Problem with first OC?

[Toddo97]

I'm in the middle of my first OC with a 170 that I bought a little over a year ago and am now finally getting around to OC it. I've had the CPU at a little over 2.4 GHZ (from 2.0) at 1.375v. I was expecting to be able to hit 2.6 at stock so I'm a little disappointed.

My results from an HTT of 240, CPU multi of 10 and a 5/6 divider gave me an Aquamark score of 92,801 and a 3DMark05 of 8118. These were the best results I was able to get after a few combinations equaling 2.4. I just bumped the VCore to 1.4V, changed the HTT to 250 and memory divider to 9/10 (after loosening the timings from 2-3-2-5 to 2.5-3-2-5) to hit 2.5. Now my Aquamark score is 93,216 (not as much of a jump as I was hoping), but my 3DMark is now 6,463! That's over 1000 lower than I hit before I started trying to OC. Did I screw something up--that can't be normal can it??

Remember, first time OC--I've looked at the guides, but am probably doing something stupid. I did disable C&Q already. My temps are good (under 50 at load). Any help is very appreciated!!

 

[GeezerMan]

Find the limits of the CPU and the ram separately.

So when testing the CPU limits, take the ram real low, like a 100 divider. This will take the ram out of the equation while you test the CPU limits.
After you find the CPU limits, find the ram limits by setting the CPU low, like set the CPU multiplier to something like 7, then take the ram higher and test for ram errors.
You can sometimes encounter overclocking "holes" like I did, where my ram would run at a divider of 166, but not 133. Odd, but can happen.

 

[Toddo97]

I think I did that correctly already--I was able to get the cpu up to 2.6, but that was at 1.525V and I didn't feel comfortable w/ the temps or that much voltage so I backed it off. I was only able to get the ram up to 210 MHz with the default timings and a VDimm of 2.7. Once I loosened the timings a tiny bit, I was able to get it to 218 MHz so I could raise my HTT on my most recent OC setting.

 

[GeezerMan]

You could have a Opty 170 that just won't go higher. My Opty 165 does 2.6GHz on stock volts. Your 1.525V is getting up there, though some do it if the temps are OK.

 

[GeezerMan]

delete

 

[Cybercraig]

That's way too much voltage. I wouldn't feed a dual-core anything over 1.45v. What is your stepping?

 

[Toddo97]

I dropped the HTT to 246 so I'm running 2.46 at 1.4V. I just hit a little over 92K on Aquamark, but am still under 7K on 3DMark05 (which is still below my pre-OC score). My Opty is a CCBWE 0536 which I knew wasn't one of the best ones but I still expected to hit 2.6 on stock. I have a 5/6 divider running right now. Would it help any by really loosening up my memory timings to hit a 9/10 divider? I won't be able to hit 1:1 due to crappy memory OC'ing potential.

 

[betasub]

Just a couple of things to check in BIOS:

Have you lowered your HTT multiplier (default 5x for HTT 200)? 3x is a good vaule while you are pushing for HTT 250+.

Have you set your memory timings manually? Leaving in AUTO/SPD can lead to the BIOS selecting too tight timings because it doesn't take your increased HTT into account: it might be reading the SPD values for PC2700/2100.

 

[Toddo97]

I've got my HTT multi at 3x already. My ram timings are set at 2.5-3-2-5 (from the default 2-3-2-5). Other than those main timings, there are some settings sitting on auto, but I have no idea what to hard set them to. Any advice? Thanks again

 

[Cybercraig]

If you are running MB frequency at 246mhz your HTT multiplier should be set at 4 not 3. You have a significant underclock at 738mhz instead of 984mhz.

 

[imported_SLIM]

Couple thoughts:
Have you made sure your not having errors at the speeds your benchmarking your system at (Orthos/memtest stable over several hours)? I know you aren't much beyond stock, but the DFI boards are very particular about memory and can lead to errors that are dropping your scores. I had to work for a while at finding the best performing and most stable memory settings (good guide at DFI street describes the huge list of memory timings as you really shouldn't use auto/spd on a DFI board). I would think HTT 4x, 250MHz fsb, and 4:5 divider would be pretty nice for what you're trying to do.

BTW, once you get your OC where you want it, you can enable CNQ as long as you are using the 10x multiplier and use a % increase in cpu volts (5-10%) depending on your stock volts.

Also, consider using 3dmark06 instead of 05 as the older version sometimes gave flaky results.