Which pathetic overclock do I chose

Which best suites my situation


  • Total voters
    42

Geo Fry

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
483
Vote on which option best suites my situation

-1- CPU 3.3Ghz : RAM 220Mhz running 1:1
-2- CPU 3.5Ghz : RAM 195Mhz running 6:5

Alright first to post my setup:

P4 Prescott 3.0E (skt478)
Abit VT7 motherboard (VIA PT880)
G.Skill 2x1GB DDR500 3-4-4-8
Corsair HX520 PSU

It's old hardware I know. The top 2 choices are what I'm undecided between which would be better. If I run the memory 1:1 with the CPU the highest I can get it is a 220 FSB which yeilds my P4 @ 3.3 Ghz and my G.Skill @ DDR440. If I drop the cpu:mem ratio down to 6:5 I can get up to 233 FSB which yeilds my P4 @3.5 Ghz and my G.Skill @ DDR390.

Both results are very pathetic and it makes me wonder about my skills for overclocking :eek: . I'm pretty sure that the VIA chipset mainboard is probably not the most OC loving board. It is probably my weakpoint, but what makes me wonder is that I get errors in memtest when my ram has never even got close to DDR500. I've tried many different timings and voltages. So I'm not sure if my motherboard is the cause of these errors and instability issues I'm having or if my memory is bad. Advice/opinions/comments/flaming all wanted and welcome :D
 
1:1 is usually better, also dont worry about those chips overclocking, they are toughies, i have a 3.4E that wont go high without "a lot" of voltage.

If ur looking to play games I THINK, (maybe other disagree) u should keep it at 1:1 as i saw with my experiences with games and benchmarks.

How's the cooling on that proc? With watercooling i can hit 3.8, at 1:1 with my DDR400.

If u think ur ram is bad run Prime95 for a while, at stock of course, any errors then run it on one stick at a time to find the culprit, or if its both.
 
If u think ur ram is bad run Prime95 for a while, at stock of course, any errors then run it on one stick at a time to find the culprit, or if its both.

Yea the thing is... I'm using DDR500 not DDR400 so I shouldn't be getting any errors since I haven't even reached the stock speeds.I guess maybe bad ram? Oh and I think I agree on the 1:1 thing too. P4's seem to love 1:1.



Thanks to all the voters so far who said I suck at OCing while giving no feedback or advice. Much appreciated ;)
 
Hey now, this is the [H]. If you put an option like that on your poll, there are always some who will use it... :p

Anyway, I vote for the 3.3Ghz with 1:1 timings. If you have a good video card, the system should work fine, at least for now. My LAN party box up until recently had a P4C 3.2Ghz running stock, 2GB PC3200 RAM and a 6800U and I was playing FEAR @ 1280x960 with AA off and AF at 8X and it played smoothly. All the other games I played on it (UT2004, Oblivion, BF2) all played fine at 1280x1024. Settings weren't at max but they were high enough that everything looked great. The only thing that concerns me is the VIA board. I'll admit I don't know much about VIA when it comes to Intel. I talked with a guy at work who had upgraded his boards from older Intel mobos to newer VIA based mobos and he said he thought they ran a lot slower. I personally have always used Intel based mobos for Intel CPU's, but that's just me. I would think it's the board causing your memtest errors, but is there any way for you to test on another mobo? If you have a Fry's or Microcenter nearby, you could by a low end i965 board and try it out. If you don't get any better results, you could always return it. Anyway, good luck.
 
I'd also go for 1:1. (I helped move this poll option into the lead above the 'you suck' option!!)
You do need to isolate the problem with your memory errors and I'd run each stick separately on Memtest and checking each slot on the mobo as well.
 
I'm doing that same as everyone recommends, My 3.0E @ 3.3 runs stable and great, too bad i'm ditching it for AMD, will be selling my albatron s478/pci-e mobo after i get my new parts :)

I'm running DDR400 cheapo mushkin which still has better timings than rated, runing like 2.5-3-3-7 @ 220FSB where its supposed to b 3-3-3-8 on 200FSB
 
Run the Bloody processor @ 3.5 with the lower memory speed. I think games will preffer the extra CPU horse power over the added memory bandwidth.
 
My guess is that the memory is possibly faulty, because that mobo is known to reach 250 FSB+ (just check all temps of components such as pwm1 etc. using uguru), the processor although known to run hot should overclock better than that when cooled properly... Can't you just lend the memory to a friend (preferably one with socket a 939 system) who can test it for you ?
 
