Need help OCing Opty 165

T

THRESHIN

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
Messages
3,932
tried OCing my new opty 165 last night and it was a bit of a half success and i'm a little stumped at the moment as to what happened. firstly, my specs:

Opty 165 Retail boxed, CCBWE 0550 UPMW stepping. (i've heard that this is great)
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe BIOS ver. 1009
2GB Mushkin DDR500 (2x 1GB)
Enermax all-in-one 535W
evga Geforce 7900GT CO
sound blaster x-fi xtrememusic
250GB WD SATA2, 80GB WD IDE (both 7200rpm)
and some other crap that doesn't matter much at this point

i'm using the stock cooler with arctic silver 5 thermal paste. i actually thought the paste that was pre-applied was one of those old thermal pads...oops. oh well.

my goal with this is NOT to achieve the highest possible overclock. i know that its very possible to reach 2.6Ghz on air with this cpu but thats not my goal. my goal is to turn this into an absolute powerhouse but yet not sacrifice any stability or reliability. i plan for this cpu to last me 3 years or more even. i figure that 2.4Ghz is a good fair mark to try and achieve with minimal voltage adjustment. plus i want an x2 4800+ :)

ok so here's the story...i started at the stock 1.8Ghz and was actually UNDERvolting it. i was able to turn it up to 2.2Ghz still undervolted. i had to increase the voltage a notch, but still under spec. ran 2 instances of prime 95, cpu torture test for over an hour then played quake 4 for a bit. sandra reported a temperature of no more than 43 C. at this point i figure wow i've got one hell of a beast! its just eating it up like a champ!

then i tired to go to 2.4Ghz....wouldn't post, the mainboard detected this once i powered down and then powered up again. tried increasing voltage, still won't post. ok so 2.4Ghz might be a little much for this one, hell i'm happy with what i got. backed it off to 2.3. no post....alright 2.2 is fine, i've tested this pretty well. still won't post even with stock voltage or even a little above that. now i'm thinkin WTF!?!? had to clock it back to 2.0Ghz to get her to post! works fine, but still strange...

so what do you guys think? think i got a dud? think i'm missing something?

my mainboard settings are as follows:

RAM limited to 250Mhz (sandra has a LOT of trouble detecting this....and i question it since in benchmarking i was about 12% above the theoretical 4000mb/s trasnfer rate. is the A64 memory controller really that good??)

SB->NB FSB 200 x 5 multipler, locking it at 1000Mhz

NB->K8 FSB, adjusted multiplier to keep this 1000Mhz or lower. did not go beyond that. had to change between 4x and 3x depending on the FSB used to overclock

CPU multiplier at 9x

voltage did not exceed 1.35V (if it did, very very minimal)

another note: my mainboard temps reported through sandra are HIGH!! i mean about 56 C!! did not have this problem until i kicked everything into manual in the bios, but the bios reports only about 43 C...possible problem with sandra again? whats a good tool to use?

i can't use the asus probe utility either....getting the problem where the x-fi won't let me install it. driving me nuts, the registry fix didn't work either. damn shoddy creative drivers! the card sounds amazing, but i mean come on creative!

thanks for any help guys!
 
I'm using MBM5 for temp-monitoring. No conflicts with my Creative card.

You mention both thermal pad and AS5 compound. Recommended interface is AS5-only between heatsink and CPU heat-spreader, a thin and uniform coating.

Overclocking is seldom as simple as just increasing FSB and Vcore.

I'd add Memtest86 to your testing, incrementing in 5Mhz increments. Some testing time can be saved by running only the most critical tests (Test#5 and Test#8), selected by the Memtest86 'C' key.

Memtest86 for testing stable timings and Vdimm at each increment, Prime95 for testing stable Vcore at each increment.

