Overclock screen issue, but...

eoniverse

Senior member
Sep 10, 2004
225
1
81
Well... I'm assuming it's from the OC. But not sure if it's cpu or gpu related. Or perhaps memory (but I doubt that because the memory was this high on my VIA board)

New board (ASUS A8N5X) and new EVGA 7600gt and added a bigger NB heatsink and fan... but everything else is well established parts from a previous build.

At stock voltages eventually got to 2450mhz. Memory is only Kingston ValueRam so I'm limited and use the divider at 333mhz right now. Settings are loose at 3-3-3-8 and 2T. HT = 4x. PCI set to 33.3 mhz and pci-e = 100mhz.

According to ASUS probe CPU temp = 34C and MB temp = 34C. With a small load the cpu temp rises to 37C. In my case the small load was watching a DVD on the PC. I'm certain from past testing the MB temp is high inaccurate due to sensor placement. (Because I'm in a very well ventilated Thermaltake Armor and the old VIA MB was at 29C/32 idle/load)

After a couple hours... I closed the DVD and pressed the 'start' button to go to a different program. The window opened up but the background around the shortcuts was black instead of pale blue.FWIW 'All Programs' looked perfect. I opened 2 - 3 programs but the 'start' menu screen still had that issue. It was late so I shut down for the night and didn't adjust anything else.

I looked in the BIOS. Never had a pci-e card before this. In the BIOS I see a place for pci-e mhz... but nothing for video card voltage like on the old AGP boards.

I'd appreciate some direction/opinions. Quite honestly when I overclock and run into max settings on the cpu my experience's have been locked desktop screen or program crash/instability. I've never seen this black background before... so that's why I'm leaning to a GPU issue.
 

eoniverse

Senior member
Sep 10, 2004
225
1
81
I didn't think it would be that difficult an issue to warrant no response esp since I just figured it out.

Beat it two different ways...

Lowered the HTT to 3X.

Raised the pci-e mhz to 105. (Perfer this method)

I test performance with video encoding running a program called M2PMCEncoderZX. It uses both cores and 'pins' both between 96 to 100% for the duration of the encode. I run that for several hours at a time.

With the AC on in the house my 3800x2 is at 42C load. Without AC it's at 45/46C. Idle is 32C regardless of room temp. I was able to tighten the CL timing to 2.5.

I don't game much - just edit video so CPU speed is king. If I can get to 2600 mhz air cooled stable I'll be satisfied with the perfomance gain out of this chip.

Thanks for looking and next time I won't ask such hard questions.