hi all,
just thought i'd share with everyone my trials and tribulations in this semi-first overclocking experience of mine, in the hopes that everyone can take a little breather from their busy overclocking schedules and have a few chuckles at my expense.
it all started yesterday 10/21/00 saturday morning. after a sixpack of coors, which gave me the needed courage, the calming nerves and the steady hands that i would desperately need to complete this mission, i set up shop in my den room. i tried to go for the pilot's dozen, which is a perequisite before all flights, but alas, i could find no more of the frosty brew.
i had did all the preliminary work of installing the mb, video card, ram, hd, cd, etc last night after work, so today i can just concentrate on getting this sytem to work right. or so i thought.
after trying for about half an eternity to install the globalwin fop38, and some painful finger torture to say the least, i just gave up on trying to use this stupid heatsink and installed the stock heatsinkfan instead. whoever made those clips for the fop38, along with the creator of the wonder bra, should be lined up in front of the french foreign legion and be shot to death. to make a long story short on the wonderbra, the reason why i hate its creator is because i once dated a very buxom blonde, with whom i had the pleasure and privilege of undressing one of the most visually stunning lingerie outfits i had ever seen. but as soon as her bra dropped the ground... so did her breasts.... and so did my jaw... as i gasped in shock.... well anyhoo, i think everyone gets the point
so, back to my oc story. heh. i turn the system on, one beautiful beep on POST, fdisk, partition, format HD, install dos cdrom driver, install win98, and voila! everything working great at core speed of 650mhz.
i decide to mess with the bios at this point before trying to oc. i download awdflash and yaz's special bios patch which includes both mb bios and the raid bios update. install. reboot. works great. but i notice after post, the raid bios still reads version 1.0.622, whereas i thought the new version is supposed to be 1.3.0 - i later find out that the 1.0.622 *is* the newer version?? i guess the k7t faq is kind of outdated as it says the newest one is 1.0.3. since i didnt know this at the time, i flashed bios again, and on the screen it said something to the effect that the "sum of the parts program do not match, do you want to continue?" stupid me, i click yes. reboot. system now is dead. i now have the BSOD. in my case its the blank screen of death, instead of blue screen of death. tried flashing the cmos, tried making a bootable disk with the autoexec primed for auto flashing, and it still wont work. i tried everything short of using a hammer and i cant get the system to boot back up. dam! i was doing so good too. i guess this is the part where the pilot starts to wonder if having those drinks earlier had any effect on bringing about the current situation. naaaaaaaaah. never. lol.
at any rate, i go to fry's, pick up a new k7traid mb. stopped by a local computer shop to purchase a taisol heatsinkfan only to find out it was all sold out. the guy said they just got a bunch in on friday too and it was gone in 2 days. wow these things are more popular than a drunk cheerleader at a house party! they had a bunch of fop32's and chrome orbs still. so i pick up the chrome orb for about $17.50 with tax, as the fop32 is just a slightly smaller version of the finger torture device thats also known as the fop38. no thanks. i'd rather have hot monkey sex with the devil. oh wait, i did that too. it was called my ex-girlfriend. lol. j/k. no wait, i'm not bitter about the breakup. really i'm not! GODDAM BITCH!!!! oops... how'd my fingers type that? LOUSY F*CKING TWO TIMING SLUTTY ASS PIECE OF SH*T WHORE!!! goddamit, there it goes again. i think i have tourret's syndrom for the fingers.
so anyways, i install the new board and hook up the new chrome orb. wow is this thing cool looking. it looks cool in the pictures that you see on websites, but its another thing when you see it for youself. had a bit of trouble installing this as well, but nothing to bad. i didnt have to bend any capacitors to get this in, as others have stated so. so i boot up, win98 comes on, everything looks good. this time i just flash it once. and start playing with the speeds.
ok! time for some real diddley doodley wholesome fun, neighbor! i first try 700@1.5 def voltage. works great! post ok, boots into win98 ok. i try 750@1.5. same!! wow this is easy 800@1.5 post ok, but wont load win98. bump voltage to 1.575 and that did the trick! 850@1.700 and finally maxed it out at 900@1.825
ran the cpustabilitytest program. freezes at 1 min 53 secs. reboot. ran again. freezes at 5 min 46 secs. repeat. freezes at 7 mins 12 secs. hmmmm. should i have done a burn in? it seems like it gets more stable the longer it stays turned on as.
