P3 700 cB0 plus Abit BF6, first attempts at OC'ing

dudleydocker

Golden Member
Jul 5, 2000
1,026
0
0
After dilligently reading many posts for the past weeks, I purchased a P3 and was lucky enough to get a cB0 from Onvia. I have sucessfully changed the board voltage to 1.9v; the system boots OK. I still only see 700 in CPUID. What other utilities should I be using to measure system performance? This is my first venture into overclocking, so be nice! Any help or references to previous threads would be much appreciated. Rest of system: Corsair 128 MB PC133 ECC, Seagate Cheetah 18 GB with Adaptec 19160 SCSI card, Matrox G400.
 

Plester

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 1999
3,165
0
76
your voltage at 700 should be 1.6v if the chip is a socket type, or 1.65v if a secc2 (slot 1), not 1.9v.
 

Viper GTS

Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
38,107
433
136
I'd say that Cheetah is undoubtedly causing your problem. Send it to me, & your computer will be much faster. E-mail me for shipping info.

;)

Viper GTS
 

mechwarrior

Member
Dec 8, 1999
132
0
0
For utilities:

Sisoft Sandra is great. Goto
http://www.zdnet.com/
and do a search for "sandra".

or

3D Mark 2000 will benchmark your whole system, but a 20meg download.
http://www.tweakfiles.com/

As for your Oc'ing, I'm not familiar with the Abit BF6. You should be able to go into bios and set the FSB to manual or user define, then choose the FSB. Your manual should go into this a little.

 

garrison

Member
Jul 8, 2000
121
0
0
???
only 700MHz with a cb0??
you have probably left in 'enable' the 'speed error hold' option in the bios (softmenu section),
set it to 'disable' and you should hit at least 933 with standard cooling and little overvolt.
I've got this option in my Abit BH6 1.1, and you should have too.



 

Plester

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 1999
3,165
0
76
here's what you need to do - during bootup, after you video card bios info, you will get the award bios screen - read what the bios revision is at the bottom of the screen - there will be a bunch of numbers, a date, and a 2 letter code, ie PO, QJ, RV. if yours is a p or n code then you should flash your bios to RV - fairly simple process if you follow abit's instructions.

after the flash - reboot as per instructions, and enter the bios and start setting things up. go into cpu setup: set fsb to user define, and select 133. multiplier to 7, set your pci divider to 1/4, agp to 2/3, agp mode to normal, leave voltage at 1.6 or 1.65, i/o voltage at 3.5(abit's def.). everything else at def. hit esc to get back to main menu. select cmos setup - here is where you config your ide drives - cd, etc. since you have a scsi drive just set whereever you cd is to auto/auto, make sure you a-drive is set right, esc. next advanced bios. obviously you are already booting from scsi, so that is fine, most def. in there are fine. esc. advanced chipset(i think) for safety set your memory settings to 3-3-3, precharge to disable, evrything else at def. (you can probably run that ram at 2-2-2, enable). esc.

save reboot - hopefully you are at 933. if you can't get past post, boost voltage to 1.7, then 1.75, etc. 1.9v won't kill you if you have good cooling but you might want to stop at 1.85. if all don't get you to 933, try decreasing fsb 1 mhz at a time (the beauty of the bf6)

good luck

ps. let us know how she goes - all the bios info i gave was from memory, but i f... with my bf6/650E (at anything from 866 - 936)constantly, and am fairly familiar with it, just the menu titles might be off.



 

LarryJoe

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 1999
2,425
0
0
Do what Plester said and you should be good to go. Also, the default voltage is 1.65v for either the slot 1 of FCPGA.

LJ
 

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,313
7
81
This is simpler than that. He posted in my thread this morning, and he isnt changing the FSB. First of all...put your voltage back to its default, and just increase the FSB. You shouldnt have any problems running at 133Mhz, with a 7x multiplier. Thats 933Mhz. If it isnt stable, then increase the voltage, but do it in small increments! You shouldnt have to go above 1.75V, but of course it depends on the chip, as they are not all created equal.

So..to start off with, put the voltage back to default, and increase the FSB.
 

