• 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.

Overclocking P4 2.8 800FSB - Weird Problems

M

morpheus9394

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 8, 2002
Messages
369
This is my current PC specs:
P4 2.8 Northwood 800 FSB
Abit IC-7
Corsair Twinx 3200LL
Antec True Power 480W PSU
ThermalRight XP-120 Cooler
YS-Tech 120mm Fan
Geforce 6800GT
SB Audigy 2
Two SATA Seagate Barrcuda 160GB HDD
Pioneer A107 DVDRW
LG CDRW
6x80mm YS-Tech Case Fans

Prior to having the 480w PSU and XP-120 Cooler with fan I had a Enermax 350w PSU with a Cooper Thermalright SL97 cooler and I was able to get a stable 3.4ghz O/C with my ATI 9800.
Since moving to the the Geforce 6800 I cannot get a stable overclock above 3.0ghz.
I am not sure where the problem lies.
This is what I tried:

3.4GHZ with a FSB of 246
CPU Vcore at 1.65v
DDR at 2.8v
AGP at default (1.55v I think)
Ratio of 5:4 or 3:2 (i've tried both)

At those settings windows is very stable but if I tried to do anything intensive, like converting DiVX movies to MP4 or playing Half Life 2 the PC will either lock up or reboot.
Temps are around 45c unloaded, going up to 65c under extreme load.
I reduced the O/C to 3.2 but got the same problem.
What is weird is I now have a far better cooler and PSU but my O/C has become far less stable.
Anyone any ideas?

P.S. If I upgraded to Process to a 3.2 or 3.4 Northword, what kind of O/C could I expect? Would it be worth the extra cost?
 
My $ is on either faulty PSU or poor job attaching HSF. How are your voltage rails?
 
Thanks for the advice.
I have check my voltages are they are all normal.
My HSF is securely attached.
My temps all seem ok.
Do you think it could be the video card that is not happy.
I will run the card at its default speed and do some benchmarks.
 
maybe the ACTUAL volt lines are being shared by the vid card and something is getting short-changed. I never trust the BIOS or software readings, just use them as a ballpark. But when you get down into nitty gritty things like this, it's worth it to buy a good multi-meter. It depends how the board's power circuit is designed, but it could still be un-able to supply enough juice to let things loose. I would put the old vid card back in with the 480w and see if you can overclock as good or higher (with XP-120).
 
Thanks for the advice guys.
Tried running O/C the processor but left the 6800 at default speeds and ran a lopping 3Dmark but the PC crashed after about 45mins.
Can't test with the old graphic card as that was sold to help pay for the new kit.
I will open up the PC at the weekend and check thing out properly.

The only thing I did notice that was a bit weird, the ABIT EQ monitor reports that the sys fan is running slow at around 940rpm. I wonder if that could be causing the MB to overheat and hang.
Is the SYS fan the chipset fan?

Any thoughts
 
Make sure you agp/pci ratio is locked at 66/33.

What are your mem timings?

Also, your Vcore voltage is a tad high. Do you really need it that high? Not sure if that has anything to do with your instability but you can probably lower your temps by lowering that voltage. My 3.0e reaches its max oc just by bumping the voltage up a couple notches.
 
Last night I reduce my vcore to 1.6v, the default is 1.52 (I think from memory).
Before I had all the instabilities I ran with a vcore of 1.65v.
I think the problem may be the way I applied the thermal grease (I was a bit generous with it)
So I have ordered some arctic silver 5 and will remove and clean up my heatsink and CPU and reapply properly and see if that makes a difference.

When I had the Thermalright SP97 I had a nice thin layer of grease but this time round I was too eager to the machine up and running so I was not as careful.

I didn't realise that too much grease could cause problems, especially when overclocking.
I will let you know how I get on.

Thanks to everyone who replied.
 
Too much thermal paste of any kind is very bad. It turns into a really good insulator when it's applied too thick.
 
Scrape it off with a credit card. If you want to totally clean it, use a lint free cloth and some isopropanol.
 
When I removed the heatsink the CPU looked like it had a thermal grease bath,
It was covered in the stuff - SILLY ME!!!
After a good clean up job and some cable management, I applied some Arctic Silver 5 so the XP-120 and re-attached it.
I also noticed the the 6800GT fan was caked in dust so all my fans got a good clean up.