Hope this helps!
 
eh sorta...only using AS5, what i meant was that the stock amd cooler came with pre-applied thermal paste. i thought it was a stupid thermal pad and ended up removing the paste. then replaced it with my own AS5. don't worry, its spread thin as possible.

as for memory, it might be worth testing but its not overclocked. i got 500Mhz DDR ram and thats where it stays....at least so says the BIOS.

i know what you mean by its not as simple as raising the FSB and the Vcore...its going to be a fun task for the weekend :p

kinda wish it was as simple as back in the day with my old 333 celeron. that baby could handle 485 with no voltage adjustment and stock cooling. 500 with voltage, but i didn't have the balls to push it that far. the best part - it still runs perfectly to this day at 415Mhz (playing it really safe, not mine anymore). its amazing the old voodoo 3 works too. 143-183Mhz. couldn't handle 1 Mhz higher LOL!
 
my 165 0608 did 2808 no problem, i think 1.45v.. i didnt even try it at lower volts ill do that later if my ram works out

right now im memtesting my gskill 3-4-4-8 @ 270mhz.. so i guess unless i run a divider i'll have to hit 290-300 to get anywhere near 2.8ghz...

i never realized until now how important the ram being overclockable is.. but hell, im already up 70mhz

i came into this from the celeron 300a days where it was what, 4 options to overclock

now its 93295j253.. but its finally starting to make sense to me. read a ton of howtos, some useless some good

theres no point to LOWER the voltage to make sure the system lives 3 years.. i mean really, i did 2.8 fine on .5 above stock volts..

AMD rates this chips up to 60c.. i havent even hit 47 at 2.8
and thats with a uberlow vcore compared to most AMD chips

but, its your system.. thats like driving a porsche 911 20mph in a 40
 
what you've said is helpful mikey. i guess we're in the same boat coming from overclocking back in the early celeron days to present day. been reading a lot, but one thing that throws me off is that the A8N32-SLI does not use ram dividers as far as i can tell....its just set independently. strange stuff. might try turning the ram down tonight and see if its lying or not.

i still have a goal of 2.4Ghz and i intend to hit that!
 
itsmikey said:
my 165 0608 did 2808 no problem, i think 1.45v.. i didnt even try it at lower volts ill do that later if my ram works out

right now im memtesting my gskill 3-4-4-8 @ 270mhz.. so i guess unless i run a divider i'll have to hit 290-300 to get anywhere near 2.8ghz...

i never realized until now how important the ram being overclockable is.. but hell, im already up 70mhz

i came into this from the celeron 300a days where it was what, 4 options to overclock

now its 93295j253.. but its finally starting to make sense to me. read a ton of howtos, some useless some good

theres no point to LOWER the voltage to make sure the system lives 3 years.. i mean really, i did 2.8 fine on .5 above stock volts..

AMD rates this chips up to 60c.. i havent even hit 47 at 2.8
and thats with a uberlow vcore compared to most AMD chips

but, its your system.. thats like driving a porsche 911 20mph in a 40
Click to expand...

Are you using any special ram settings on that Expert? About 265 is the limit with my g. skill without any extra tweaking.

I'm gonna have to start playing with dividers and then voltage if I can't push it anymore.
 
THRESHIN said:
what you've said is helpful mikey. i guess we're in the same boat coming from overclocking back in the early celeron days to present day. been reading a lot, but one thing that throws me off is that the A8N32-SLI does not use ram dividers as far as i can tell....its just set independently. strange stuff. might try turning the ram down tonight and see if its lying or not.

i still have a goal of 2.4Ghz and i intend to hit that!
Click to expand...

Your Opty should be good for that.

I'm running 2.7GHz@1.45vcore Dual Prime95 stable and SuperPI 32M stable.
But I've got a really good HSF - the ThermalRight SI120 and an 87CFM 120mm fan on it.

Good luck, playing with yours - My goal was stable at 2.8Ghz - Couldn't quite make it. But it really is a different computer at an almost 1GHz OC. :)


 
well i figured it out! finally! turns out that the limiters on the ram really aren't limiters for this mainboard....the FSB is still jacking up the ram frequency beyond the limiter. i mean, wtf is the point in that asus?!?!? now i have to guess work it all!

either way, the problem was that i was severly overclocking my ram and not knowing it. thats why i couldn't start up properly past 2.2Ghz.....still shows that this mushkin ram has some really sweet overclocking potential! i'm even busting the highest scores in sandra memory benchmark and surpassing the theoretical 4000mb/sec without any OCing on the ram....its very impressive!

as it stands i'm running with stock cooler, 1.3875V Vcore, at 2.4Ghz and its just zipping along. i don't think i can keep this up though. although it will pass any tests i throw at it my cpu is getting WAY too warm for my liking! i'm currently at 67 C with full load. little much for me. might see if she will stay at this speed with lower voltage. if worst comes to worst i can always invest in one of those arctic 64 freezer solutions or whatever they are....can't remember now. maybe try some of that liquid metal TIM that was on the [H] front page the other day.

funny thing is, i thought it was the mainboard at this temp. i had the problem where the x-fi wouldn't let me install asus utilities. i used sandra to take my thermals. the mainboard temp just kept going up and up but the cpu temp stayed the same....hmmm.... got that solved (uninstalled x-fi for the time being, used the registry fix). turns out sandra was swapping the temperature readings.

its amazing that this cpu can handle these kind of temperatures.....makes me wish i had watercooling.
 
