I'm pretty much a begginer when it comes to overclocking my cpu, and although I've made the attempt before with previous machines - I usually get frustrated and give up leaving it at stock.
So I've now got my 3000+ Venice purchase specifically for it's overclockability, and the DFI LanParty Ultra-D motherboard - for the same reasons.
I admit I cheaped out on the ram, going with Corsair ValueRam timed 2.5 3-3-8 on the recommendation of a Corsair employee from another forum - stating even if the SPD is set to 3-3-8, they're likely winbond chips under the re-silking that Corsair does that are easily capable of 3-3-7 or better.
Now being as new to overclocking as I am, I am starting to think the DFI motherboard is a little over my head. Being the holy grail of overclocking boards, but lacking reasonable documentation on all the bazillion settings in the Genie Bios for CPU and DRAM settings - it's a little overwhelming.
For the time being, I'm sticking with the stock cooling (and the questionable ram) and I will see what I can push it to.
Attempt # 1 - Using the Nvidia nTune tool (as I said, I'm new to this so have no idea how useful this thing really is). Oh, I suppose it's relevant to mention I'm running a 6600GT PCI Express card.
Stock 3dmark2005 (again, poor benchmark but all I had handy) was about 3400-3500 points. Whether this is standard or abysmally poor - you'll have to tell me.
Ran nTune for about an hour, let it do it's thing and I managed to push my score up to about 3800. Now nTune for some reason still seems to show all the values (cpu, ram, fsb, gpu, gmem, etc) all at their stock values. So what did it change?
I left the values as is, and instead went and pushed my FSB up. Managed to get it up to 215 (this seems too low for the theoretical threshold on these chips, no?) and my 3dmark score up to just a hair under 4000 (3998).
Yet if I push my FSB any higher than 215, I get either a lack of booting into windows, or alternately an error about a missing something or other .sys file. Drop back to stock, can boot in fine. Leave it at 215, all works fine.
So I followed the advice of the stickied thread in here, and pushed the DRAM voltage up to about 2.90 from 2.60 stock. No luck any higher than 215FSB still. Added a CPU voltage jump (that is if "VID" is for CPU voltage, and if not can anyone tell me what I bumped my voltage up on?) from 1.40 to 1.50... still no luck.
I tried changing the TRAS on the ram to 7 from 8 - and the machine refuses to post. Thankfully DFI allows you to boot at stock when you hold insert, otherwise I'd be in there clearing the cmos every other boot. Also safe to mention that I may have changed something other than the TRAS by accident, as the DFI DRAM settings are poorly labelled and I again haven't a clue as to what values I'm changing without some hand-holding.
Now I've been reading again - and keep seeing mention of the CPURAM ratio. 5:4 is always mentioned in relation to the FSB getting up to or over 250 - yet would it be a safe assumption that it may help in my case with this "questionable" ram? Or is it my ram limiting me, or something altogether different?
Temperatures have not hit over 33C at all - but I'm still currently stuck at 215FSB with the ram set at the SPD defined values.
So what am I doing wrong?
edit - just thought of a few things I neglected to mention. Running the latest "beta" bios for the DFI motherboard that I found... somewhere seemingly-semi-reputable. I just can't recall where. So I may take this ram and try it in another machine to double check that it really is 3-3-8 and not being misreported or not-quite-supported by the DFI motherboard.
So I've now got my 3000+ Venice purchase specifically for it's overclockability, and the DFI LanParty Ultra-D motherboard - for the same reasons.
I admit I cheaped out on the ram, going with Corsair ValueRam timed 2.5 3-3-8 on the recommendation of a Corsair employee from another forum - stating even if the SPD is set to 3-3-8, they're likely winbond chips under the re-silking that Corsair does that are easily capable of 3-3-7 or better.
Now being as new to overclocking as I am, I am starting to think the DFI motherboard is a little over my head. Being the holy grail of overclocking boards, but lacking reasonable documentation on all the bazillion settings in the Genie Bios for CPU and DRAM settings - it's a little overwhelming.
For the time being, I'm sticking with the stock cooling (and the questionable ram) and I will see what I can push it to.
Attempt # 1 - Using the Nvidia nTune tool (as I said, I'm new to this so have no idea how useful this thing really is). Oh, I suppose it's relevant to mention I'm running a 6600GT PCI Express card.
Stock 3dmark2005 (again, poor benchmark but all I had handy) was about 3400-3500 points. Whether this is standard or abysmally poor - you'll have to tell me.
Ran nTune for about an hour, let it do it's thing and I managed to push my score up to about 3800. Now nTune for some reason still seems to show all the values (cpu, ram, fsb, gpu, gmem, etc) all at their stock values. So what did it change?
I left the values as is, and instead went and pushed my FSB up. Managed to get it up to 215 (this seems too low for the theoretical threshold on these chips, no?) and my 3dmark score up to just a hair under 4000 (3998).
Yet if I push my FSB any higher than 215, I get either a lack of booting into windows, or alternately an error about a missing something or other .sys file. Drop back to stock, can boot in fine. Leave it at 215, all works fine.
So I followed the advice of the stickied thread in here, and pushed the DRAM voltage up to about 2.90 from 2.60 stock. No luck any higher than 215FSB still. Added a CPU voltage jump (that is if "VID" is for CPU voltage, and if not can anyone tell me what I bumped my voltage up on?) from 1.40 to 1.50... still no luck.
I tried changing the TRAS on the ram to 7 from 8 - and the machine refuses to post. Thankfully DFI allows you to boot at stock when you hold insert, otherwise I'd be in there clearing the cmos every other boot. Also safe to mention that I may have changed something other than the TRAS by accident, as the DFI DRAM settings are poorly labelled and I again haven't a clue as to what values I'm changing without some hand-holding.
Now I've been reading again - and keep seeing mention of the CPURAM ratio. 5:4 is always mentioned in relation to the FSB getting up to or over 250 - yet would it be a safe assumption that it may help in my case with this "questionable" ram? Or is it my ram limiting me, or something altogether different?
Temperatures have not hit over 33C at all - but I'm still currently stuck at 215FSB with the ram set at the SPD defined values.
So what am I doing wrong?
edit - just thought of a few things I neglected to mention. Running the latest "beta" bios for the DFI motherboard that I found... somewhere seemingly-semi-reputable. I just can't recall where. So I may take this ram and try it in another machine to double check that it really is 3-3-8 and not being misreported or not-quite-supported by the DFI motherboard.