident claim...

 

[Markbnj]

Here's where I ended up tonight after a long evening of tweaking...

cpu: htt=230mhz x 11 (2530mhz), 1.475v
ht: 4x, +.01v
dimm: 1:1, 230mhz, 3-3-3-7, 2T, +.01v (2.70v)

idle = 40-42c
load (p95 x 2, small FFT) = 64c

Not great temps, but the AS5 is still curing.

CrystalMark: 51889

Seems stable, but I only ran the last iteration of Prime95 x 2 for 30 mins. I'll exercise it more tomorrow night.

 

[INM8]

Hmmm...my x2 4400+ runs at 2420mhz stable (prime 95 for 30 hours) with a vcore of 1.3440v. Am i missing something? This cant be right, because everyone runs theirs at stock for more than this. I havent experiened any system instability, but it seems strange my one can run oc'ed at this lower vcore. Is this normal? Will running the chip at this vcore decrease performance or damage the cpu?

btw: When running prime 95 on both cores, my temps are about 43-44C. Havent tried oc'ing anymore cause im happy with the speed Maybe ill try to get higher when i finally find a game that slows it down

 

[onn2000]

My X2 3800 runs overclocked at 2.4GHz at 1.26V Vcore. It's just the luck of the draw.

 

[chinkgai]

Originally posted by: onn2000
My X2 3800 runs overclocked at 2.4GHz at 1.26V Vcore. It's just the luck of the draw.

pic or shens

 

[onn2000]

Can someone please tell me how to post pictures? The JPEG file is ready. I just don't know how to do it.

Edit: I've run two instances of Prime95 for 13 hours. Could've gone on longer but I thought that was stable enough for me.

 

[INM8]

I dont know for sure but i think you've gotta host them offsite (eg. webserver, free picture hosting) and post links.

If you dont have any means of hosting it, email it to jza-21fgATmyamail.com and i will host the images for you

 

[onn2000]

Check your email.

Edit: Thanks loads, INM8.

 

[INM8]

here we go

http://members.iinet.net.au/~naidoos/images/overclocked.JPG

 

[onn2000]

Sorry if I can't post pictures of the Prime95s running, but that was a few weeks back. The highest that I've managed to get was 2.7GHz at 1.47V Vcore, since I didn't want to go further than that.

I've seen a guy do 2.8GHz at 1.4V. Now that's impressive.