Some overclocking questions

[Soapy5]

I did a quick google and |H|ard search, and nothing that fits my problem showed up.

Basically, I think its about time to squeeze the last amount of juice from my system and overclock it. since i was going to put a fresh windows install anyway, i experimented a bit with rivatuner and easytune. i could get pretty good videocard oc's without crashing outright but i didn't have the chance to stress test them thoroughly. (i used 3dmax, but for some reason it always extremely slow for me; i wanted to use ati tool but for some reason it wouldn't work). all in all i think i can handle the videocard oc without too much fuss.

my main problem lies with the cpu. for some reason, no matter what i do, i cannot get the fsb to go higher than 210 from the original 200. any higher and the computer crashes immediately after oc'ing during post. ive tried reducing the ddr clock ratio, increasing voltage of the cpu core, the mem core, the chipset core, i also tried reducing the multiplier (the multiplier is locked at 12 and under). also, i am using the bios to oc the cpu. however, when i use easytune, i can get it up to 214.

on another note, I experiment a bit with some of the options and found out that my pc will run on a higher ddr clock ratio just fine (up to 2:2.5 with the ram at 2.5--still i dunno what a higher ram clock can do, so i put it back to 2:2). also, oc'ing the pci-e was pretty easy too (i got it upto 145 from 100 but after a google search found out its not too smart to keep it up there so i'm keeping it at 110 for now)


so basically, am i stuck with a unoverclockable cpu? does a higher ddr clock ratio (in favor of the ram) help me out in any way? what about the PCI-e speed?

system specs are:

mobo: GIGABYTE GA-K8N Ultra-9
cpu: AMD athlon 64 4000 2.4gh with san deigo core and Zalman 120mm copper 7700 cooler
ram: CORSAIR ValueSelect (2 x 1GB) DDR 400 (PC 3200)
vidcard: XFX PVT70FUNF7 GeForce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 450MHz Core and 1250MHz Memory with Zalman VF900 copper cooler
psu: PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W

i am completely out of cash, so upgrading anything is not really an option (although i am planning on buying extra ram soon) but i really wanna hold off on upgrading and get a completely new system when the time (and mula) comes.

 

[AMDXP]

I had a gigabyte board for my P4. I didn't have great results either.

 

[Soapy5]

yea, my gigabyte board was PITA from beginning to end

 

[Soapy5]

okay, a bit of an update:

using rivatuner and Rthdribl i was able to get the core up to 490 from 279 mhz and the mem up to 1377 from 1260. the weird thing was, putting the core any higher did not do anything until i reached 501, and then the actual core speed would jump from 490 to 513 mhz, and i'd be in artifact central. for the mem noticable artifacts would start when i went over 1380 (i don't mind a graphical glitch every now and then, but when the black splotches start showing up I knew the oc is too much). the temps (starting from 44 C core and 37 C ambient) would hover around 69 C core and 49 C ambient at the lowest fan setting and 58 C core and 43 C ambient at the highest. the zalman fan is inaudiable over the rest of the pc at either setting so im happy.

so basically the limiting factor is artifacts for me; anyone know how to get around that? also, anybody know why the core is unresponsive to any oc's over 480 until i reach 501 where it jumps to 513? lastly, i decided to stick with riva tuner over easytune. so, anybody know of a good software to oc' the cpu?

EDIT: dunno if it matters, but there are actually three readouts for core clock:
geometry: 529 mhz
shader: 486 mhz
ROP domain: 486 mhz