Overclocking 2500+ Barton?

elbirth

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May 8, 2003
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I built myself a new system (the one in my sig) just under a month ago or so. As you may know, the stock speed is 1830mhz (or 1833...). Anyway, I went into the BIOS and upped the FSB a bit in various intervals (I think it's like 180 now or so, not sure off the top of my head, cause I won't be at the comp till this weekend). It's now running at 2090mhz by me just increasing the fsb... I've got an MSI K7N2-L motherboard with the latest BIOS update (which I think reads the CPU temp in a different way than normal, so the temps seem a bit low) and after playing Medal of Honor for about an hour or more the temperature maxed out at like 39C... it idles at like 33-34C on average as well, according to MBM5.

Anyway, I tried carrying it over 2.1ghz and when I run 3Dmark01 it'll crash and reboot part way through, so apparently that's too much for it without upping something other than the fsb.

I'm entirely new to overclocking and would like to push it alittle further if possible, but not so much that I'll need to go out and buy more cooling equipment (yet at least). I've got a Thermaltake Volcano 9 on there, with 3 intake fans and 2 exhaust on the case. Could someone give me tips on what I can do to push it some more without risking the CPU's health? Also, if you have any good links on getting into overclocking, that'd be most helpful.
 

MachoDonut

Member
Apr 28, 2003
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Your memory may be holding you back. Have you relaxed the timings? Also, what are your voltages?
 

elbirth

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May 8, 2003
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Not really sure what you mean by relaxing the timings... also, the voltages should be at stock right now... I can't say for certain since I won't be home to access the computer until Friday.
 

Mavrick007

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2001
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If you go into your bios you will see your ram settings, unless you changed them, they are probably at SPD.
It should show you what they are set at now. Lower numbers are tighter timings whereas higher numbers designate "more relaxed" timings.

You can always relax the timings so that your ram has an easier chance of overclocking a bit higher but like MachoDonut said, your ram is
starting to get pretty maxed out right now if you are running your fsb at 180+ (since default for PC2700 is 166x2) which is in the realm of PC3000.
 

elbirth

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May 8, 2003
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Hmm... I don't really want to go getting another gig of ram at pc3000/3200 after I've bought this already... I got each of these sticks for $53 each, which, with all things considered, is a pretty good price. Higher end ram is a bit more expensive, and I can't really afford to go spending almost $200 more on ram.

Anyway, isn't there something I can do with the voltages to allow the CPU to overclock more? How dangerous would something like this be in regards to the health of the CPU and heat?

Lastly, do you know about how high I could safely "relax" the timings on my ram?
 

GooGooCluster

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Mar 19, 2003
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He is not saying to buy new RAM he is saying go into your bios and change the CAS settings from what they may be (2,2,2,5,t1) or what ever yours are at, to a higher level like 2,3,3,6 or 7. This should give you more room to over clock. I really dont have much experince with this but this is what he meant.
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
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Try setting the RAM at 7-3-3-2.5... if it's still unstable, then you've hit the limit and will need to use the multiplier to overclock further... the XP2500 has a multiplier of 11, and you should be able to adjust it at least up to 12.5... if your FSB is at 180 now, you can get 2250 Mhz out of the processor by changing the multiplier to 12.5... however, above 2.2 is a little rare for XP2500's still... so you should go in small steps... maybe set the FSB to 170 and the multiplier to 12.5 and then gradually increase the FSB until it becomes unstable. Then back it down a tad and do more extensive stability testing, like 12+ hours of Prime95 while looping 3DMark.
 

elbirth

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May 8, 2003
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I guess I didn't really point out what I was saying... I know he wasn't saying I should buy new ram, I was just making a comment that I knew there were other things I could do to overclock, but wasn't sure just *what* they were, or how to do them... and I wanted to exhaust those possibilities before I think about doing something else such as upgrading RAM... but thanks for the input, I didn't know about changing the CAS settings.

When I get back home this weekend and mess with the computer some more, I'll try those things out. Thanks alot so far, guys
 

Mavrick007

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2001
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What I meant basically is that you "might" be able to get the fsb a bit higher than what you have it at now but I would not chance it too much cause you really have it at 190fsb if you are at 2090Mhz and haven't changed the multiplyer from 11. This is a decent overclock since you haven't changed ram settings and are using PC2700.

I might try pushing it a bit further just at the current settings and then see how far it can go cause the higher the fsb in an overclock is better than the higher the multiplyer if you get the same
end result (ie. 2100Mhz @ 200 fsb x 10.5 is better than 2100Mhz @ 190 fsb x 11), but it in turn might be more unstable at the higher fsb if your ram can't support it, since when you raise
the fsb you also raise the ram speed that much further out of spec.

I would see how far you can go past 190fsb using the default mult of 11, and then lower the fsb and raise the mult to see how far you can go. Like Jeff said, you can probably get a 12.5multiplyer to
work but I would expect that it will not make it to 2200 with a fsb of 176 even. I would test it at the highest fsb you can get using different benchmarks, and then try it at different multiplyers and fsb to get the highest overclock and then bench that.

Hehe Chances are that you are pretty close to your max right now so you've done your job right. ;)

If you want to start raising voltages, then don't raise the cpu or vdimm much at a time, but I would probably stay away from doing that cause on air you are getting close to the max already.
It would probably take too much voltage to raise the fsb to be of much value to you since you are so far out of spec now on your PC2700 (I'm surprised the Crucial PC2700 is actually that good).
Lowering your ram timings might not really do much since you are so far out of spec now either, it might actually lower your performance if you don't achieve that much higher of an overclock.

Heh Of course alot of this is just speculation coming from reading what other people are getting in the boards and in the databases, so if you can do better I want to know cause I'm about to make a
2500+ machine as well. This is just the order that I would try things if it was my machine that we were talking about.

My biggest concern is ram.. I want to have fast enough ram with a bit of extra room, but at the same time not pay through the nose. I was about to buy HyperX PC3000 with one of the 333fsb chips, but if I want to hit 200fsb, I would feel alot safer with PC3200 and it will give me a bit of headroom as well I imagine cause alot of PC3200 ram is going to 210-220fsb, and I can get some for a bit more in cost (about $10) for Corsair XMS PC3200C2PT.