What to do on my first OC...

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D1sc1pl3 0f Mal1c3

Gawd
Joined
Sep 19, 2004
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521
Ok, on the proc/mobo in my sig, I'd like to try my hand at OCing before I upgrade. I've been told that I won't be able to get a great over-clock the old board in my sig, but I was think I'd go into the BIOS and set the FSB to 200 and the multiplier down to 10.5, giving me about 2100mHz. Is it as simple as that? Will I need to adust the voltages? What do I do with regards to my RAM? Oh, and where in the BIOS do I play with the settings? Finally, what happens if I BSOD or nothing happens when I exit the BIOS? Do i just hit the hard restart button, go back the BIOS, and keep fiddling? Sorry about the n00bness, this is my first try. Thanks :D
 
D1sc1pl3 0f Mal1c3 said:
just hit the hard restart button, go back the BIOS, and keep fiddling
Click to expand...
You answered your own question :p

Trial and error is my preffered method. Just use MBM 5 or something and make sure your temps don't get too high.
 
basically find the limits of everything..

underclock the cpu and overclock the ram until it won't boot or runs badly..

then run the ram at a setting that you know for sure it will work.. and test the cpu to see how high you can get it to go, and what voltages it takes to reach a certain ghz..

then figure out what you should theoretically be able to hit based on the limits you found and try some..

i actually made a chart for my cpu and voltages..

id3634.gif


i should make one for my memory, but i don't have any voltage control right now, so i stick with what i have..
 
I really don't understand how to adjust voltages properly or when to do it, for that matter. I understand that if I want my processor to work harder, I'm going to need to feed it more power, but after that, I'm lost. Also, I don't even know how to overclock my RAM, so that's another issue. Lastly, I'm doing this all on stock cooling and like one little fan on the top back of the case, so I'm going to be pushing this to the limits ^^
 
ok.. there was a really good explanation to the cpu voltage thing.. read the stickies in the top of the forum.. i know it is in there.. but basically the farther past stock you run it, the more votlage it needs..

is your XP a desktop model? if so, the stock voltage is 1.65v.. you might be able to raise it 100mhz or so on stock voltage, maybe more. but eventually if it is too far away from stock it won't run.. then you have to up the voltage... it will be in your bios soemwhere, they are all different, proboably under "voltage/frequency" control or osmething like that.

you might be able to hit up to 2.2 ghz or so at 1.65v.. or it might take 1.75v or more..

now.. you need to know what temperatures you are at now, and waht you find acceptable. in my case i won't let my cpu temp go over 50 celcius.. and i won't go past 1.8v .. theoretically you cpu can handle abvout 70 celcius.. but high temperatures and high voltages can kill a cpu.. so it is safer to keep it as cool as possible, especially if you are running high voltages through it.. and higher voltages create more heat..

mbm 5, speedfan, and sandra are all programs that can monitor your temperatures..


for the ram, once again, go into the ram section of the forum and read the stickies.. people have already written overclockign tutorials and guides, so i don't need to do it all again.. buy basically you have a cas timing.. that is the first number when people say, i hav 2-2-2, or 2.5-3-3- memory.. find out what those numbers are for your ram.. and at what speed..
if your ram is running at 166 (pc2700) and at 2-3-3.. then you might have to make it 2.5-3-3 to get it to run at 200mhz (pc3200)... you can raise memory voltage too.. but it runs hotter and can damage it.. those number are basically the delay time on the ram.. the lower the numbers the faster it is.. so you can either run it faster, with greater delays, or faster with more voltage and lower delays (but it will create more heat)..

that should give oyu a good start..

good luck

scott
 
Ok, so when I go into the BIOS, and OC this a little, should I ease back the timings on my RAM(PC3200) to like 2.5-2-2-5, or something?
 
what are your stock timings?
i would lower the timings when overclocking the cpu.. that way you know you are hitting the cpu limits and not the memory limits.. also you probably have a locked multiplier.. so you can only overclock by raising the fsb.. raising the fsb overclocks the memory, and therefore you either need to loosen memory timings, or raise the memory voltage..
 
the stock timings are 2.5-3-3-7 o_0. I haven't seen that before. I was thinking it would be like 2-2-2-5, or something. What should I do with these? I tried just arbitraily setting it at 200x10, and it wouldn't boot into Windows, though. Didn't toy with the voltage or anything, yet.


EDIT: I noted in my CPU-Z profile of my RAM, it had the timings displayed in columns, and they were headed by different speeds. If I set the timings to these speeds, will the RAM then be rated to run at that? Like, isn't the RAM supposed to be at a 1:1 ratio with your FSB? My FSB is only at 166, and that seems to be holding back my RAM, which I though was rated to run at 200mHz. The 200mHz column timings are 2.5-4-4-8. Should I give that a go and retry the OC? I would normally just try that anyway, but I don't want to break anything...
 
yeah.. the thing is called an spd table.. and it says what timings it is rated at at a given speed.. you can always set the ram to auto too.. but 2.5-4-4 is what you need to run it at 200.. and it sounds like it is rated for 2-5-3-3 at 166. now it probably will do a little better than rated, but not much, because the ram that does much better is rated higher and sold for more money..

the higher the numner, the "looser" the timings are.. so 3-4-4 should run guarunteed up to probably 220 or so because it is looser timings.. 2-2-2 @ 200 is only achieved with really good ram...

also keeping the ratio 1:1 is ideal. especially with althon XPs.. but you can run async.. i actually set my mom's 1.2 duron to run at 100 and her ram at 200.. it works well and is a huge improvement over when she had sdram with that same cpu..
 
bah, no good. It won't let me get above 3 in the middle two numbers of the timing sequence. O well, I figured this board wouldn't be a stellar OCer anyway. I got the goods on the way from newegg, so I guess I'll look at my new mobo's BIOS and see if there's anything there I have Q's about.
 
set your ram to automatic, i can't see how it wouldn't let you downclock your ram, which is what you are essentially doing..
 
Will do. Should adjust the voltage if I want to set it from 11.5x166 to 10x200? I mean, is that all I have to do? Just pick some numbers and boom?
 
D1sc1pl3 0f Mal1c3 said:
Will do. Should adjust the voltage if I want to set it from 11.5x166 to 10x200? I mean, is that all I have to do? Just pick some numbers and boom?
Click to expand...

if you are taking about just your cpu voltage, you probably don't need to adjust it for only a 100mhz increase... most people run prime95 for a full day to test the stability of their overclock.. and memtest to test their memory's stability..
 
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