Opty OCing Headaches!!

[Jay25dj]

Hi people! New here to the AnandTech forums!

I'm having some problems with Ocing my new opteron, here's the story so far...

I've recently changed my Corsair PC3200XMSC2PT 2x1gb set as i thought this was limitting my potential OC. I bought some G.Skill 2GB 3200ZX kit in the end, which i have seen reviews of reaching over DDR500 which would be fine for my needs.Trouble is it doesn't seem to have helped me much. My oc will now boot in at higher FSB speeds than it did before, but i just can't get Prime95 stable at anything above 250Mhz. I've dropped the HTT mulitplier to 3, run the ram on the 166 and 133 divider and nothing is helping. I either get Illegal SUMOUT errors in a loop til Prime halts itself or it errors out with a rounding error after only a couple of mins!

I'm currently running and Opteron 146 CABYE 0540 FPBW on an Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe with 2GB of brand new G.Skill PC3200ZX. No matter whether i loosen the timings on the ram, up the cpu and mem voltage nothing i can do will get it stable!!!

If anyone can offer some advice here, all i can find about OCing Opterons is on DFI boards! Thanks people!

 

[Tweakin]

My first thought would be your PS. Looking at the other items in your rig, I can only imagine that you might be running out of juice.

 

[Jay25dj]

Hmmm, i had thought about that. Was planning on buying and SLi psu soon as will be savin up for a 2nd GTX what with Christmas just around the corner and my birthday a month later! I was wondering if my mobo wasn't up to the task as, like i said, i can only find OCing info for this cpu with DFI boards.

keep those suggestions coming!

 

[theMan]

if you do get a new psu, get a seasonic s12-500. very quiet, stable, and high quality.

 

[Big Lar]

Try sitting in bios and watch the PSU voltages for about 10 Minutes. If they are bouncing all over, and are below rated spec, you need a new PSU, if not, maybe it is ok.
You can also try watching the Core Voltage in CPU-Z for a few minutes while under a load, and look for large Sways in voltage.

If the supply seems to holding it's own, after patiently watching for dips/spikes, I would then try upping the Cpu Core voltage a notch, as long as your temps are not too high.

 

[Jay25dj]

Thats possible, it runs fine at 2.5ghz but errors out after that so i may try giving your suggestion a go. I'm raelly stupmed by this. i can get up to about 2.7Ghz with just the rounding errors, but after that i start to get the SUMOUT ones.

Seeing as the stepping i have was meant to be one of the best i thought i'd have an easier time with this! lol!! To be honest its performing below the 3200+ i took out, which i had stable at 2.6!

I'll give the power monitoring a go and see where i get.

Keep 'em coming!

Update: The cpu voltage seems to vary constantly between 1.392 and 1.44. That seems to me to be swaying around quite a bit as thats spread over 4 settings in my bios!

 

[Jay25dj]

Anyone else got any thoughts on what my problem could be?

 

[Elfear]

Seems like your cpu voltage is jumping around a lot. Mine stays at a constant 1.392V under load. Not sure if that's the problem but sounds like it might be an issue.

Try running Memtest for awhile to determone if it's the ram giving you fits or not. Just let it run through test #5 about 20 times. Other than that, do you know which bios version you have? Maybe the Opteron chip needs a newer bios on that board.

 

[Shimmishim]

try messing with your preamble and MAL settings.

try MAL 9 and preamble 6.5

opterons seem to be picky about these two settings.

also, what tref are you using?

 

[Jay25dj]

Right, run memtest test 5 through 23 cycles and no errors reported, that was with the FSB set to 280, 333Mhz mem divider and no errors reported. I'll try playing with the MAL and preamble, but don't know what i have them set at at the mo. Someone over at PlanetAMD has just suggested that it could be a problem with my 12v rail. It has an output of 14amps on the +12v1 and 15amps on +12v2 and apparently my 7800GTX needs over 20amps so would be suckin up too much power. This sound like it could be the source of the prob?

 

[Jay25dj]

So anyone else got any thoughts on the power issue here? think it could be the source of my probs?

 

[the Chase]

Not sure about power supply but I have the same memory as you and most of the ZX hates a CAS setting of 2.5. Im sure you probably have it set to 3 already as you have said you loosened timings but try it if you haven't. I'll hunt down the link at xtremesystems that has a G. Skill technician detailing all the best timings in A64 tweaker to use for this very memory. It helped me a lot and I am prime stable at 2.94/ 166 divider/ 3/3/2/6 at 2.85V and 1T. See my sig- must update for this memory yet.

Edit- Updated my sig and here's the link-
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=77205

 

[Jay25dj]

Ok, i'm getting really frustrated now! lol!! i've changed my psu to a brand new Enermax Liberty 500W modular supply, with dual 12v rails at 22amps each. Thing is, all this has enabled me to do in Prime95 is get to 2.8Ghz without Illegal SUMOUT errors, but i get rounding errors straight away no matter what the memory divider/timings are set at!!

I'm beginning to think that it my be my mobo, i bought this board on the recommendation that it was pretty much the best of the bunch (not including the DFI as i didn;t like how close the PCI-E slots are), but on the other hand it could be the cpu.

I'm tearing my hair out here, can anyone else think of anything to help me out? Not getting any better performance from this Opty than i did from my Venice 3200+!!

 

[Remorfer]

Well,

I've got the same mainboard and had the same problems with it......
It performs very poorly above about 250 Mhz with 1T, switching to 2T helps....
Overclocking with my DFI SLI-D is a lot less painless
Overclocking with the new Asus A8N32-SLI is also pretty cool, usually needs a bit less voltage for the same overclock than the DFI, the Asus however refuses 1T above 260-265 Mhz ....so you need a divider even if the RAM would allow you to work in synchronous mode....
I've been testing four Opti's 146 with these boards, for hours and hours on....have loads of time, because of pericarditis that currently prohibits any kind of physical activity... so I've had about 3 months time to fiddle around with all the settings....
Believe me, it's the board .... then again, at 2.8 Ghz, you might need to consider watercooling if you hit a brick wall, overclocked cpu's are a lot more heat sensitive.... most of the guys hitting 3 Ghz or more do it on water or phase change )
Hope this helps ;-)