I'm not truly [H].....

[Oldie]

.....but I want to be. I've been a "geek" for about 15 years now. I started out destroying a rebuilding telephones, my colecovision (which I still have and play), I've passed my WinXP Pro MCP test, never bought an OEM or something someone else made, etc....

Unfortunatley though, (much to my shame) I've never ventured into the dark arts. So I threw myself a system together to get myself started: Antec TrueBlue 480W, IC7-Max3, P4 2.4c, some XMS DDR400, and an AIW 9600 Pro. I've intentionally gone w/o the faster CPU and vid card to see what I can get out of these (plus if I end up somking something, I'd rather not kill off that X800 I just shelled out for).

Now I'm not looking for a spoonfeed here, I want to learn. I've spent a few weeks reading, researching, etc... especially in these forums. Some excellent OC's around here. For the moment I have to stick w/Air Cooling so I'm not expecting miracles. I was hoping some of you nice people out there would be willing to take pity on a poor depraved geek like me, and spill out some [H]ard won knowledge of your own about my hardware, and some good starting places/suggestions. Based on what I've read this box should have some nice potential.

Many Thanks,

Oldie (yes the same one (if you were wondering))

 

[KoZLop]

no problem

 

[KoZLop]

any time..

 

[OPUS1]

Go slowly young luke!
Start with some status programs and build a base from which to work from.
Sisoft,AIDA32 & rthdribl will give you the stats to move forward from.
always do one thing at a time, that way you will know what the particular limit is.
ie: ram settings, max cpu ovclk etc.
May the [H]force be with you
try the search in here, a plethera of potentially potent problem solvers.

 

[Oldie]

My main questions are basically, which settings should I adjust to oc the cpu, and how slowly should I go? I've got all of the tools, I'm just not certain on the best way to use them.

 

[AACI_CIO]

Your AIW 9600Pro is likely not going much of anywhere for the OC. However, you should be able to get a nice FSB OC without any extra voltage on the P4 2.4. I don't ever see much AIW OCing primarily due to lack of heatsink compatibility I assume.

OCing the P4:
-Go into the BIOS or use an OCing program.

-Up the FSB by about 10Mhz per boot until you reach instability.

-Now, when the system is unstable, you can either:
a) Up the voltage (can be dangerous with P4's past 0.10 volt increase).
b) Lower the FSB a bit and re-test for stability.

-Many use P95 to test for stability:

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

 

[nst6563]

you could always mod a better hsf on that 9600. See my sig for what mine's clocked at. Used a dremel and some measuring and about 40 minutes worth of time to mod and install a new hsf on my 9600xt. Didn't net me any more MHz, but it did allow the GPU to run cooler. 9600's (especially the XT's with the low-k process) don't run hot to begin with. But in order to get OC's of 100Mhz or more you usually need a vmod.

When you start o/cing that 2.4c, set your RAM divider to 5:4 that way you will find the upper limit of your CPU first and then you can start the process over with your RAM at 1:1. Someone on here has a 2.4c running at about 3.79Ghz or so. Not sure what cooling. I have a 2.8c @ 3.78Ghz on air....so just b/c you're running aircooling doesn't mean you won't get much from an oc.

 

[mattthemodder]

Lap every heatsink and use decent thermal paste

 

[ReNeGaDe*]

that's one big oc

 

[Papa-Ming]

,,,,

 

[Languageguy]

If you haven't already done so, please make sure your PCI/AGP bus is locked. The default is "Auto", change it to "Fixed" to lock it.

 

[Filter]

use a memory divider 5;4 ; lock your pic/agp and try a fsb of 250 to start with. make sure you up your memory voltage.