overclock it ?

[sal69]

hi,

i recently got myself a new system, now i wanted to give overclocking a try.
i never overclocked one of my systems so i am a real noob to this =).

so maybe someone can help me out. my system :
asus a8n-sli nforce4 board
amd athlon64 3200+
msi gf6600 gt
corsair ddr400 cl2 ram's

i tried some of the fancy bios settings, like
AI Overclock (seems to overclock by the given percentage all the time)
AI NOS (overclocks dynamically by a given percentage)

but, if i rase it above 5% it gets unstable. I know that i may have to increase voltage? but i am not quite sure...

what is the best way to overclock this baby ?


and besides that there is another problem i have. the asus board has a feature called q-fan that
dynamically adjust's the cpu, mb and 1 cha fan.
BUT if i turn it on the bios hangs up on booting (i see the asus-sli logo but it goes no further). i allready installed the latest bios version. i activated it and unplugged all fans except the mb fan, with the same result. may this be becouse i am using 120mm fans all around (2 cha 1 cpu)?

sal

 

[JohnAn2112]

Have you tried relaxing your memory timings and increasing the DDR voltage to 2.8? Also, lower your HT frequency to 4x and see if you get stable. How many volts are you giving your CPU? You can try increasing it, but stay under 1.65v.

 

[sal69]

i did not ajust any voltage settings, since i was not sure about the limmits and i dont wanna damage something.

increasing ddr voltage to 2.8 and cpu voltage to 1.65 is safe ?

sal

 

[JohnAn2112]

Those are pretty safe voltages.

 

[mickles]

1.65 is quite high if it's a winchester core. Are you running newcastle or winchester?

 

[sal69]

winchester, i also use a Thermalright XP-120.

as far as i get it i lower the multiplicator to lets say 9
and then rase the fsb and the ddr voltage ?

 

[nubreed000]

I'm having the same problem Sal. Anything over 5% on my 3000+ causes "Warning: System Boot Fail" during bootup, and if it's through NOS, then when I do something more CPU-demanding, my system just locks up. This is my first time at attempting to overclock anything, and whether I do it manually, or automatically, it locks up after a certain. I was gonna post another thread, but looks like I'm not the only noob with this problem

Also, I've asked this a couple times already but nobody answered...how high of an OC should I be able to do with stock HSF? I'm hoping for around 2.2 to 2.3...will it happen?

So you guys are saying that upping the voltage should help?

and lol@ "multiplicator" u mean multiplier right?

 

[Icepick]

Sal69 and nubreed000, ditch the automatic overclocking feature and try to do it manually IMHO. You want to make sure to start off conservatively at first and gradually increase your overclock. To begin I recommend you enter BIOS and reset all your settings to factory default. Then drop the HT multiplier from the default setting (5) to 4. HT = 4 will keep your HTT below 1000MHz up to 250 FSB. Set your DRAM divider to 166. Raise the FSB to 210 and see if it's stable. If it's not stable then you may need to relax your DRAM timings. Try setting them to 3-3-3-10. Then move on to 220 (220*9=1980). Keep raising the FSB in increments of 10 until you notice instability (in Prime95 or 3dmark). CPU and memory voltages should only be raised in VERY small increments and only as a last resort. See how far you get without touching the voltage settings first.

A lot of people are hitting 2.4GHz without much effort with their 3000+. I think you'll be able to get the processor to run at 2.2GHz (3500+ speed) easily.

nubreed000, you should be able to hit a decent overclock with the stock HSF. The amount of overclock you reach can depend on the processor and motherboard. For reference, I'm getting a 400MHz overclock with the stock HSF and my temps are reasonable. Please post back and let us know how your overclocking is going.

 

[Icepick]

Originally posted by: sal69
i did not ajust any voltage settings, since i was not sure about the limmits and i dont wanna damage something.

increasing ddr voltage to 2.8 and cpu voltage to 1.65 is safe ?

sal

sal69, I recommend you put your voltages back to default and try what I mentioned in the previous post first. Only raise your voltages as a last resort and only in the smallest increments. 2.8V is a bit high for your memory at that speed. It shouldn't need that much.

 

[nubreed000]

Thanks for the reply icepik. I'll bookmark this thread and when I get some time tomorrow I'll take another stab at it and let u know.

I'm assuming that the DRAM Divider is half of the ram speed right? Eg. my RAM is DDR400, so in BIOS it's gonna be 200mhz....correct? I've seen people say that this part is confusing on the ASUS A8N because it's labelled differently or somethin like that.

 

[Icepick]

That's right. For DDR400 your RAM divider will default to 200MHz in BIOS. If you would like a reference I'll post my current settings below.
HT Frequency: 4x
CPU Ratio: 11
CPU FSB: 237
CPU VID: 1.500
CPU Voltage: Over VID 5.0%
Memory Voltage: 2.65V
DRAM Memclock: 166MHz
Timings: 3-4-4-10-1T

I'm happy with this overclock since 2600 is FX55 speed. Going forward I'm going to try to get it stable at tighter memory timings. Feel free to PM me if you run into trouble.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I gave up on the auto overclocking options on this board, I didn't have any luck with nTune, NOS or any of the other auto features. I have however had good success using the manual overclocking features.

I,m currently running the following settings on my 3200+ (stock 2000mhz)

284 x 9 = 2558mhz cpu volts 1.584
ram @ 232.5mhz 2-3-3-5 ddr volts 2.9

HTT multi = 4
Ram memory setting DDR333

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: nubreed000
Thanks for the reply icepik. I'll bookmark this thread and when I get some time tomorrow I'll take another stab at it and let u know.