i decide to max out the voltage to 1.85 on 900mhz. bingo! stability test ran fine for 6 hrs 55 mins 10 secs
whew after a botched bios upgrade, painful and swollen fingers from installing the fop38, and some deep meaningful soul searching, (huh?) i finally got my duron 650 to run very stably at 900mhz. This is still amazingly fast for all my needs, but honestly, i'm kind of disappointed that i wasnt able to hit 1ghz. But I guess I cant really complain as the cpu came unlocked already (week23), which saved me the time and effort in having to unlock it. the tradeoff, however, is that the newer ones before week26, i think, rarely hit above 900mhz. i would've liked to have a newer one, which came locked, so i can have a better chance of hitting 1ghz. i guess every person's mileage may vary. hope this wasnt too long and rambling, but i just had another six pack before i sat down to write this so forgive me for any spelling or grammatical errors
:Q
******************************************************************
edit - well this morning when i woke up, i decided to play around with increasing the fsb a bit. i also changed some of the ram settings around. starting w/ the dram timing from HSTCLK to HSTclk + PCIclk, and DRAM TIMING of SDRAM 8/10ns to FAST, DRAM BANK INTERLEASE of Disabled to 4Way, SDRAM CYCLE LENGTH of 3 to 2 and AGP-4x MODE of Disabled to Enabled.
i then changed the fsb speed from 0 to +1 , which effectively bumped the 100mhz fsb to 101 mhz. it now ran at 910.44mhz and booted into windows! i then bumped it to +2 @ 918.72 and it works great!. but it wont boot into windows at +3 , so i set it back down at +2 , ran the stability test and it keeps freezing up after 1 to 2 mins of testing. oh well, so much for that theory... is there anything else i can do to help bump up the speed? should i change anything else while changing the FSB speed? any responses greatly appreciated!
also, the benchmarks i use to measure the speed is WCPUID and SiSoft Sandra. this reminds me of something else, i looked at my temperature last night and at both full and idle load, my cpu was at 30.0C , the MB was at 26.0C. this morning, when i woke up after leaving the cpustability test run all night, the cpu temp now reads 25.0C !!! and the board 26.0C! granted, it was raining and very chilly this morning, but are these readings accurate?? seems like they are extremely low compared to other temps i've seen posted on here. i had left the case open and just have the chrome orb and one case fan running, so its not like i did anything special.
another thing too, how do you decipher those sandra scores to tell you if you have ram running at 2-2-2 ?
===================================================================
edit 10/23 11:45am PST - ok, i tried playing around the FSB again. 110x8.0 runs stably, but its only 880mhz... everything else is unstable. guess 900mhz is the limit on this puppy. boohoo =((((
just an interesting side note, as soon as i moved my new oc'ed system from the den room and covered the case up, the temp SKYROCKETED from 26.0C mb/30.0C cpu to a 29.0C mb/47.0C cpu ! the cpu jumped a whopping 17.0C from just putting the case lids back on and moving to a more warmer room. yikes. guess i should really put some sort of thermal grease on the heatsink at least. i just slapped it on naked. huh uh huh uh huh... i said slapped it on naked.
just thought i'd share with everyone my trials and tribulations in this semi-first overclocking experience of mine, in the hopes that everyone can take a little breather from their busy overclocking schedules and have a few chuckles at my expense.
it all started yesterday 10/21/00 saturday morning. after a sixpack of coors, which gave me the needed courage, the calming nerves and the steady hands that i would desperately need to complete this mission, i set up shop in my den room. i tried to go for the pilot's dozen, which is a perequisite before all flights, but alas, i could find no more of the frosty brew.
i had did all the preliminary work of installing the mb, video card, ram, hd, cd, etc last night after work, so today i can just concentrate on getting this sytem to work right. or so i thought.
after trying for about half an eternity to install the globalwin fop38, and some painful finger torture to say the least, i just gave up on trying to use this stupid heatsink and installed the stock heatsinkfan instead. whoever made those clips for the fop38, along with the creator of the wonder bra, should be lined up in front of the french foreign legion and be shot to death. to make a long story short on the wonderbra, the reason why i hate its creator is because i once dated a very buxom blonde, with whom i had the pleasure and privilege of undressing one of the most visually stunning lingerie outfits i had ever seen. but as soon as her bra dropped the ground... so did her breasts.... and so did my jaw... as i gasped in shock.... well anyhoo, i think everyone gets the point
so, back to my oc story. heh. i turn the system on, one beautiful beep on POST, fdisk, partition, format HD, install dos cdrom driver, install win98, and voila! everything working great at core speed of 650mhz.
i decide to mess with the bios at this point before trying to oc. i download awdflash and yaz's special bios patch which includes both mb bios and the raid bios update. install. reboot. works great. but i notice after post, the raid bios still reads version 1.0.622, whereas i thought the new version is supposed to be 1.3.0 - i later find out that the 1.0.622 *is* the newer version?? i guess the k7t faq is kind of outdated as it says the newest one is 1.0.3. since i didnt know this at the time, i flashed bios again, and on the screen it said something to the effect that the "sum of the parts program do not match, do you want to continue?" stupid me, i click yes. reboot. system now is dead. i now have the BSOD. in my case its the blank screen of death, instead of blue screen of death. tried flashing the cmos, tried making a bootable disk with the autoexec primed for auto flashing, and it still wont work. i tried everything short of using a hammer and i cant get the system to boot back up. dam! i was doing so good too. i guess this is the part where the pilot starts to wonder if having those drinks earlier had any effect on bringing about the current situation. naaaaaaaaah. never. lol.
