Rookie Oc'er...Some questions....

[darkeneddays]

Hi all,

Ok, despite being into computers for years now I finally grew a pair and decided to try out overclocking. I've read countless guides before bothering but I still have a few questions. I was running a 2000+(palomino) on an 8hka+ til she died So to replace her I picked up the NF7-S(2.0). Everyone seems to rave about how this sucker OC's so I figured what the hell. Unfortunatey, the Palomino I had was not very OC friendly. I traded a co-worker an 1800+(Pally) for his 1700+ Tbred. Unfortunately, it's a tbred "A". The best I can seem to do is 166*11( 1.8vcore ).

So this brings me to my questions:

1) Is 1.8v too much? I'm running at around 41c idle on a Volcano6cu(yes, piece of crap I know) Is there a certain voltage that is kinda the "line not to be crossed"?

2) Memory timings. I have'nt tinkered with this because...well....I have no damn clue what the hell they mean. I have some Corsair PC2700 crapram that I'm running in spec(not trying to push cheap RAM). What I have now is currently running in 6-3-3-2.5. So can someone tell me what the memory timing have to do as far as overclocking is concerned?

My set-up is:

Abit NF7-S 2.0
Tbred 1700+ "Rev.A"
512 Corsair ValuRam PC2700
Volcano 6 cu HSF
Enermax 330w PSU
Radeon 9800 NP
120 WD HDD
Liteon 52x CDRW

Any and all help and advice is appreciated

 

[myocardia]

Okay, first of all, you didn't really trade up on processors, because T-bred A's don't overclock any better than Palomino's. The overclocking chips are the T-bred B's and the Bartons. If you want to see how high your chip can go, you're gonna have to relax your memory timings first, but I wouldn't expect it to go any higher. A 360mhz overclock is really very good for a T-bred A. Now, to relax your memory timings, raise them. That's all there is to it. Plus, you should have the last number at 11, not 6. It sounds crazy, but 2.5-3-3-11 outperforms 2.5-3-3-5. Anyway, you might want to try lowering the processor's mulitplier to either 10 or 10.5, and relaxing your memory timings to 3-4-4-11, and see how high you can get the fsb. The majority of the performance boost you get from overclocking is from having a higher fsb, not just from the actual clockspeed of the processor itself.

 

[darkeneddays]

Well the multiplier was locked on the Pally and I wasn't really interested in doing the unlocking trick on it. I'll see what I can do with the memory timing and try jacking the FSB a little more. Thanks.

 

[darkeneddays]

Ok, you were pretty much right...it ain't going much higher

At 10x I could get the FSB to 185 (1850mhz) 190 would boot but crash with Windows. I also tried 10.5x...but results didn't get me any higher than before.

So considering my first overclock of 11*166, is 10*185 better in terms of performance even though they both come out to right around 1.85ghz?

 

[JustStarting]

higher FSB is better. 1.8v is not too much either, as long as it stays cool. for an NF7, 41C is cool!!

find yourself a Tbred 'B' here on the forum for ~ $50. Look for a DL3TC after the CPU speed rating, with a JIUHB or an AIUHB stepping code. I've seen a few lately for ~$50 or so.

 

[darkeneddays]

Back again

Ok, 10x185 crashed with a BSOD after my 3Dmark2k1 bench.(When I pressed the "online results browser to be precise)
Dropped it back down to 10x180...seems pretty stable. Ran 3dmark just fine and did about an hour of Prime95 without and errors/warnings. I'm gonna stress it some more before I call it rock solid though.

One other question though. When do you need to up the Vdimm? I knew I needed more Vcore when I'd get no monitor signal on boot.(At least that's what worked). But I don't quite understand the Vdimm... Currently it is still at it's default 1.6v.

Thanks again