Few xp2500 overclocking stability questions

-ADREN-

I overclocked my xp2500 to the xp3200 speeds, i.e I put the FSB up to 400 (200mhz).

The 1st time I did it, windows xp loaded and ran for about 15 mins, then I was greeted by a blue screen saying Error, System has encountered a Critical error or something like that, and said it was Dumping Memory to disk. It then restarted.

I then went into the Bios and uped the vcore to 1.6 and loaded windows again, and it remainded loaded for a little longer, about 20 mins, then crashed to blue screen all over again, same thing.

Then I went to bios again and uped the vcore to 1.65, and booted windows, and I am still running it at the moment, at 46 Idle temp (is this ok?)

However!
Since the system has remained running I decided to run prime95, this returns the hardware error with in a minute or 2 of running.

What is the recommened step forward for ensuring a stable overclock?

I might also add that I am able to change my multiplier setting for some reason.. would It help if I lowered the FSB back to 166mhz and increased the mulitplier to a higher setting?

Thanks,
-Coz.

BloodBath

I'm not sure on the max safe vcore for that chip but it's higher than what you are atm I think.

I'd say one more vcore raise will make it stable providing your temps are ok. Your ram is pc3200 right?

BloodBath

-ADREN-

Hey blood m8, really didnt think anyone would be up at this time anyways, just like you said I upped the vcore to 1.7 and I ran SuperPI 8mb run, and it did it fine, my other setting did not run this, I yet have to try prim95.

On the setting before this current one, I ran 3dmark 03 and I got a blue stall screen and no response, so I might run that again also to see if it completes with vcore at 1.7.

Ill let you know how things go,
Thanks.

oh yea my ram is pc3200 yea

Redrocket

ive got a ****ty heatsink and and ****ty thermal paste so my temps are 50c idle 60c load
i changed multiplier from 11x to 13x which is about a 3000+ or 2166mhz.
thats all i changed though.
what motherboard have you got?
i used to change the fsb but then figured out that i also overclock the pci/agp bus and thats not good. so i left fsb at 333mhz, worked out better because i was able to reduce the timings on my cheap ram to performanceish timings

-ADREN-

I hav an Asus a7n8x - x,


I tried prime95 again, and it rain for a good bit then I left it to run for the night, but it said hardware failure when I came back. Though when it was being run, windows xp, when to the user switching interface, would this have affected prime95s process?

Col_Loki

The standard out of the box voltage for the Xp2500+ is 1.65v so your only a little over that.

What temps are you getting when running prime95? What heatsink do you have?

Did it give you a time how long prime95 ran for? Mabye 1.725v providing temps arent mad.

-ADREN-

a) running prime95 it coes to about 50.
b) I have an artic Copper Silent 2L and one 80mm Exaust fan.
c) prime95 didnt give how long it ran for.

What should I do next?

BloodBath

Raise your voltage to 1.725 like loki said and try again.


BloodBath

-ADREN-

I ran prime95 there and it went about an hour, except this time it didnt say Fatal Hard ware error, a Windows Error Box came up, sayin Prime95 has caused and error and Must be shut down thing, followed by the option to send error to windows thing.

Is this the same thing as prime95 reporting fatal hardware error. ie my computer is unstable?

I am able to run 3dmark fully, and get a score now of 5728, as oppossed to 5528 the last time.

So should I still go ahead and up the vcore a bit?

Temps are still around 45 idle 50 under load. These temps are ok yea?

Col_Loki

When prime95 crashes like that its hard to know. Sometimes its an error with the program itself and your PC might be totally stable.

Try it again and see if it does the same (mabye try a re-install first). Your temps look ok and your prob close to getting it stable.

-ADREN-

Col_Loki wrote:

Your temps look ok and your prob close to getting it stable.

yay, i like the sound of that.

Tbh alot of those Windows errors are appearing, and on start up my machine keeps on wanting to run chkdsk, I have a feeling all these are releated to the old hard drive I have in the system at (13gb). While Im waiting for the sata controller from jes, for my sata 160gb hard drive. So maybe when I install that drive and xp etc on that it will be better. Think it might have something to do with it?

