• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

I don't understand my overclock?

L

lost0822

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 10, 2004
Messages
270
I just started overclocking for the first time the other day. I’ve read many guides on how to do it, so I ‘m pretty confident at the basics. I just built this machine about a month ago so I thought I’d try some overclocking. First thing I did was to make sure my system was stable at stock setting. Prime 95 ran for one 9 hour period and a 6 hour. Memtest ran at a 7 hour period, so everything is good at stock.

Anyway, I thought ok let bump up my FSB. Well I went up from 200 to 210 to start. Everything booted up fine and all, temp was about 41 at load and 35 stable. I thought well I should run Prime over night to test it, but for sh!t’s and giggles lets run 3dMark03 to see what my score comes out as. Now at stock settings I get around 11000 with my 6800GT slightly oveclocked 370/1030. I thought ok with this oveclock my cpu test scores should go up right? Therefore increasing my total score. Well I was wrong my score came out to the low 10000’s!

I don’t understand why this is? Like I said I’m new to this, so anyone know why?

I then went and bumped up my cpu voltage to see if that would help, from 1.5 to 1.65……nothing still around the low 10000’s. So then I thought o.k. maybe I should loosen my memory timings, well I went from 2.5, 3, 3, 8, 2T to 3, 4, 4, 9, 2T……ugh 3dMark03 scores sucked went to like 8000! And the frames were fragmented the whole time, so I changed my timings back.

What am I doing wrong. Am I doing this wrong in thinking my 3dMark03 cpu scores would go up? When I watch the frame rates on the cpu tests they are lower at my 210 fsb then at my stock 200 speed. Any suggestions? I ran Prime 95 all night last night (9 hours total) with the 210 FSB with no errors, so that seems pretty stable. Thanks for any suggestions.
 
I got a couple things you can check. Make sure you are getting good voltage. I know you have a OCZ 520, but check to make sure your voltage rails come with in the manufacturers specs. Also, check to make sure your AGP/PCI lock is on. It may not seem like you have a high enough overclock, but check it anyway.
 
covertclocker said:
I got a couple things you can check. Make sure you are getting good voltage. I know you have a OCZ 520, but check to make sure your voltage rails come with in the manufacturers specs. Also, check to make sure your AGP/PCI lock is on. It may not seem like you have a high enough overclock, but check it anyway.
Click to expand...

Everything seems to check out with my OCZ, so that seems fine. For the AGP/PCI lock to be active on my MSI board you have to push the AGP frequency number from 66 to 67 which i did. any other suggestions? thanks though.

Also i noticed that my mem voltage as reported from the MSI Core Center is at 2.7.....that seems high does'nt it, i've never adjusted the memory voltage that's what the motherboard automaticly did....if i go into my Bios it's set to AUTO, so that's what number i guess it's coming up with, should i try lowering it?
 
do you have your memory set at expert or optimised/auto or w/e they call it... my motherboard and a 8rda+(prob others as well) will adjust memory timings as you pump fsb

i run my memory(its pc2700) at 2.8v at 200 fsb 1:1 at 2.5-3-3-11 1T (dunno about a64 but nforce-2 loves 11)
 
ryuji said:
do you have your memory set at expert or optimised/auto or w/e they call it... my motherboard and a 8rda+(prob others as well) will adjust memory timings as you pump fsb
Click to expand...

Well there's a Agressive Timings section, but i have that disabled. Also where you adjust the timings there is a "Max Memclock (Mhz)" that i have set to auto, should i change that?
 
lost0822 said:
Well there's a Agressive Timings section, but i have that disabled. Also where you adjust the timings there is a "Max Memclock (Mhz)" that i have set to auto, should i change that?
Click to expand...
sounds like your mobo is automagically setting the memory divider.. make it 1:1
 
ryuji said:
sounds like your mobo is automagically setting the memory divider.. make it 1:1
Click to expand...

it does'nt come up that way it give you these options, "Auto" "100" "133" "166" and "200"....i guess i should put it to 200 then for a 1:1 setting?
 
