First real OC; did I do anything wrong?

[Miller]

Well, after doing some extensive reading after screwing up my ABIT AS-8 (long story, but the short of it is, I didn't ground myself properly and shorted out the mobo...wasn't really a mobo problem), I decided to up my X2 3800+ just a tiny bit, to keep up on a single-core basis with my friend's 3500+.

Followed the guide in the AMD Processors forum, did the Prime tests with Clockgen, reached a max HTT of 225 for both (even with vcore at 1.44v...eh, maybe mine just doesn't want to overclock too much). Alright, well, since I was only aiming for 2.2 anyway, 225 was just fine.

Upped the vcore to 1.44 just for stability's sake (I have a Zalman 7700Cu that keeps my processor at a breezy 35C-36C idle and ~43C under load; if I could OC any higher, I probably would, but I'm kind of hesitant after my Abit "mishap"), put the RAM down to 166mhz (5:4...I have Corsair ValueSelect PC3200 ram @ 2.5-3-3-8 by default, and I'm not sure of its own ability to withstand higher speeds, so I'm just keeping it there), put the HTT at 225 and kept the Multi at 10 and booted into Windows.

Everything seems fine so far...did I miss anything? Considering how much the replacement parts cost me when I killed my old mobo, I'm trying to make sure I got everything right, else it may be a while until I'm on a computer of my own again. ;P

My setup:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ 2.2 (220*10)
Zalman 7700Cu
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
1GB (2x512) Corsair ValueSelect (2-3-3-8)
Antec TruePower 2.0 550w
eVGA GeForce 7800GT (@483/1120)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2
Maxtor 250gb (IDE), Western Digital 200gb (IDE)

[Edit] Also, what kind of performance boost can I expect to see? Obviously I'm not expecting anything major, but how much difference do you suppose 200mhz will make (particularly in games)?

Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[Miller]

Only doing one small bump...if no one replies, I'll just leave it at that. I just want the confidence that I actually did this right. x)

And an update...I set my RAM back to 400mhz (it's now running at 440mhz, as I recall; listed in Everest as PC3500). I have the vdimm in the BIOS set to [Auto], which I asssume will set the correct voltages accordingly...should I set it manually just in case? Everything seems to be running just fine; timings are again at 2.5-3-3-8. Haven't run MemTest, but I played a couple hours' work of games to stress-test it, and have been doing other things on it, and so far no issues.

Anything else I should be taking into consideration?

Thanks again. Sorry for the bump.

 

[cx323]

i would run sp2004 for at least 12 hours to make sure it's stable. for the ram i would set the voltage yourself because autodetect just reads it form the eprom which would be for stock speeds. overall it looks fine as long as it's stable

 

[Miller]

What would you suggest for the vdimm? It appears stable, but I don't want to take any chances.

This is on the same general topic of overclocking; I followed the AMD guide of finding the maximum HTT by way of Prime95 and ClockGen, and both capped out at about a 222mhz overclock. However, I was attempting it with the stock voltage...should I be setting the voltage to as high as it can go when I'm doing the Prime95/ClockGen test? I'm rather put off by the fact that most people are getting higher OCs out of their 3800+ X2s than I am. My next goal may be 2.4ghz.

Here's a screenshot of CPU-Z, if it helps (what can be discerned from the CPU-Z screen as far as overclockability goes?):

http://www.altered-screens.com/other/cpuz12-9-05.jpg

Thanks again.

[Edit] One last thing. Supposing it weren't stable, what's the worst that could happen? Actually physically damaged parts, or just crashes and lock-ups and such?

 

[unfortunateson]

Need to see the speed of your mem, however try this:

Go into your BOIS setup. Disable Cool&Quiet
Set CPU Frequency to 240
Set CPU Multiplier to x10
Set Memclock Index Value to 333Mhz
Set Hyper Transport Frequency to 4x

Run Memtest86 and Prime95 to test for stability.

Congratulations, your an overclocker.

Your system specs are similar to mine - I followed those instructions and was able to reach 2.4ghz at 1.325 volts...

 

[Miller]

What are your RAM timings? I think I may have to loosen up on mine.

[Edit] Seems kind of stuck at the 225mhz mark....upping vcore to 1.47 didn't seem to help, nor did loosening RAM to 2.5-3-4-8. Did I just get the (bad) luck of the draw, or am I missing something?

 

[Render]

u have VALUE ram....change ur memory divider.

 

[Miller]

Well, even when I set everything as follows:

HTLink: 2x
RAM Divider: 100mhz (it shows it as the effective speed, so it shows up as 200mhz)
Multi: 5x
HTT: 200

And run Prime95 In-Place FFT and use clockgen to boost frequencies by 2-3mhz (this is all verbatem from the guide), I still hit exactly 225, after which my computer just reboots. Boosting vcore doesn't help at all...loosening my timings didn't seem to do anything either (2.5-3-3-8 works the same as anything else). Anything else I should try?