Asus' settings in the bios are rather noobish when it comes to timings. By selecting the speed of your memory, it really is setting a devider but just isn't saying it, and it is a bit misleading at post. I recommend a utility like cpu-z that will tell you exactly what timings your bus and memory seeds are running at. Also, don't forget to keep an eye on your ht multiplier.
 
thanx rob;) will do! almost forgot about cpu-z.

so good news is now that i have the ram problem sorted out and this this is VERY stable at 2.4Ghz, i've been able to drop the Vcore way down. i'm at 1.3125 at the moment, totally stable and thats dropped my cpu temp down to 57 C max under full load. still not great, but a far sight better than 67 that i was getting before. my fan speed is a little over 2800 rpm, i wonder if there's a way to speed that up to 4000.....stupid asus. i can honestly say i don't think i'll get one of their boards again.
 
I have the same mobo and cpu. I also have the same problem when i tried overclocking over 2.2ghz, so which settings exactly did u change for the bios to make it be able to overclock to 2.4?
 
well its a weird overclock....problem is that the HTT will rise as the cpu FSB does. it shouldn't go much beyond 1000Mhz, i don't at all because there really isn't any performance gain.

my problem was the ram. if you set the limiter on the ram (or even leave it auto) the frequency will actually go up even though the stupid board doesn't report it at post. i have 500DDR ram and i was sending the ram to hell in a handbasket

so simple answer is this (BIOS 1009 BTW): under the 'jumperfree configuration' set all your voltages to stock. check your voltage with the asus pc probe software in windows to be sure its what you want, the damn thing actually adds voltage to what you specify. set the vcore to manual. set your CPU multiplier to its max manually here too (mine is 9X for the opty 165). set all your FSB settings to manual (SB->NB, NB->K8) set the SB->NB bus to 200. set your NB->K8 FSB to whatever you want for your overclock. now go into your 'chipset configuration' menu. set everything to manual. set the PCIe slots both to 16 up and 16 down. set your SB->NB multiplier to 5x. with the SB->NB FSB at 200 that you just set, this will lock your bus between the south bridge and the north bridge at 1000Mhz which is exactly what you want. now, you will need to drop your NB->K8 FSB multiplier down below 5x, i have mine at 3x right now. so my fsb is 267Mhz currently. that gives me the 2.4Ghz and with the 3x NB->K8 i get 801Mhz HTT. it doesn;t seem to hurt performance at all. i saw in another thread here where some guy tested and it made virtually no difference. finally, the ram. because i have 500Mhz ram, i set the ram limiter to 250Mhz. with the DDR, i get the 500. this is under the cpu configuration menu and then a sub menu for the ram. way to label asus. jerks. now those settings are not correct. they are really ram dividers except they tried to make it easier for idiots. it didn't work. because i was limited to 500, it was more of a divider. as i raised my FSB the ram started to overclock and i had no clue. thank god i didn't damage it, i was getting kinda scaird. the solution is to lower the ram limiter by a lot. check it with cpu-z and if you're low you can always raise it a notch. i havn't bothered to sit down and figure out the math behind it and well i don't feel like it right now. not exactly hard, i'm just lazy. maybe later tonight

in the end, i've reached my goal of 2.4Ghz with ease. i'm still dropping the voltage and right now i'm at 1.18V. i can't believe how far below spec this thing is going. i'm going to drop it even further later until i find how low i can go.i also stuck a second 80mm fan on top of the amd fan with just some nuts and bolts and 8 nylon washers (double stacked to give good clearance). yes its ghetto, but it works. i got my cpu temp down to a very respectable 46 C under full load on both cores.this gives me plenty of headroom for when it gets warm this summer and i might even be able to push this baby a little further and stick within my safety limit

hope that helps, good luck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top