Over-clocking questions

[Zenoth]

Hey, I'll try to make this simple.

Would any of the following three BIOS settings affect in any way, shape or form CPU/Memory over-clocking ?

1) HTT Voltage
2) Motherboard Chipset Voltage
3) PCI-E Frequency

Example: Would increasing the HTT voltage potentially help for a better/more stable over-clock on the CPU and/or Memory ? Same thing for other settings mentioned above ?

Thanks.

 

[stevty2889]

1. Perhaps that would help some if you had your HTT bus overclocked, but it's generaly best to avoid doing that. You don't gain any performance by overclocking the HTT, and you don't lose any by using a divider and running it lower than 1000mhz. Basicly keep the HTT at 1000mhz or less. The divider for it is sometimes called the HTT multiplier or LDT multiplier. The default is 5x. For between 200 and 250mhz "FSB" set it to 4x, for 251-333 use 3x, and don't wory about the HTT voltage.

2. The memory controller is on the CPU itself for A64's and X2's, so generaly that won't make much of a differance, but doesn't hurt to try if you are getting some slight instablity.

3. You want to keep that locked at 100mhz. If you overclock the PCIe bus it will make things LESS stable.

 

[Zenoth]

My X2 just refuses to go above 220 FSB, it doesn't make it past the POST, it will sometimes get to a point between POST and Windows loading bar, but instead displaying a blue screen with a few lines written but it doesn't stay there for even a quarter of a second, and then it boots up again, and will do so in a loop until I access the BIOS and set the FSB back to 220 or lower.

I'm just trying a moderate OC, to 237 FSB, at 11x multiplier, that'd give me 2.6Ghz or so. Basically I'm trying to reduce my current CPU bottleneck until I upgrade my system. I have reasons to believe that the Memory is the cause of the 220 FSB "wall" that I seem to hit every time despite everything I tried. Even if what I try should work it doesn't. I tried to isolate the Memory, set it to 200Mhz from 400Mhz, at 3-3-3-3 2T, from defaults of 2.5-3-2-5 1T. I've tried to set the Memory voltage at 2.75, then 2.8, no go. I've tried to increase the CPU voltage, up to 1.450, no go. I've tried HTT multiplier at 2x, 3x, 4x ... no go.

So the only thing I left behind untouched was those three settings, namely the HTT voltage, Chipset (Mobo) voltage and then PCI-E frequency. I won't touch the PCI-E frequency, I wouldn't want to screw up anything to my brand new GTS. The HTT voltage ... well, basically it seems useless as long as the HTT multiplier is set properly according to the FSB speed, and the Mobo chipset voltage, still, I wouldn't see the use of playing around with it, according to what you've said, it wouldn't matter much.

I've always liked my X2, but I've always been more than just disappointed by its OC'ing performance. And if, like I think, the culprit is the Memory, then I'd be even more surprised. I thought OCZ made Memory that could have some OC'ing room, and I wouldn't call a 20Mhz OC anything decent. All of that would just be temporary in the end anyway, since as I've mentioned I will upgrade my system this summer when both Penryn and Barcelona are on the scene. But meanwhile ... I just had some hope, to push my X2 a little further, and make my GTS suffer less by the K8's slowness.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Set your memory to DDR333, and 2.75v and stock timings.
Set HTT multi to 4x
Bump vcore up to 1.475 or 1.5, and try uping the FSB a bit at a time.

 

[Zenoth]

Did not worked.

At those settings (which I tried before, and tried again a minute ago) I can reach my Desktop up to 226 FSB, at which all I can do is opening a few files, browsing the web and listening music, but as soon as I start up a program like SuperPi or SiSoft Sandra it hangs.

 

[jakegub]

You want to keep your (HTT x FSB) very close but typically not over 1000. So with an HTT multiplier of 4x, 250FSB is going to be approximately your upper bound. If you want higher than 250 FSB, use a 3x HTT. The instability in SuperPi or SiSoft Sandra is just an unstable overclock more than likely. You need to test your memory and cpu separately. Use Memtest86 for memory testing and Orthos, OCCD, or some other program for CPU stability. Memtest has an iso file on their website you can just burn to a cd, and it will boot into memtest automatically.

 

[reichter]

I have a similar problem. Got the same mobo and just recently upgraded to the X2 4400. My computer fails to boot just before reaching the 220 mark. I'll try some of the advice I've seen here and if I make any progress I'll let you know what I did.