Overclocking questions....(semi-noobish)

Khannie

Ok, so I did all the reading and I updated my bios and tried out my first A64 overclock at the weekend.

Short story: Wont post now at 2200MHz, (also tried upping vcore to 1.375V) but did post on Saturday and happily ran prime for an hour with no errors.


Longer story.....

I have a 3800+ X2. First I tried 210MHz x10. Dropped the HT multi to 4x and the ram multi to 2 / 1.83 (somewhat underclocking the ram). Wouldn't boot (first boot post-flash), undid it, booted, tried again, no problem.

Ran prime for a while, seemed fine. Upped it to 2200, ran prime for an hour. Played some games. Happy as larry. Decided to leave it at that as I was getting 402MHz for the ram, 2200 for the cpu and 840 for the HT link. So I turn on the computer on Sunday and it wont post. It just resets the machine and repeatedly tries to post.

Could someone tell me why this is?

Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-K8N-Pro SLI (or something like that).
Stock cooler, but with arctic silver applied instead of the gunk that comes on it.

gline

first of all 1 hour prime does not meen stable , at least 8 hours or more means it is stable. Also you may need better cooling.

whats the default vcore for those chips?

Khannie

Fair enough, but I would have thought that 1 hour meant it wasn't highly unstable (to the point that it shouldn't post the next day).

Default vcore is 1.35V.

gline

Khannie wrote:

Fair enough, but I would have thought that 1 hour meant it wasn't highly unstable (to the point that it shouldn't post the next day).

Default vcore is 1.35V.

u might need more then 1.375 vcore.

no you are right it shouldnt have been that unstable, its strange alright

Khannie

Right so. I'll bump it up to 1.4 and report back. Thanks.

One other thing....when I first got the mobo, I had a similar start / stop malarky with dual channel ram until I upgraded the bios (to version F2 at the time, currently at F9 which is the latest).

gline

Khannie wrote:

Right so. I'll bump it up to 1.4 and report back. Thanks.

One other thing....when I first got the mobo, I had a similar start / stop malarky with dual channel ram until I upgraded the bios (to version F2 at the time, currently at F9 which is the latest).

maybe try swap the dimms or try them in the other 2 slots

Khannie

Turns out it was the stock cooler. I got an arctic 64 freezer pro. Lovely. I now have it at 2400 (nice 20% overclock) and 1.425 Vcore (1.35 is stock). Memory is divided down to 398MHz and ht is at 4x.

Prime is running and seems ok for now.

Could someone tell me at what Vcore level I risk damaging the processor? Is 1.45 reasonable enough with a decent cooler and arctic silver? I'd like to squeeze some more out of it, but I'm getting a smidgen nervous now.

Optikus

Some older A64's are ok up to 1.65-1.7v. Although i wouldn't push my Opteron more than 1.55v as they seem quite sensitive to vcore, this is probably the same case with X2's. I think 1.45v is safe enough for dual cores.

conzy

Heres a good chart:



I am at 1.47 at the minute, Generally anything under 1.6 vcore is safe, And the freezer 64 pro is well able for it.

Like optikus said the 130nm cpus could be pushed to 1.7vcore, but that would be lethal for a 90nm CPU.

P.s what ram have you got?? Why not overclock it also if possible?

Khannie

Thanks for the replies lads. Much appreciated. Looks like I can push it further, but I think I'll leave it as is for now. I'm pretty happy with two cores at 2400 Mhz.

conzymaher wrote:

P.s what ram have you got?? Why not overclock it also if possible?

I have reasonable quality pc3200 adata ram. It should be capable of a small overclock, but the ram divider only works in specific units. 2/1.83, 2/1.66, etc. so the ram speed is completely dependent on the CPU input frequency and I don't think it'd take a very big overclock.

Edit: Prime's been running for about 90 minutes now with no errors, so this looks stable enough. Fingers crossed.

gline

thanks for the chart conzy, where'd u get that?

DemonOfTheFall

Excellent chart conzy, so hard to remember the stock voltages for every chip!

conzy

That ram isnt worth overclocking:p

I mean, 2.4ghz CPU and ram on a divider with tightish timings would be better than 2.4ghz CPU and ram barely overclocked with really loose timings.

FASTER FASTER FASTER:D Dont settle for 2.4ghz, push it to the max safe voltage and see what it can do;)

@ Gline and Demon of the fall, I borrowed it from Xtremesystems.org:p

Khannie

lol@ram not worth overclocking. Probably not.

Also meant to say thanks for the table. It's quality.

I'll see how far it can go after I've let the arctic settle in for a while. Love that I have 4600+ x2 speeds for the price of the 3800+ x2 + cooler.

conzy

Np:)

Thats one of the many joys of overclocking, I have better than FX-57 performance for nearly 1/5 of the price:) , and I got my freezer 64 pro for €15 from OcUk.

The only bad thing about the Freezer64 pro is the recommended 200hour "settle in period" of the MX-1 paste, but its worth it because MX-1 performs better than AS5 on the Freezer 64 pro anyway.

I didnt notice any drop in temps after 200hours......

P.s Your motherboard has a passive Chipset cooler doesnt it?

