First Overclock - Have Questions Now

[Toireht]

Tonight was the first time I've overclocked anything in my computer. I never really ventured into overclocking because I didn't have any money to replace anything if something did go wrong while in school. After ordering a FX-55 from the newegg deal, which should arrive tomorrow, I now have a backup if something does go wrong so I thought I would give it a go. The system I used for my overclock is in my signature.

After reading up on about 2-3 tutorials and getting all the programs I needed, I felt I was ready to try this overclocking thing. Using Eclipse's guide I loaded up Clockgen, Speedfan, and Prime95. I set Prime95 to inplace toture test and used clockgen to raise my FSB by 2-3 every 15-30secs. I now got my FSB up to 244 which sets my processor running at 2200mhz and my ram at 200mhz. Ran Prime95 now for about 30mins and played FSX for about 1hr to make sure everything was fine and dandy.

Now I'm sure the processor can go farther but the reason I stopped at 244 was because now my RAM was back up to where it was before I used up all the 4 ram slots. Before I used only 2 slots and they were running at 200mhz, but when I upgraded my RAM to 2gb using up all 4 slots it set itself to 166mhz. Now my questions are:

-=How far do you think I could push my RAM at default voltages?
-=Is raising the FSB the only way to push my processor faster since my multiplier seems to be limited to x9?
-=At post it says the ram is running at ddr333, when I check cpu-z in windows it says 200mhz...does that not mean its running DDR400 or am I royally confused?
-=When I get my FX-55 do you think I will be able to push the FSB to 244 again to be able to reach 200mhz for the RAM or is there another way to set my ram back to running at 200mhz?
-=Now I'm interested in overclocking my videocard, where would you guys say to go to get started in that?

Sorry for what seems to be easy questions...but I would rather know than be ignorant and mess something up.

Thanks for the tutorials BTW

 

[khanable]

Yes, your ram is running at ddr400 speeds.. and from the sounds of it.. stably!

Yes raising the fsb is the way to go!

Try using a divider on the ram, like 5:4 ratio so it reverts back to ddr333 and you can move your processor up more.

The fx-55 comes at stock 2.6ghz I believe, meaning it's running a 13x multi.. so 13 x 244 = nearly 3.2ghz, which is a rather decent jump. Getting that high on stock cooling will be near impossible, and rather tricky on high end air. I **think** the multiplier is unlocked on that chip, though. So you can play with that as well!

 

[Chernobyl1]

Hi, I'll answer what I can.
Use Stress Prime 2004, its nicer to use and just as good.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Stress-Prime.shtml

We cant predict how far you can push your ram.
You'll be the first to know when you've done it

Unfortunately, raising the FSB (HTT) is the only way to boost your CPU's speed.

At post it will report the initial memory speed set in the BIOS not what speed it runs at after the overclock is setup.

To see how far your motherboard will clock, set the HT to 2x or 3x, set the Memory to DDR266 (2:3), set the multiplier on the CPU to as low as it will go and make sure the PCI-e/PCI bus is locked.
Raise the HTT until it doesnt work any more and you will have the max HTT that you can ever achieve while overclocking.

To make your ram run at 200MHz (400MHz DR) while running default HTT, set it to "DDR400" in the BIOS. The setting may have other names like 1:1

I'll let someone else recommend a graphics card overclocking tutorial as I havent read one for some time.

edit:
missed one thing...
Some motherboards will run the memory at DDR333 if all 4 slots are occupied.
If you have to use 4 DIMMS, overclock as far as you can.
Somemotherboards have a 1T/2T memory timing. 2T is needed to run 4 DIMMS at DDR400 on those boards.
As already mentioned, if the memory tops out too early, divide the speed down.

 

[Toireht]

The fx-55 comes at stock 2.6ghz I believe, meaning it's running a 13x multi.. so 13 x 244 = nearly 3.2ghz, which is a rather decent jump. Getting that high on stock cooling will be near impossible, and rather tricky on high end air. I **think** the multiplier is unlocked on that chip, though. So you can play with that as well!