Col_Loki

Its hard to know about the prime95 errors, but the CHKDSK is almost definetly related to the hard drive .

You should set the Xp2500+ back to stock speeds when installing windows on the new hard drive, its a good precaution to take. So far so good all the same.

BloodBath

yay, i like the sound of that.

Tbh alot of those Windows errors are appearing, and on start up my machine keeps on wanting to run chkdsk, I have a feeling all these are releated to the old hard drive I have in the system at (13gb). While Im waiting for the sata controller from jes, for my sata 160gb hard drive. So maybe when I install that drive and xp etc on that it will be better. Think it might have something to do with it?.

That's major instability. It's happened to me a few times when trying to reach 3.8. It even corrupted the os once. I had to repair it from the xp disk.

Not sure exactly what the root of the problem is though.


BloodBath

davkav

if i run my 2500+ at 3200+ i.e. 2.2ghz i have the vcore set at default and it sits at 1.68 volts no probs with windows or anything i find it strange your havin instability probs when the fsb is only at 200mhz.

oh and the temp sits below 50oC at those speeds aswell

-ADREN-

Ok actually those errors dont come up all the time like I said, I fixed my doom3 Windows error, that was .cfg related.

The only windows error ive gotten really is that one from prime95, are you saying my system is unstable because of the overclock? So should I bring up the v core to 1.75?

Are you sure the chkdsk thing has nothing to do with my old ****ty hard drive?

The system has been running now fine for about 8 - 9 hrs. Mind you not under much Cpu stress I would think, still it hasnt just crashed for no reason. temps are still 45c.

Advice?

-ADREN-

davkav wrote:

if i run my 2500+ at 3200+ i.e. 2.2ghz i have the vcore set at default and it sits at 1.68 volts no probs with windows or anything i find it strange your havin instability probs when the fsb is only at 200mhz.

oh and the temp sits below 50oC at those speeds aswell

Im not sure its stabilty anymore, I think it could be a messed up hard drive.
Davkav have u let prime 95 run on ure sytem for a while is it ok?

-ADREN-

ok I ran prime95 again and about 30mins it it gave me

[Thu Aug 12 22:53:23 2004]
FATAL ERROR: Resulting sum was 1776881960037888, expected: 6839871785107090

Why is my system still unstable?

Davcav can get his one to 3200 speeds when his vcore is set at 1.68 when my is set at 1.7 and still unstable?

Could it have anything to do with the old hard drive what so ever?

BloodBath

You are running your ram at 200mhz fsb right?

The amd boards have the option to clock the ram higher than the cpu fsb. That's about all I can think of. You should have no trouble getting a 2500 to 3200 speeds.


BloodBath

-ADREN-

I restarted my pc in safe mode (because of this other error i was getting the windows page file one) and it did this wierd thing something to do with partioning that took forever to complete, anyways when it finished that it loaded into safe mode. I restarted the pc normaly and the windows page file error is gone, but ive lost loads of hd space on the 13gb drive. What did it do when I chose to go into safe mode, it at loads of disk space?

Anyways anyone think the hard drive could be the reason why my system isnt stable atm at 3200 speeds?

My ram is cocked at 200mhz yea.

-ADREN-

I restarted my pc again just to see if the chkdsk thing came up during start up.. it didnt, and also my page file error has also gone away.

What ever the system did to its self when I asked it to go into safe mode, seems to have helped the errors go away.

What was it that it did?

I'm going to run prime95 again now and see whats the story with that.. fingers crossed.

p.s the thing that the safe mode did, took up like a gig of my hard drive.. all ive left now is like 200mb, but I cant find any extra files on the disk. ?

Col_Loki

If the increased voltage to the CPU isint helping try using a Ram divider (ie run the Ram at 80% , of 5:4 FSB:RAM) ......... this will slow your memory speed down just to check if its a problem.

Or mabye drop the FSB down to 195mhz and check for stability.