I am not ROCK solid stable at 3.4GHZ at 5:4 ratio with the ram running 2-6-3-2.
And the PC is flying.
Getting over 66,000 in Aquamark3.
Thanks to everyone for their advice and help.
 
morpheus9394 said:
I am not ROCK solid stable at 3.4GHZ at 5:4 ratio with the ram running 2-6-3-2.
Click to expand...

I think you mean 'now' rather than 'not' :p

Good news, glad to hear it :)
 
Good news dude. Have you tried to get those timings down to a 1:1 ratio. I am running my 2.8 at 3.4 rock solid as well, however I am using the 1:1 ration. Usually it just takes some messing around with your timings and upping the voltage on your ram a tad. Just a thought.
 
OOPPPSSS, yes I meant to say "it is NOW rock solid" DOH!!!

JAGZZZZZZZZZZZ - Now that the PC is running well I am going to start pushing the OC harder.
Do you think is better to go for a higher clock speed, like 3.5ghz or go for a higher DDR speed, using the 1:1 ratio instead of a 5:4 ratio.

What timings did you use to get your machine stable at 1:1?
What MB have you got? I am using an ABIT IC7 with the latest offical bios update.
 
Nice to hear, my 2.8 hits 3.4 stable as well (gotta love that XP-120)... but my Kingston Valuecrap holds my ratios back :rolleyes:
 
I have an IC7-max3 and the timings are 2.5-7-3-3, with some gskill. It's at 1:1 and a 243 fsb. My cpu voltage is 1.65 and mem is 2.8 volts. I am at 32 idle and 41 load. Now I did go and lower my temps as displayed in MBM by 10 degrees due to the abit vs asus article. I am running on air with a crappy aerocool4 or i it aeroflow, ahh who cares. I think you can get there with 1:1 timings, just up some voltages (if you feel safe about it). Lemme know what your voltage is now and we'll see if its the voltage on your ram or cpu holding you back from the 1:1 timings. Now the gskill is top shelf ram though, so it could be your ram. My specs are in my sig as well.

Here is the article, a great read for us abit owners.
http://www.bleedinedge.com/reviews/abit_asus_temps/abit_asus_temps_01.html
 
My Vcore is default at 1.52v and DDR voltage is 2.8v with AGP at 1.6v (I am overclocking my 6800 GT)
My temps are 48c and around 55c under load (according to Abit EQ).

My memory is Corsair 3200LL so I don't think I will be about to go 1:1 at a FSB as high as yours but I will give it a try.

I previously got an O/C of 3.5ghz with a 3:2 ratio but it wasn't very stable but I am not sure if that was because my temps were a bit high as I didn't have the XP-120 and I only had a 350v PSU back then.

I will try some O/Cing in a bit and let you know how I get on.

Thanks for the advice.
 
I just now lowered my vCore down to 1.625 and it benched fine, the test is ALWAYS actual gameplay though, and I will do some of that tonight. I think a reason for your problems with stability is your vCore. Up it some and I think you'll see an improvement in that area. I know that up to 1.65 is safe. I do NOT know what intel claims is the safe voltage though and they generally leave some margin for error. Check out the article I linked and I think you'll become a lot more accepting of your abit eq temps, they read higher than they actually are. I may try and drop mine down to 1.6 but I was running into stability issues with that voltage, so I upped it some. Mine is also 1.525 defaulted, but who cares about defaults when your OCing!!

edit: I am in the iddle of a move in the next couple of weeks, but I am determined to hit a 250 FSB for 3.5GHz on air and at 1:1 timings. Too much going on to start with all that now as I am happy with my measly 700MHz OC :) , for now anyways. Would love to get a 1GHz oc, but that'll have to wait for watercooling. Exos-2 here I come... Of course getting that by the "financial advisor" (ol' lady) is easier said than done. Hmmmm how to sell her on a $400 water cooling rig???
 
:D
Of course getting that by the "financial advisor" (ol' lady) is easier said than done
Click to expand...
That really made me laugh as I know exactly what you mean as I also have a financial advisor at home and trying to get the PC upgrades pass her ever watchful eye is VERY difficult but all part of the fun.
I would be happy getting a stable 3.5ghz OC at 5:4 ratio. I doubt VERY much if my RAM would work at 250fsb at 1:1 but it is worth a try.
I did some reading on the ABIT forums (found some very useful tips) and I found that you can get a more stable OC is you change the Game Accelerator settings to Auto, Normal, Auto, Disabled, Disabled (reading from top down).
Give that a try, if you haven't done so already.