I'm assuming that the DRAM Divider is half of the ram speed right? Eg. my RAM is DDR400, so in BIOS it's gonna be 200mhz....correct? I've seen people say that this part is confusing on the ASUS A8N because it's labelled differently or somethin like that.

Thats correct on the A8N memory options are mislabled and very confusing compared to earlier nforce boards. The description of the settings say they will maintain the memory at or below the DDR settings. This is not true. The effect of the memory settings on this board are:

DDR400 will always keep you ram 1:1 as you increase FSB
DDR333 gives you a 5:6 memory divider (equivilent to the 166 setting on previous boards)
DDR266 gives you a 2:3 memory divider (ie.. 133)

 

[sal69]

hmm maybe this was a not so good idea, i came up to 220 fsb, without problems. at 230 windows denied booting.
i reset to defaults, but xp still wont boot....
some problem with active directory ....
lsass.exe reports errors about the acl-structure
is there a trick to spare me a fresh install ???

 

[nubreed000]

K, so I gave it a shot just before going to bed I got some weird results...I actually managed to boot into windows and have it run fine with the settings you have Guitardaddy (at 2.5ghz)...but the moment I restart my computer, or turn it off and on, I get System Boot Failure (and that annoying wave file plays "system failure due to cpu overclocking".) I fooled around with the CPU Frequency a bit, with DDR set to 333, and I kept getting that everytime.

Funny thing is though; whenever I got that error, I'd go into BIOS, come out and it would load into windows.

And sal69: I got a problem like that too earlier, but for some other file. I restarted my computer, set all the OC's to default and it worked. Did you try that as well?

I'm gonna try again in the morning, and this time lower the DRAM timings as well. Hopefully that'll work.

 

[sal69]

no i reainstalled, dunno what happend =), but i only installed basic xp + drivers anyway so it was not that much work.
i m gonna try it again (silly me=), maybe this time more luck

 

[sal69]

and again new install .... i think ill give up on this 4 a while i am tired of reinstalling
i switched back to the last non-beta bios 1002
maybe this helps ?

 

[Sparky19692]

mak sure that you PCI lock is set 2 things will happen eather windows willnot boot or windows scan disk will pop up with corrupt files.

 

[nubreed000]

ok, so far so good for me I think. I restarted my comp and it got past the boot sequence. These are my settings so far:

2160Mhz
Mutliplier: 9x
HTT: 240Mhz
Voltage: 1.488

And my Ram Timings are: 2-3-2-6 with the clockspeed set to DDR333 (166mhz)

I need to clear up something though, the DRAM timings, which number is what? eg. my DRAM timings are 2-3-2-6, so thats

CAS# - CAS-to-RAS - RAS Precharge - TRas

Is that it? Cause in BIOS its in a different order, and I just wanna make sure, so when I adjust the values I adjust the right ones.

edit K, I was wrong. I restarted to continue overclocking and got System Boot Failed. I changed my RAM Timings to 3-3-3-10 like Sal suggested. Windows loaded up, but I'm gonna restart now and see if it'll load up again, or will I get Boot Failure again.

BTW, which BIOS version should I be using? Cause right now I'm using the original one that came on the board. I can't update it because ASUS Update won't install on my system.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: nubreed000
K, so I gave it a shot just before going to bed I got some weird results...I actually managed to boot into windows and have it run fine with the settings you have Guitardaddy (at 2.5ghz)...but the moment I restart my computer, or turn it off and on, I get System Boot Failure (and that annoying wave file plays "system failure due to cpu overclocking".) I fooled around with the CPU Frequency a bit, with DDR set to 333, and I kept getting that everytime.

Funny thing is though; whenever I got that error, I'd go into BIOS, come out and it would load into windows.

And sal69: I got a problem like that too earlier, but for some other file. I restarted my computer, set all the OC's to default and it worked. Did you try that as well?

I'm gonna try again in the morning, and this time lower the DRAM timings as well. Hopefully that'll work.

What bios are you using? Prior to using the beta 1003.005 bios if I used clockgen to set the CPU voltage, when I rebooted it would drop the voltage and the system wouldn't boot. the 1003.005 beta bios fixed this problem. It also provides a manual PCI lock in bios. I haven't had any problems with this beta bios, but I have read many people having stability issues with it. With this board being so new, I guess anything is a bit of a gamble at this point?

 

[nubreed000]

i'm using the BIOS that was loaded onto the CPU...oh, and I dropped the CPU freq. back down to about 210 because whenever i restarted my PC, I'd get that same error.

 

[nubreed000]

Ok...I updated my BIOS to the one you have.

BTW, off-topic: but I can't seem to use the onboard LAN at all. I installed the drivers, and it keeps telling me that the LAN Cable is disconnected. I made sure in BIOS that everything is enabled, and it is. Am I missing something?

Anyways, I guess I'll try OC'ing again *sigh*

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I have never got the Nvidia lan port to work, I'm using the Marvel Yukon port with the drivers from the Asus website. I'm on XP SP2 and I've read that there aren't any drivers for the Nvidia lan that work for SP2 yet

 

[nubreed000]

2.25gigs and counting

looks like the BIOS fixed it. I restarted my comp a few times and it loaded without any problems. Now, how do I make sure that everything is running smoothly? Is ASUS Probe be enough? My temps are pretty good...hovering around 40C atm.

 

[pudds]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
I have never got the Nvidia lan port to work, I'm using the Marvel Yukon port with the drivers from the Asus website. I'm on XP SP2 and I've read that there aren't any drivers for the Nvidia lan that work for SP2 yet

Im using the nvidia lan with xpsp2 no problems. Can't get network manager to install properly though