-ADREN-

Ran prime95 there again, it got to test 10 and the windows error came up, not the prime95 text saying Hardware Failure detected.

What does this mean?

Im really confused as to why the hell this wont run stable at the xp3200 speed, expecially since the vcore is at 1.7, and the temps are 45 idle and 50/52 under prime95 load.

I read on the prim95 stress.txt document that if it were a psu problem the vcore would drop significantly, using my asus monitor, I can tell it doesnt, so its not the psu.

I dont quite fully follow you loki on the ram thing your on about? What will that do?

Ciaran500

There should be a ram ratio that has options like 2/2, 2/3 etc.

Its prob set to auto at the moment, this means that if you put the CPU FSB to 200mhz, the ram will run at 200mhz(400mhx effectivly). So when you change that ratio you can have the ram running at different speeds to the CPU.

e.g.
200MHz FSB speed with 1:1 FSB : Memory ratio results in 200MHz memory speed (DDR400)
200MHz FSB speed with 5:6 FSB : Memory ratio results in 240MHz memory speed (DDR480)
250MHz FSB speed with 5:4 FSB : Memory ratio results in 200MHz memory speed (DDR400)


What loki told you to do was set this so the ram runns slower than the CPU so you can check that the ram isn't giving you errors, not your overclocked CPU.

-ADREN-

I ran prime95 last night and it got this far


[Fri Aug 13 03:17:53 2004]
Self-test 1536K passed!
[Fri Aug 13 03:29:20 2004]
SUMOUT error occurred.

When I came to check it in the morning this is what it said + a windows error saing prime95 caused error thing.

What does this one mean?

Also I can run superPI test at 64mb, with it completing no problem.

What loki told you to do was set this so the ram runns slower than the CPU so you can check that the ram isn't giving you errors, not your overclocked CPU.

By setting the ram slower it could tell me if its a ram problem and not a cpu problem is that it?

p.s my ram timmings are 8-3-3-2.5 should I tighten these?

Col_Loki

Either use a divider to slow down the speed of your memory (ie 5:4 or 80% - whichever one you see, i forget on the A7N8X), or reduce the FSB speed to 195mhz.

The Prime95 error is most lightly to do with an un-stable system, its hard to tell how CPU's will perform when overclocked - luck of the draw. Try eliminating the Ram from the equation by using a divider (leave the timings alone) . If that doesent work then try the FSB at 190/195mhz and see if its stable at that........

-ADREN-

When I bring down the ram mhz should I not get more errors, because of the ram not running fast enough ie. at the same speed as the Cpu mhz?

Col_Loki

Nope, the Ram can be run at different speeds to the CPU........... just make sure you dont use the divider to increase the memory speed (this actually does nothing for memory performance its just a stupid thing).

Ciaran500

When the cpu and ram are not running in sync the performance will be slightly lower but it will not cause any errors.


While trying to find the max CPU overclock you should have the ram running at their default speed with loose timings. This way and of the errors you get in windows are caused by the overclocked cpu, not the overclocked ram.

deckie27

The chkdsk error is couse you have your hard disk formated with fat32
convert to NTFS and you will never see that error again

From a command line its something like convert c: /fs:ntfs



A quick guide to overclocking

Each compondent has to be tested seperately
First the Board
set the mulitplier low Like 5* and high ram timing 8-3-3-3 or looser
you need to push the board fsb to the max
it you have fsb at 200 cpu = 1000 mhz ram is not under pressure with its loose timing
Run prime or sysmark2001se until you get it stable be it 195fsb or 220fsb

when you hit max stable fsb that is what the board will do

Next the cpu. up the multiplier to 9 run tests as above. if all pass got to 9.5 test if all pass keep going in .5 increments untilit fails up voltage slightly and retestwhen you get it stable up the multiplier again and so on.
It is real important to keep a good eye on cpu temps as this could pop ur cpu if it overheats to much.


When ur happy you have hit the max on the processor start tighting the memory till it gets unstable back off a little and thats it. you have hit the max of ur current setup.


then you can turn the computer backwards and you should have a nice fan heater for free.