MustISO

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,927
12
81
My experience with the same CPU/Mobo combo has been much worse. I got a 700E CB0 stepping CPU. I bought a BF6 and upgraded the BIOS to the latest. My setup is:

700E, Retail with retail FC-PGA HS/Fan
BF6
Micron PC133 CAS 2
LeadTech GeForce DDR
MX300 sound card

When I run at 110 FSB or 115 FSB everthing is fine. All at 1.65v.
At 124, I can barely boot. I even cranked the volts up to 1.80v
The screen gets garbled and locks at anything about 120Mhz FSB. The CPU is staying cool according to the BIOS. I'm using an ABIT Slocket III. The PCI Bus is at 1/4 and AGP is at 2/3. I'm almost willing to try a PCI video card.
Does this CPU just suck. I'm gonna try my ASUS P3B-F tonight.

MustISO

 

Plester

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 1999
3,165
0
76
you try setting your agp mode to normal yet? never heard of a unstable cpu giving a garbled screen - sounds like an agp/video card issue to me.
 

MustISO

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,927
12
81
I have two PCI video cards I can try to just rule out anything else. Maybe set my ram to 3-3-3.
Any programs out there that can test my memory's stability at speeds over 133Mhz?
 

LarryJoe

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 1999
2,425
0
0
Well I wouldn't worry about your memory just yet as it is 133 and you can't even get near 133. I think it is your LeadTek DDR, I had one and it couldn't handle an 88 agp bus. I had to run it at 84 with a 126 fsb. That problem was solved very quickly when I popped in the CL2 GTS.

LJ
 

Plester

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 1999
3,165
0
76
before you go to the trouble of tearing out your card, go into your bios and set the agp mode to normal(=agp1x), and your aperture to 16mb or less(=turning off agp texturing), and reboot.

sadly for you i recall reading that the leadtek gf was one of the few that wouldn't tolerate much goosing of the agp, and LJ obviously helps confirm this, but my old tnt2 wouldn't run 3d over 120fsb(80mhz agp) until i turned off agp2x, then it would run all the way up to 100mhz agp, and was very slightly slower than agp2x(using Q3 as a benchmark). good luck - (sell the card...)
 

LarryJoe

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 1999
2,425
0
0
Plester is right, you may as well disable a few things to see if it is the culprit, if you still have problems, definitely throw in that PCI card so you know for sure.

Personally, I didn't disable sidebanding, go to 1X or go to an aperture of 16mb or less. I am not about to tweak down a card that cost me $280. When I discovered it was the card, I had it on e-bay within minutes.

LJ
 

MustISO

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,927
12
81
Well, I did a little more testing last night. It was NOT the video card or the AGP bus. Sadly it was the memory running at 2-2-2. Once the memory was set to 3-3-3, I was able to run over 124Mhz FSB. I was told this was CAS 2 memory but I'll have to look up the chips to be sure. I'm still having problems getting over 920Mhz but I'll work on it slowly.


Thanks

MustISO
 

Ubetcha

Junior Member
Jun 27, 2000
8
0
0
700e cb0
Be6-2
GF2/64mb (Hercules)
128mb Infineon 222

Goes to 933 @ 1.7 volts and will run prime95 all night without a hitch, but as soon as you do something graphic like 3dMark, it will lock up the screen. (i.e mouse still moves but only Ctl/Alt/Del works)

At 119 fsb all is well.. 6341 3dmarks

This sounds like the GF2 is having the problem. Opinions?
 

Plester

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 1999
3,165
0
76
yup, i tried 2 diff. 32mb proph. IIs, and neither was crazy about agp speeds in the 89mhz zone. try setting agp mode to normal in the bios, if that doesn't work, lower you agp aperture to 16mb. if either of those work then your card ain't happy at high agp speeds. i don't think sidebanding is enabled on that card, but if it is disable it - powerstrip works.
 

Ubetcha

Junior Member
Jun 27, 2000
8
0
0
Interesting results.. Setting the AGP aperture to 16 will allow 3dMark to run when I'm overclocked to 933@133fsbb. However, 3dmark runs slower than crap. When it finished, it reported I was running a 125mhz CPU and the resulting 2100 3dmark score is unacceptable performance. Setting it to 32/64/128/256 will cause 3dMark to freeze up. Setting it to 4/8/16 it will run, but horribly slow..

Ideas?

700e@933 1.7volts
BE6-II
128mb cas2
Herc GF2/64mb
 

Plester

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 1999
3,165
0
76
did you try the agp mode at 'normal' and leave your aperture at 64mb. see if that works

the reason you have such low scores is that by setting the aperture to 16mb or less turns off agp texturing - not a good thing but helps troubleshoot.

the bad news is you have a card that most like ain't gonna work at high fsbs - boohoo