Right, time to try that for that 3.5ghz OC. I will post back in the morning and let you know how I get on.
Good luck to you mate.
 
Yeah almost forgot about the a-a-a-d-d, the normal on the 2nd one actually hindered my OC. Must be something quirky with the ram. How about you buy my wc setup and I'll buy yours, that way we can classify it as "charity work"!!! Yeah wishful thinking! Theres a good thread on the exos-2 in the watercooling section.
 
:(
Well I was testing the PC all night and I was not able to a stable OC at 3.5ghz even with a ratio of 3:2 and with lowering the timings, Memtest couldn't even do one pass sucessfully.

So I went back to an FSB of 243 and decided to convert some Divx movies to MP4 and PC kept hanging.

I tried everything to get the machine stable but not joy so I had to go back to defaults speeds for now.

It is really weird because the PC is stable during every other test, Memtest (did 10 passes with no errors), 3dmark 2003/2005 (several loops with no problems), Aquamark with no problems, plus a couple of hours playing Farcry at Ultra Max settings with no problems.

The only thing I didn't try was changing the GA settings to A-A-A-D-D like you and if that doesn't work I guess a reload of Windows maybe needed though, Windows is running like a dream at the moment (for once) so I didn't really want to have to reload everything.

I do notice that when I am encode my CPU useage goes to 100% so the machine is being pushed to its limits during.
When O/Cing and encoding my temps go up to 64.5c or 54c if you take into account the ABIT temp issue, the problem is not heat.
I even tried raising the Vcore to 1.65v but that made no different.
When I reduced the timings to 3-3-3-8 and used the 3:2 ratio I was able to encode for longer before the PC hung.
I suspect that when my PC is pushed to its limits the RAM is holding me back.
Playing games doesn't push the PC that much as the 6800 handles alot of the work for the PC.

Got any ideas?

How did your O/Cing go?
 
I didn't get a chance to attempt the 250 yet, but what is your AGP voltage at? Some have found that they have had to up the AGP to OC properly. I think that changing to A-A-A-D-D will help as well. What voltage do you have going to your memory? Try upping it? I think the chip can do 3.5 at 1.625, but will test mine tonight. Hopefully the ol lady will leave for awhile. She hears the computer post, then repost, then repost, etc and she knows I am trying to blow it up =) I'll give you a full rundown of my setting when I get home. Later and good luck!
 
I was reading an article on the ABIT forum and found out the Corsair 3200LL has a issue with the ABIT board that stops them working on a FSB above 250 so I guess I am screwed but I would be happy with a 3.4ghz overclock if I can just get it stable all the time.

I encode videos alot so encoding stability is really important.
I already tried increasing the AGP voltage to 1.6 but I didn't go any higher as I didn't think it would make a difference, so I will try that tonight.
My DDR voltage is already at 2.8v so that is fine.
I will try changing GAT settings to A-A-A-D-D to see if that makes a difference.
It is so weird how it is stable during gameplay and benching but not during encoding.

I wish now that I had paid a bit extra for some PC4000 ,especially as back DDR memory was alot cheaper. Oh well.

Good luck with your O/Cing tonight. I will post back later with the results of my tests.
 
Ok, there's the latest.
Tried running memtest at 243fsb at 5:4 ratio but it crashed after 15mins.
Reduced to 240fsb and change my timings to 2.5-7-3-3 and change the GAT to A-A-A-D-D like you suggested.
Also increase the AGP voltage to 1.65 but reduced the vcore to 1.55v (to get heat down)

Was then able to run memtest for nearly 2hrs with no errors. Did about 7 passes with no problems.

Just burning a couple of DVDs first and then I am going to do a Prime95 torture test to see what happens.
Hopefully the PC stays stable for the stress test (which I will leave overnight to be sure)
If all is ok I think I would have proved that the hardware is working well.
Tomorrow I will run Norton Utilities to check for errors on the hard drives (especially as I have had alot of resets in the pass couple of days)
I will let you know how I get on.
 