Dec

-ADREN-

Thanks for that reply but I can change my multiplier in my bios, but It takes no effect due to the Chip I have being locked. Also there seems to be no option in the bios to increase the FSB by 1mhz or 5 mzh, it just have the option off 100mhz 133mhz 166mhz and 200mhz.

Recent update, ive been to hell and back with the sytem.

Everything was going fine, except for not running prime95 for a while, the system was seemed to be functionaling fine, at 200mhz and vcore 1.7.

Then I decided to see like loki recommened to up the vcore just one more, to see it prime95 would run. So I did.

The system started fine, and I was side tracked into installing my scanjet drivers. They installed fine, and I restared system did my scan and that was fine. Restarted again, and then my usb dsl modem couldnt be found (wtf?) then I restarted again, and I was met with a black screen and an error saying "Currupt system.sys file" or something of the likes, and it wouldnt boot any futher.

Left for work, came back home.

Started system up again, the error didnt come up, got to XP mouse and Keyboard didnt work.

Ended up doing the windows xp Recovery thing, basicaly reinstalled xp but leaving all my files, and now im back here.

So what the hell was all that?

Surely uping the vcore should help the stability issue?

Is it possible I have another system problem going on or what or is this pure unstability. I keep thinking it has something to do with the old hard drive, since it came from the old Pc with windows 2000 on it, and was never formated. Windows 2000 was simple recovered on the new computer to get it working on the new system, then I uprgraded the win2000, to the current XP.

Seems like a whole load of just overwritting system files etc, rather than a clear install.

Whats further more, as ive heard the xp2500 chips are just xp3200 underclocked, so what im doing here isnt exatly overclocking, an everyone that has put there xp2500 to xp3200 speeds has done it with out anysort of hassel?

Some one please just tell me its the ****y old hard drive :P, then I can just wait for the new hard drive and do all the ocing then.

Ive returned the bios setting to the 166mhz speed atm. So im back to xp2500 speeds.

I really would love to get the cpu to run at 3200 speeds as it seems like it looks like a normal thing to ask of it.

My cpu temps were never over 52 under load at 200mhz

Col_Loki

Whats further more, as ive heard the xp2500 chips are just xp3200 underclocked, so what im doing here isnt exatly overclocking, an everyone that has put there xp2500 to xp3200 speeds has done it with out anysort of hassel?

Thats not true at all. It totally depends on what the yields are like. In the initial stages AMD doesent make and distinction between an Xp2500+ or an Xp3200+, they all come out the same . The chips are then tested to run at the Xp3200+ level (well a bit over that to make sure) and then marked as Xp3200+ capable. If the yields are good they might have a big ammount of chips that pass the test. The problem with this is the Xp2500+ is the popular chip not the Xp3200+, so if they were to put all the chips that passed into the Xp3200 catagory it would flood the market ........ they wouldnt sell.

So these chips are marked down according to market demand, ie mabye re-branded to an Xp3000+ or 2800+ and finially an Xp2500+. So there is a chance depending on AMD's efficiency that you actually get an Xp3200+. The chances arent as high as some people tend to think. The chips are getting better and better so yea getting to 2.2ghz isint as much of a big thing as it used to be.

Overclocking is almost never just a simple FSB change (unless youre experienced) , theres always changing, errors, voltages, problems. There are alot of things that can cause the errors ....... thats why you want to eliminate as much as you can. Ie have the Ram at a lower speed, make sure your PSU is fine, etc etc so its all down to the CPU. Its possible the hard disk and software has something to do with it......

Almost everyone that overclocks for the first time has problems, especially if they havent read up alot about it before hand (i read a small bit and had problems ).

There should be an option in your BIOS to get 1mhz increments (ive had the A7N8X , unless the -X is different which it shouldnt be). You have to set 2 options to user define. If you only set one to user define you get 100/133/166/200 mhz, there is another option mabye 3/4 lines down which you should set to user define and it will give you 1mhz increments...... so you can drop the overclock slightly