at any rate, i go to fry's, pick up a new k7traid mb. stopped by a local computer shop to purchase a taisol heatsinkfan only to find out it was all sold out. the guy said they just got a bunch in on friday too and it was gone in 2 days. wow these things are more popular than a drunk cheerleader at a house party! they had a bunch of fop32's and chrome orbs still. so i pick up the chrome orb for about $17.50 with tax, as the fop32 is just a slightly smaller version of the finger torture device thats also known as the fop38. no thanks. i'd rather have hot monkey sex with the devil. oh wait, i did that too. it was called my ex-girlfriend. lol. j/k. no wait, i'm not bitter about the breakup. really i'm not! GODDAM BITCH!!!! oops... how'd my fingers type that? LOUSY F*CKING TWO TIMING SLUTTY ASS PIECE OF SH*T WHORE!!! goddamit, there it goes again. i think i have tourret's syndrom for the fingers.
so anyways, i install the new board and hook up the new chrome orb. wow is this thing cool looking. it looks cool in the pictures that you see on websites, but its another thing when you see it for youself. had a bit of trouble installing this as well, but nothing to bad. i didnt have to bend any capacitors to get this in, as others have stated so. so i boot up, win98 comes on, everything looks good. this time i just flash it once. and start playing with the speeds.
ok! time for some real diddley doodley wholesome fun, neighbor! i first try 700@1.5 def voltage. works great! post ok, boots into win98 ok. i try 750@1.5. same!! wow this is easy
800@1.5 post ok, but wont load win98. bump voltage to 1.575 and that did the trick! 850@1.700 and finally maxed it out at 900@1.825ran the cpustabilitytest program. freezes at 1 min 53 secs. reboot. ran again. freezes at 5 min 46 secs. repeat. freezes at 7 mins 12 secs. hmmmm. should i have done a burn in? it seems like it gets more stable the longer it stays turned on as.
i decide to max out the voltage to 1.85 on 900mhz. bingo! stability test ran fine for 6 hrs 55 mins 10 secs
whew
after a botched bios upgrade, painful and swollen fingers from installing the fop38, and some deep meaningful soul searching, (huh?) i finally got my duron 650 to run very stably at 900mhz. This is still amazingly fast for all my needs, but honestly, i'm kind of disappointed that i wasnt able to hit 1ghz. But I guess I cant really complain as the cpu came unlocked already (week23), which saved me the time and effort in having to unlock it. the tradeoff, however, is that the newer ones before week26, i think, rarely hit above 900mhz. i would've liked to have a newer one, which came locked, so i can have a better chance of hitting 1ghz. i guess every person's mileage may vary. hope this wasnt too long and rambling, but i just had another six pack before i sat down to write this so forgive me for any spelling or grammatical errors :Q ******************************************************************
edit - well this morning when i woke up, i decided to play around with increasing the fsb a bit. i also changed some of the ram settings around. starting w/ the dram timing from HSTCLK to HSTclk + PCIclk, and DRAM TIMING of SDRAM 8/10ns to FAST, DRAM BANK INTERLEASE of Disabled to 4Way, SDRAM CYCLE LENGTH of 3 to 2 and AGP-4x MODE of Disabled to Enabled.
i then changed the fsb speed from 0 to +1 , which effectively bumped the 100mhz fsb to 101 mhz. it now ran at 910.44mhz and booted into windows! i then bumped it to +2 @ 918.72 and it works great!. but it wont boot into windows at +3 , so i set it back down at +2 , ran the stability test and it keeps freezing up after 1 to 2 mins of testing. oh well, so much for that theory... is there anything else i can do to help bump up the speed? should i change anything else while changing the FSB speed? any responses greatly appreciated!
also, the benchmarks i use to measure the speed is WCPUID and SiSoft Sandra. this reminds me of something else, i looked at my temperature last night and at both full and idle load, my cpu was at 30.0C , the MB was at 26.0C. this morning, when i woke up after leaving the cpustability test run all night, the cpu temp now reads 25.0C !!! and the board 26.0C! granted, it was raining and very chilly this morning, but are these readings accurate?? seems like they are extremely low compared to other temps i've seen posted on here. i had left the case open and just have the chrome orb and one case fan running, so its not like i did anything special.
another thing too, how do you decipher those sandra scores to tell you if you have ram running at 2-2-2 ?
===================================================================
edit 10/23 11:45am PST - ok, i tried playing around the FSB again. 110x8.0 runs stably, but its only 880mhz... everything else is unstable. guess 900mhz is the limit on this puppy. boohoo =((((
just an interesting side note, as soon as i moved my new oc'ed system from the den room and covered the case up, the temp SKYROCKETED from 26.0C mb/30.0C cpu to a 29.0C mb/47.0C cpu ! the cpu jumped a whopping 17.0C from just putting the case lids back on and moving to a more warmer room. yikes. guess i should really put some sort of thermal grease on the heatsink at least. i just slapped it on naked. huh uh huh uh huh... i said slapped it on naked.
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