I agree with the other guys from the other post, a frsh windows I don't think will help much. I personally would leave the settings at aaadd and try the 243 again. I totally understand about too much voltage though. Everyone has their limit that they will up it to. My limit is 1.65, with my cpu at 1.625 now. I won't move it higher than that, just for another couple MHz. I am going to try and mess with mine now, I'll let you know how it goes.
 
Well I had to raise the voltage back up to 1.65 due to 2 different instances of games freezing. Never had the issue at 1.65V. By lowering the voltage, the temps didn't drop anyways, so.... I haven't tried 250 FSB yet, but will later. I think I also need to get some better cooling over my memory, anybody have any ideas, that actually work?
 
Tried 250 FSB again and it could not get past memtest without giving me thousands of errors after about 20% completion of test 3. I saw somewhere that the gskills need good cooling or memtest would fail like that. I have yet to find it, but I swear it was on gskill's forums. I am going to try and get a 80MM fan and somehow mount/ position it directly over the ram and see if the errors continue. I mean thousands and thousands of errors in a couple of seconds.
 
You probably need a better chipset cooling solution. I doubt an additional case fan will help all that much. Some, but not a lot.
 
Well the latest results are:
Been running Prime95 all night and had no crashes or errors so the PC does seem stable at the moment.
Just about to install Systemworks 2005 and check my hard drives for errors.

So do you think that the memtest crashes were due to not enough Vcore voltage?
I was trying to avoid raising the voltage too high, to keep the temps down but if you guys think that raising the vcore will improve stability and allow me to raise my FSB I will give that a try.

With regards to your problem, I was reading that changing the chipset cooler will help, especially with the IC7 board as the default cooler is not very good.
Yesterday ordered Zalman ZM-NB32J which according to other posts will fit nicely with the XP-120 and you won't need to install a fan on it as a) it doesn't need one and b) if you have a 120mm fan installed on your XP-120 (who won't have one) the fan covers the chipset cooler.

Right, I am off to instal systemworks 2005 and make sure everything is running fine.
I will then do some video benchmarks before upping my FSB to see if the PC stays stable.
 
I DO think your reboots and instability were due to not enough Vcore memory. I do NOT know why my computer won't go at 250. I was getting tons of errors in memtest and think its heat related. I am going to clean up wires in the case tonight and see if that helps me pass memtest.
 
jagzzzzzz said:
I DO think your reboots and instability were due to not enough Vcore memory. I do NOT know why my computer won't go at 250. I was getting tons of errors in memtest and think its heat related. I am going to clean up wires in the case tonight and see if that helps me pass memtest.
Click to expand...

Sometimes instability at high FSB speeds is due to inadequate northbridge/chipset cooling.
 
Well, I have just finished running disk doctor on all my drives and they came back clean.
So I think I have finally got my PC to stable point, though I need to run some more video benchmarks first, just to make sure.
If they go ok, I will then try to encode a few DIVX movies and hope the PC believes.
If it does I will then slowly increase the FSB to find the sweet spot.
 
Just installed the exos-al. Temps are awesome, but it has been a couple weeks since ocing this thing. Still trying to get a stable 3.5, no luck yet though. Any suggestions? The exos is cooling my cpu,NB, and gpu. Haven't seen a temp over 38C and thats during prime. I can't get prime stable though. Max stable is 1 hr 7 min. Advice is welcome. morp how did your OC go?
 
Jaqzzzzzzzzzz, good to see you back again!!

Sounds like you are having similar problems to me.
I did manage to get a stable O/C of 3.4ghz but found that sometimes the PC would hang when encoding videos so I reduced the O/C to 3.3ghz and it has been stable ever since.
To be honest, I have not had the time to investigate further.

I suspect the problem may lie with the memory being pushed too hard, especially in my case.
Have you tried changing your DDR ratio to 5:4 just to see if the machine is more stable.
If it isn't then at least it rules out the memory as the cause of the problem.
 
Well since the last post I finally got it "stable". It hasn't crashed during gameplay and passed about 4 hours of Prime and SuperPi. I changed the timings from 2.5,7,3,3 to 2.5,6,3,3 and everything is good. I also bumped the voltage down on the mem and up on the cpu to 1.7. I have the watercooling setup up and running and the temps are awesome! Haven't broken 40C yet even when priming and gaming. I am tempted to try and go further, but will play games on the 3.5 for a week or so and see if I can get it to restart, if not then I'll push it up and try 3.6. Watercooling is awesome and the noise reduction is great as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top