Overclockers Read!

[James Bond]

I've been reading forums about overclocking for weeks now and I've completely got it down, I understand it all (Which makes the entire process much much easier as you all know )

I think that one of my pieces of hardware may not like overclocking, but I'm not sure how I would determine such; either way, my computer has not responded to overclocking well at all. This suprises me because I have "a great overclocking system" according to many people.

I have never been able to functionally get my HTT above 230, when I see many people with it at about 250+. Meaning the highest I've ever OC'd my processor to is about 225x11. Now I would not complain with that, about 2.5GHz. However I have had many many problems so I decided to take it easy.

Last night I downloaded the F.E.A.R. demo online and took out my graphics card OC'ing and put it back to stock. I put my CPU to 220x11 (2.42GHz) and ran it. It ran decent, and crashed 15 minutes deep with a BSOD.

With the same set up 3DMark05 crashed with an internal error.

I'm wondering if my CPU just doesn't respond well to OC'ing. At this point should I just give up and not overclock at all so I can be stable, or try to find maybe another CPU?

The problem is that I know how to OC, I just don't know what steps to take when it doesn't work or where I should attempt to tweak my system.

Sorry for the long post, but if you have a good OC background then I would really appreciate some comments,

Tyler Lucas

 

[GuitarDaddy]

What speed are you running the ram? Are you using a divider? If not that is most likely your problem. Even 220mhz is pushing it for value ram, try using the 166 divider which will keep ram under 200mhz up to a FSB of 240mhz or so.

And what is your vcore? You may need to bump it up a little

 

[James Bond]

All of my ram is defaulted still, along with my vcore. Would changing my ram help ??

 

[Lord Banshee]

USe divider please , i am using a 166.

my Newcastle doesn't like anything above 2300 but that is a 2800+

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: Tizyler
All of my ram is defaulted still, along with my vcore. Would changing my ram help ??

Yes definately use the 166 divider. Running a divider on A64's doesn't effect performance and allows you to clock much higher. With a divider and a bump in vcore you can likely get much higher.

 

[James Bond]

Well I lowered my ram using the 166 divider and bumped up my FSB to 230.

At that point my CPU was running at 230x11=2.55Ghz.

I kept my video card defaulted, I put my vcore volage a bit up to 5.25, and left all of my other ram values default.

This time when I ran 3dmark05 it got about 15 seconds deep then froze solid (which was rather suprising to me), as in I couldn't alt-tab or anything. I restarted, lowered my FSB to 225, and here I am now.

Any ideas what went wrong there?

I really appreciate your help guys, thank you

 

[uOpt]

What do people consider a safe max voltage for a Newcastle?

 

[AquaLeviathan]

Originally posted by: Tizyler
a bit up to 5.25

:Q 5.25!? I hope you meant 1.525.

Lower your HTT multiplier to 3x or 4x.

 

[James Bond]

lol yes i did mean that.

my HTT multiplier is 4x right now, any other ideas?

i just ran OCCT and it generated errors half way through with my FSB at 225

 

[theMan]

make sure your pci lock is set.

 

[James Bond]

whats pci lock?

 

[James Bond]

any more advice?

 

[James Bond]

my cpu cleared occt on 220FSB, but with the 166 ram shouldn't it be able to go higher?

 

[Concillian]

Newcastles top out in the 2.3-2.5 range. You are probably nearing the capability of the processor.

My newcastle (2800+) can make about 2.3? GHz (don't precisely remember) with some voltage increase, I think in the 1.6 to 1.65v range. You will not get the 2.6-2.7 GHz type speeds that people see with Venice cores with a Newcastle.

 

[uOpt]

My 3400+ does 2590 MHz stable at 216 * 12 at stock voltage. I have a Zalman 7700Cu at full RPMs on that one. It does that both in an Abit KV8-Pro and an Asus K8V-X (which doesn't have AGP/PCI locks so it is dangerous).

Not bad for a $200 CPU

It does 2685 MHz at 1.550 volts stable enough for an hour of Prime95 but that one doesn't survive FreeBSD's `make world`.