My guess is you either have a CPU without a lot of headroom for overclocking (possible on a high-stock-clock Prescott), or a mainboard that just isn't that good of it (or both). I doubt it's your RAM or power supply.

Personally, I'd go with the 1:1 solution.

P.S. What CPU cooler are you using in that setup? With a Prescott, you need all the cooling you can get.
 
Thanks for all the responses :)

My guess is that the memory is possibly faulty, because that mobo is known to reach 250 FSB+ (just check all temps of components such as pwm1 etc. using uguru), the processor although known to run hot should overclock better than that when cooled properly... Can't you just lend the memory to a friend (preferably one with socket a 939 system) who can test it for you ?

Nope.... No one I know cares about the world of PC enthusiasts. I'm not too sure about this board being able to reach 250FSB. Are you sure you're not thinking of the IC7 with the i875P chipset. That was like the overclocking board to get for skt478 chips iirc

Hey now, this is the [H]. If you put an option like that on your poll, there are always some who will use it... :p

Anyway, I vote for the 3.3Ghz with 1:1 timings. If you have a good video card, the system should work fine, at least for now. My LAN party box up until recently had a P4C 3.2Ghz running stock, 2GB PC3200 RAM and a 6800U and I was playing FEAR @ 1280x960 with AA off and AF at 8X and it played smoothly. All the other games I played on it (UT2004, Oblivion, BF2) all played fine at 1280x1024. Settings weren't at max but they were high enough that everything looked great. The only thing that concerns me is the VIA board. I'll admit I don't know much about VIA when it comes to Intel. I talked with a guy at work who had upgraded his boards from older Intel mobos to newer VIA based mobos and he said he thought they ran a lot slower. I personally have always used Intel based mobos for Intel CPU's, but that's just me. I would think it's the board causing your memtest errors, but is there any way for you to test on another mobo? If you have a Fry's or Microcenter nearby, you could by a low end i965 board and try it out. If you don't get any better results, you could always return it. Anyway, good luck.

I'm hoping it's not my RAM, then again I'm really hoping it's not my board either :p. It's not a big deal enough for me to go out and buy another board just to test this. I do wish I had a friend with a similar system. Alas I will keep trying... 3.6ghz 1:1 was my goal

Personally, I'd go with the 1:1 solution.

P.S. What CPU cooler are you using in that setup? With a Prescott, you need all the cooling you can get.

I'd love to keep it at 1:1, which is why I bought the DDR500 ram to begin with. Everything seems so much smoother when at 1:1; games seems to have much less stuttering. I have an all copper TT cooler. It's not great but it's the winter now and temps are very low. For example now it is 34C idle and 48C load with 1.38V @3.3ghz
 
np, hope your memory is fine so you can crank it upto (and beyond) rated speeds when your A64 parts come.
 
Well I have it stable @ 3.4 with memory running 1:1... no memtest errors. It seems my G.Skill didn't actually like the extra voltage I was giving it. I'll run prime for a while and see what happens. Then I'll try 3.5 running 1:1.
 
Ah, that's much better then :) You might also want to loosen the timings even further if it helps push you to 3.5 or even 3.6.. maybe try 4-4-4-12? Change 1T to 2T? Have you tried a really crappy divider and then cranked the fsb to figure out what your cpu is maxing out?

I'm still undecided about which would be better though... 3.6GHz, 1:1, 4-4-4-12 2T... OR... 3.4, 1:1, 3-4-4-8 1T. Generally, it's better to take higher frequency on the ram over slighly tighter timings, no?
 
Well here's the thing... at 3.4 I was stable on prime for about 20 minutes and zero memtest errors on 100% coverage. So I decided to bump up the FSB just a little to 229 which puts me at 3.43 1:1. I run memtest and get 8 errors on 25% coverage. All I changed was the FSB from 226 to 229. No memory timing or voltage changes.

My ddr500 GSkill is rated at 3-4-4-8 and between 2.6-2.8 voltage. I have it manually set at 3-4-4-8 and 2.7volts and it hasn't even hit it's mhz limit yet. So do I have a faulty stick or should I change something. I'm already at 2T command rate. Here is a screenie.

cpuz1.jpg


So where should I go from here to get rid of those memtest errors?
 
Test your sticks individually. You might have a bad one. It doesn't make sense to have DDR500 (rated 250fsb, 1:1) that's crapping out at not even DDR460. So I'd say either yes, you have a bad stick, or, the mobo doesn't care for that particular frequency (might want to do some research, I'm not familiar with it), or, up the voltage to 2.8 and try again...
 
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