Quick question about intels overclocking/dual channel

C

codename47

Gawd
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Mar 7, 2003
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I'm new to intel... like two weeks now... and I built a system with the Gigabyte 8KNXP (refurb 85$) and the 2.4C intel chip... this is a 875P chipset board. My questions are these:

Overclocking: I've tried moving the bus to 250 and setting the ratio to 2 which changes the ram speed to 333.... I currently have XMS PC3200 2X256... and I get a cold lock... like take the cmos battery out b/c the system will no boot. So Do I need to manually move the ram speed lower or is my intel 2.4 not capable of reaching 3.0ghz? I thought it was pretty standard to overclock and it will get to 2.5 and 2.6 very stable even after a day of burn in and running prime95.

Dual channel: If I stick 2X256 DDR in to make the dual channel possible, will sticking one stick of 512MB in a different DIMM on a different channel cause the system to no longer work in dual channel? I know with my AMD board with 3DIMMs that doing that wouldn't take away from the dual channel of the system but I also know that AMD has a weird dual channel set up...

So in conclusion I'm confused and don't know much about intel systems. If you could enlighten me that would be great.
 
Good luck with that gigabyte board. Volts stop @ 1.6v max, Memory volts are terrible. I bought a refurb also for 85, but i needed it for a customer that wanted a ton of HD's and mild overclocking.


And No on sticking a single stick in with the other 2, it will drop all back to single channel.

This is not a board for a 2.4 at all. I used it for a 3.0 and couldnt get over 220fsb. on a chip in knew what good to 3.6ghz.

Also the P4 wirewrapping the pins on the cpu does not work.

And the memory scores were terrible on it.

Seemed like a deal when i bought it to. Sell it if you want to OC that 2.4.
 
ouch.... not really what I wanted to hear but thanks for the feedback. Yeah I really wanted this system to run lots of hard drives and it does do that really well. I've read reviews though and saw them get a good 500mhz overclock so I figured I could too.... oh well... maybe I'll buy a slower intel chip and throw it in here and let it be a raid motherboard... which it would do well at I think.. very stable.
Well thanks for all the help....
 
Make sure the AGP, and PCI slots are on stock settings (66.7 MHz, and 33.3 MHz) some boards will automatically raise the speeds on these busses when you try to overclock. Leave the RAM at DDR400 speed, underclocking it isn't going to help you.

As for Dual Channel you need to have 2 sticks of equal size and speed for it to work, it also should not impair your OC. Try this: put your Ram in whatever slots it needs to be in for dual channel. In your Bios set the FSB:DDR multiplier to 5:4, up your DDR voltage to 1.6 or 1.7, manually set your Memory Timings to their stock settings. Change your FSB setting to 230 and check if it boots from there. If it does, keep upping the FSB by +5 until you either reach 3.0 GHz or it won't reboot. I doubt that the 2.4c is what is giving you problems, it should be able to get up to 3.0 GHz at or near stock voltages (1.5-1.55). Also make sure you have the newest BIOS. Quick tip, generally on most computers instead of yanking the CMOS battery, shut the computer down for 20 seconds, hit the power button and hold down the insert key on your keyboard, it should return the computer to stock settings.
 
Well I had installed the latest bios when I brought the board home so I know that is ok... but everyone is talking about a ratio switch in the bios and mine doesn't say that anywhere... mine has a setting like 1,2,1.5, etc... that changes the settings for me and I assumed that was the same thing.. anyone know if I'm right or just crazy.

Thanks again for walking me through the process... very helpful..
 
If it says 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, etc. 2.0 should be the default 1:1 setting, ie 800 MHz FSB: 400 MHz ram.

If you are wanting to overclock, set it to 1.25 that should allow you to get to approach a 1000 MHz FSB while keeping the ram at or near 400 MHz. Here is the way to look at it, your FSB is quad or x4 whatever you have it at, ex 200 MHz x 4 = 800 MHz FSB, your ram is x2, so the FSB to DDR ratio is simply 4/2 =2.0 for default settings. 5/4 or 250/200 = 1.25. Play around with it a little bit the important thing is keeping your DDR near 400 Mhz. When you change the settings (1,1.5,2, etc.) it should show you what your DDR frequency is at with regards to the FSB.
 
Thanks for helping out...... I feltl like I was going crazy b/c I couldn't find any ratio settings in the bios... I saw and messed around with the 1,2,1.5, etc settings but didn't know exactly what I was doing and then would get a nasty lock up... anyways yeah I'll try that tonight... I'm pretty stoked b/c I didn't want to spend any more money on another board and chip. It's amazing how well my XP3200(overclocked XP2500) does performance wise and I wasn't going to settle for spending more money on a 2.4ghz and getting less performance than what I already had. I hope this works b/c I just got a refurb 9700pro from newegg for 170$ so that machine is going to be sweet!.... thanks again for your help...
 
Hey thanks for the help... I set the ratio thing to like 1.33 which did the trick.. I'm running at a nice 3.01ghz P4 running, ~1000fsb!!! Amazing.. I thought I was going to have to make another system to overclock but now I get the best of both worlds.. fast and extremely upgradeable system... thanks again for the help...
 
That's what this message board community is all about. They helped me out with my problems so now I am just passing it along.
 
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