A whole bundle of overclocking questions.

JackKelly

ok firstly, here are my specs;

Athlon 2500+ Barton
512 PC3200 DDR
ASUS A7N8X
Radeon 9600 Pro

now!

Ok what i wanna do is OC my 2500. A simple task i suppose but im quite confused.
Firstly, i presumed i would need extra cooling so i ordered a thermaltake volcano 12 heatsink/fan.
Now, second, i though, hey, i mite need to flash my BIOS as i havent touched it since it was bought.Grand. But ive heard nasty stories of Flashings going wrong. So do i actually need to go through with this?Is it necessary? My BIOS revision is 1003 and from the looks of things it could be at 1007, 1010 by now.Again,im confused.

Than i got to looking at my options for OCing the 2500.I went into my setup and lookied around.I heard that some 2500's come unlocked and some locked.But i cant tell if mine is unlocked or not,im able to change my multiplyers up to 12.5 which seems decent enough, and my FSB (i think) seems to be able to go anywhere from 0 to 250Mhz in 1Mhz steps unlike the usual 133/166/200 or whatever.So i could get up to 3.1Mhz or nearly a 3200+ Athlon right? So i tried this temporarily and obvioulsy due to the crappy stock Heatsink, it wouldnt boot. That takes messing around with Timings and Voltages right?!

Now one other problem i noticed with regards the BIOS, it seems to be slightly confused about what processor it has beside it. After messing about a bit,when i booted up, it would tell me i had a 3200+ running but when i went into setup it just said i was running 100X11.0.Is this again, a dodegy BIOS that needs flashing.

So can anyone help me out here,as im slightly overwhelmed by all the settings etc!

One Last thing, this time to do with oc'ing tmy 9600 pro. i downloaded Rage 3D tweak, with the intention of OC'ing, two things,
1.Is it really as easy as going into my Ati Settings and fiddling with the Rage 3D sliders?
2.How will i check stability.GAmes will just crash?

ok thats it.If youve read down this far, thanks!and any help would be appreciated!!!

davkav

I have my 2500+barton running at 2.6Ghz. When they say the processor is locked it means that the multiplier cannont be changed. A simple test would be to set your FSB at 133Mhz and put the multiplier at 11x and the boot screen should tell you you have the CPU running at1.4Ghz or so. Now go back into the bios and increase the multi to 11.5 or 12 whichever comes next and you the boot screen should now say (133 * 12) = 1.5ghz.

If this happens then your CPU is unlocked.

Otherwise all you can do, like me, is increase the FSB to a certain frequency to get the most stable overclocked CPU speed. If you go to high and your comp does'nt start you'll have to increase the core voltage so the CPU becomes more stable and overclocks a bit more.

For example in my comp when i have these settings:

200 * 11.0 (my multi is set locked at 11) = 2200mhz @ 1.6volts

but at

236 * 11.0 = 2596mhz @ 2.1volts(alot of peolpe wouldnt recommend going that high Think i just got lucky)

then you have to take the stability of the memory into account and stuff but im afraid i dont know much about that

thsi thread should help also
2500+ overclocking

SantaHoe

RE: Overclocking 9600pro.
I used to use Rage3D to overclock, but I'm now using ATI-Tool since it has a built-in rendering window that scans for artifacts as you go (artifacts are rendering errors and a sure sign that your card is being pushed a little too far)... you can set it to search for the maximum stable Core & Mem clocks.
I'd suggest finding a stable overclock for your Athlon first, since upping your FSB in increments like that means your AGP frequency rises with it and can cause problems with an already overclocked card... or so I've read.
Actually I think my BIOS lets me lock my AGP at 66 regardless of FSB... which is nice.

davkav, nice one, what temp are you getting on that oc?

davkav

SantaHoe wrote:

davkav, nice one, what temp are you getting on that oc?

under load doesnt go over 58C 60 would be my limit gonna get a new PSU and watercooling and see how far she goes then

Watch this space

OfflerCrocGod

SantaHoe wrote:

I'd suggest finding a stable overclock for your Athlon first, since upping your FSB in increments like that means your AGP frequency rises with it and can cause problems with an already overclocked card

It's using the nForce2 Ultra 400 so it should be locked, so he doesn't have to worry about that.

JackKelly

hey cool , thanks. Ive gotten a slightly better idea of what im doing now. My new worry is in cooling. I have a new Fan heatsink on the way which should be grand for cooling the CPU, but what about the RAM?will that need any cooling?I have the option of going up to 250X12.5!i think.I dont want to be burning anything out just yet!I also got 2 case fans to clear out the case.

With regards the 9600, yea, i downloaded ATI-Tool and its much better. I did the "find highest core" and ended up increasing it by 150? isnt that a bit much. Its now on 520.There is no temperature monitoring so i dunno if this is too much. It seems stable according to ATItool. Im thinking of putting a thermal probe near the chip.Should i consider cooling for this also?!

[EDIT] just looking at the post above this, im pretty sure my board is unlocked, my multiplyers go up to 12.5.(Some of them seem to go "9.0/17.0"[/EDIT]

davkav

TimAy wrote:

I have the option of going up to 250X12.5!i think.

QUOTE]

yeah my FSB goes up that high too but that doesnt mean your CPU will support it as for the multiplier id say its locked unless you got a mobile 2500+

your RAM wont need any cooling

JackKelly

no way of unlocking it no?

SantaHoe

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

It's using the nForce2 Ultra 400 so it should be locked, so he doesn't have to worry about that.

Same as my mine then
Sweet chipset /me heartily endorses.

TimAy, you should test out those clock speeds in a game for a few hours before you settle on them, I knocked mine back a few notches because I was getting artifacts while playing video.
Current clocks for my 9600pro - Core: 478 Mem: 356
I'm using an arctic cooling VGA silencer on it... I suppose I could get more clock out of it if I set the fan speed higher, but I like to keep things quiet and stable.

davkav

TimAy wrote:

no way of unlocking it no?

Nope fraid not suppose you could put yur present 2500+ in the buy and sell and buy a 2500+ mobile but thats the only way im afriad i looked into unlocking mine but theres no hope

JackKelly

^^mmm, okey doke,its still good. ill wait till i get my new fan heatsink before i start properly messing. I think i have booted up at 3200+ before I THINK, if thats possible.