I would just keep an eye on its temperature, and maybe put some AS5 on it if you have it, My board has a fairly crappy Chipset cooler, and when i put AS5 on temps dropped around 8 degrees, and now they never go over 40 degrees load. Most Motherboard manafacturers use a thermal pad instead of paste, and thermal pads are ****e.

Khannie

Doh! I just assumed that the gunk on it was crap and replaced it with AS5. I had a bad experience before with thermal paste that came with a graphics card cooler.

Pretty sure it's a passive cooler for the chipset. I may look at arctic-ing that next weekend. Thanks for the advice.

conzy

Dont worry about the AS5 on the Freezer 64 pro, I know a lad that used it on his freezer and there was only 4 or 5 degrees in the difference.

Just remember next time you have to remove the HSF, get some MX-1:D

Khannie

Grrr. Something's wrong. Today the machine wouldn't post and will only go to 2100MHz (exactly what it would reliably do with the stock cooler), even at 1.45V.

I must be doing something wrong, though I can't figure out what. I have the ram divided down and the HT at 4x. Is there something else that I could be missing?

It fails before the mobo gets to the point that it detects IDE drives.

conzy

What PSU fo you have?

What divider are you using?

Is the ram overclocked at all?

Its not a problem with cooling, and cooling wasnt the problem in the first place so its something else.

The first thing you will have to do is clear the Bios and see if its ok at stock;)

Khannie

PSU is a 430W BeQuiet. A lovely piece of kit.

I'm always dividing the ram so it's below 400Mhz (or around). The actual divider is 2/1.83 (or 2/1.66 when I had it at 240 x 10).

When it does post, it's stable in windows. I had it at 1.45V and 220 x 10 last night repeatedly posting.

It's always fine at stock, thankfully.

Full specs: Gigabyte GA-K8N-Pro SLI, 3800+ X2, 430W BeQuiet PSU, 6800GT 256, 1GB (2x512) Adata PC3200, 2 x 200GB P120 SATA2 Samsungs, 1 x 160GB IDE133 Maxtor, 2 x dvd drives (1 burner, 1 reader).

po0k

try single stick of ram, or borrow some quality TCCD off someone.

conzy

TCCD Wont help him here, the ram is on a divider and shouldnt be causing any problems.

Try and run OCCT and a pass of Super PI 32M at stock, Just to be sure your memory is ok, then start overclocking again;)

gline

u try memtest?

vishal

i'd say it is either your mobo or your psu. have you used any other processor in the gigabyte?

Khannie

Thanks for all the replies lads. Much appreciated.

What's OCCT? What's TCCD? *innocent whistles*

I haven't run memtest (yet) will do later.

I had a 3700+ San Diego in the same mobo, but always kept it at stock.

I'll also pull out a stick of ram after running memtest.

conzy

TCCD is a Memory IC that Samsung make, it can reach amazingly high clocks ( DDR620+ ). OCZ platinium uses TCCD

OCCT is a stress testing program, It only takes half an hour to complete, and if there is a problem, it will find it;)

A 32M pass of Super PI is also a great stability/ram test, and only takes a half an hour.

When you are happy with your final overclock run around 8hours of Prime95 and then you are stable;)

P.s heres a link to OCCT and some other good overclocking tools

http://www.short-media.com/download.php?dc=72

Optikus

OCCT won't be good for testing dual core systems. You should start your overclocking by finding your CPU's max then your RAM's max, then try to locate a sweet spot between them both. Set your ram to the lowest divider. This will eliminate the RAM from causing any pronlems. Next up your HTT to what ever was your highest stable. Then run 2 instances of prime95 (one on each core) do this for about 4-8 hours, if all goes well then up the HTT by about ten and run prime again. Keep repeating this process untill you start failing prime, this will be your CPU's limit. To get your RAMs limit you will need to use the lowest HTT multi as to eliminate the CPU from causing probs. Set your HTT to what ever you think is a good place to start. Run test 5 and 8 of Memtest about 10 times on each test, once passed start upping to HTT repeating the tests upping again, untill you get errors, that will indicate your RAM's limit for overclock. Once limits are found for both the CPU and RAM you will have to find a sweetspot to make the overall system stable. I tend to go for higher CPU mhz scraficing RAM speed and timings.

conzy

I think you can run 2 iterations of OCCT, and assign one to each core.......

Anyway Khannie, there is another thread called "a bit of help with overclocking" in this section, have a gawk over there;)

Optikus

conzymaher wrote:

I think you can run 2 iterations of OCCT, and assign one to each core.......

Anyway Khannie, there is another thread called "a bit of help with overclocking" in this section, have a gawk over there;)

To do that you need to set up two user accounts in windows run one instance of OCCT swith user run another instance, then set affinity through task manager. Prime is far easier and will spot errors alot quicker.

OP if you want to find the max stable overclock for your system it will take time but its worth it in the end. Follow the guide i gave and you will be able to do it but for proper overclocking it takes nearly a week to find your max on cpu and ram and another two to tweak it and get it at its most effiecent.

B00MSTICK

I find prime95 alot more stressful the OCCT, but if you dont want to wait 12 hours or need 101% stability then it does the job fine

awhir

cozzy whats the full name for the MX-1 thermal paste.is it no overclockers.co.uk

fount it but were can you get it not in knoplett or oc.co.uk