Would I be able to set the multiplier down to 12x which would give me 2.9ghz? Or even 11x to get 2684mhz, which would almost be stock again.

 

[khanable]

Would I be able to set the multiplier down to 12x which would give me 2.9ghz? Or even 11x to get 2684mhz, which would almost be stock again.

Yep.

 

[kill4killin]

You are more than free to lower the multiplier, all AMD chips come only capped i believe. The FX series may be different but i dont believe it is.

Man, if you are running stable at 3.2Ghz and your temps are good...more power to you. I would just leave it there Those are nice speeds.

 

[Toireht]

...To make your ram run at 200MHz (400MHz DR) while running default HTT, set it to "DDR400" in the BIOS. The setting may have other names like 1:1

edit:
missed one thing...
Some motherboards will run the memory at DDR333 if all 4 slots are occupied.
If you have to use 4 DIMMS, overclock as far as you can.
Somemotherboards have a 1T/2T memory timing. 2T is needed to run 4 DIMMS at DDR400 on those boards.
As already mentioned, if the memory tops out too early, divide the speed down.

Thing is, in bios it says ram is set to 1:1. Is set to be running 5:4 automatically because of my motherboard or is it still running at 1:1 but at 166mhz.

You are more than free to lower the multiplier, all AMD chips come only capped i believe. The FX series may be different but i dont believe it is.

Man, if you are running stable at 3.2Ghz and your temps are good...more power to you. I would just leave it there Those are nice speeds.

Right now this OC is being done on a 3000+ Venice, FX wont come in till tomorrow, so my speed is 2.2ghz actually.

 

[Chernobyl1]

Thing is, in bios it says ram is set to 1:1. Is set to be running 5:4 automatically because of my motherboard or is it still running at 1:1 but at 166mhz

I ammended my last post with the explanation for this.
It looks like your motherboard is designed to change the memory speed to DDR333 when all 4 DIMM slots are used.
One of those things I'm afraid but you can try overclocking them back up to DDR400, it may work
Loosen the the memory timings a bit before clocking to see how far you can get, then tighten the timings one by one to see how many you can get faster at that speed.

My motherboard makes me run my memories timings slower (2T instead of 1T) when I use all 4 memory banks, otherwise it wont even boot.
My Venice 3000+ easily broke 2.6GHz on a worse motherboard than I have. Now it does 2.7GHz.
You can get a fair bit more from your chip if your HTT goes high enough.

 

[Toireht]

Just recieved the FX-55 and started to OC like I was before. My last OC with the venice cpu was 245FSB with RAM at 200mhz and HTT 4x. Memtest ran without errors for 2 passes and Prime95 ran without errors for 1hr.

SpeedFan - monitor cpu temp
Clockgen - Increasing the FSB 1-3 every 30secs
Prime95- inplace torture test

Now when I started OCing the FX-55 I forgot I set the HT back up 5x. When I got the FSB up to 215 it came up with an error reading; Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4. Ram was only at 170mhz or so and it reached 200mhz before without errors. Did this error arise because I forgot to set the HT back down to 4x and it went above 1000mhz? Or is it an memory error like I have read on the forums? I'm running prime95 right now at stock speeds to see if it happens again.

 

[Chernobyl1]

It could be either but I suspect memory.
It takes a few minutes to test

You may need to set a divider on the memory to get the max from your CPU.
Setting the HTT to 4x may not be enough, theres no loss setting it to 3x so you may as well do it
Did you find the maximum HTT your motherboard will do?

 

[Toireht]

It seems to be my processor, whenever it hits 2.8ghz either being 215x13 or 200x14 I get the error in prime95. I'm sure I would just have to up the voltage but I don't like the idea of that just because I'm so new to this, so I think I will just leave it at stock.