lost0822 said:
it does'nt come up that way it give you these options, "Auto" "100" "133" "166" and "200"....i guess i should put it to 200 then for a 1:1 setting?
Click to expand...
interesting.. so the max your mobo will run your memory is 200 fsb? whats the rated speed of your memory and its timings.. just curious
 
you wont see that much of an increase when doing a cpu o/c in 3dmark03
it uses the vid card and ram mostly .. it's not as cpu dependent as 3dmark01 was
you'd beneift more in it by o'cing the vid then the cpu
 
stickygreen said:
you wont see that much of an increase when doing a cpu o/c in 3dmark03
it uses the vid card and ram mostly .. it's not as cpu dependent as 3dmark01 was
you'd beneift more in it by o'cing the vid then the cpu
Click to expand...

okay but why would it go down by almost 1000 points?
 
i was just stating that o/cing a cpu wouldn't make that much difference in the 3dmark03 score
as others have posted already the problem is more than likely something with the ram or setting in the bios when your o/cing
was it consistent .. the drop in score ?
did you run it more than once to make sure it wasn't a fluke score?
do other benches show a drop in score also ?
 
stickygreen said:
i was just stating that o/cing a cpu wouldn't make that much difference in the 3dmark03 score
as others have posted already the problem is more than likely something with the ram or setting in the bios when your o/cing
was it consistent .. the drop in score ?
did you run it more than once to make sure it wasn't a fluke score?
do other benches show a drop in score also ?
Click to expand...

Yeah i ran 3dMark05 and that went down as well.

Another question, how will i know to loosen the timings on my memory when overclocking. Like i said i have them at stock right now and the system is still stable at this 210 FSB. Do i just keep pushing that number up and then wait till it's unstable to loosen the timings? thanks for the answers so far.
 
do you have a copy of memtest ?
http://www.memtest86.com

burn the iso to cd .. makes it bootable

set you o/c in bios then boot off the cd ... let memtest run for a few hours minimum
if you get no error boot to windows and stress test with prime or something

if you see any errors on memtest it could mean the o/c is to high and you need to relax the ram timimg .. or you can bump up the ram voltage .. or maybe the ram just wont do that speed

booting into windows without knowing if your ram is stable can corrupt your windows install so i live by memtest :)
 
stickygreen said:
do you have a copy of memtest ?
http://www.memtest86.com

burn the iso to cd .. makes it bootable

set you o/c in bios then boot off the cd ... let memtest run for a few hours minimum
if you get no error boot to windows and stress test with prime or something

if you see any errors on memtest it could mean the o/c is to high and you need to relax the ram timimg .. or you can bump up the ram voltage .. or maybe the ram just wont do that speed

booting into windows without knowing if your ram is stable can corrupt your windows install so i live by memtest :)
Click to expand...

yeah i have memtest, i used to when i built my machine to make sure it was stable....passed with flying colors...i have yet to try it with my 210 overclock yet, Prime 95 ran for about 9 hours last night with no errors, i guess i should do Memtest tonight then.
 
if it's prime stable for 9 hours it'll pass memtest :)
you should still test the ram with memtest first then run prime .. keep upping the fsb until you start getting errors on either test .. then try relaxing teh timings alittle
 
stickygreen said:
if it's prime stable for 9 hours it'll pass memtest :)
you should still test the ram with memtest first then run prime .. keep upping the fsb until you start getting errors on either test .. then try relaxing teh timings alittle
Click to expand...

cool thanks, i'll do that.

i just don't want to see a decrease in my gaming because of this....i mean if i guess i should not assume that because my 3dmark03/05 scores went down that my gaming speeds will decrease or should i?
 
When you overclock your CPU, don't use 3dm03/05 to check the results, theyre more GPU dependant than CPU dependant. Use 3dmark01se, SuperPi, commanche 4, or something like that. They're more CPU dependant, and you should see an increase, not a decrease in those.
 
Well i got my scores back up. Seems as though i needed to turn down the overclock on my 6800gt. mine does not overclock well at all, but i usually have it at about 374/1050....but when i overclocked my cpu and ran with that same 6800 overclock the scores came down....i put the overclock on the card to 365/1030 and my score went back up to 11000 area. Why would that overclock on my 6800 needed to be tweaked after i overclock on my cpu? Anyway i'm up to about 2353 from 2.2 on my cpu right now and counting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top