Looking for a couple tips

V

vmerc

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 3, 2003
Messages
262
Let me just get this out of the way, and then we can get to business:

I am bitter over the fact that every single computer I have ever owned has not been OCable beyond some useless 1-2 MHz. Vidcards not included. I always read reviews on multiple hardware pages before I buy, and only buy the cream of the crop (as far as quality and stability not sheer performance cuz that costs $$$), but somehow I get shafted out of overclock EVERY TIME.

Ok...

I currently have this setup:

WinXP
Athlon 3500+
MSI K8N Neo2 platinum
1GB (2x512) Corsair 3200PRO
BFG 6800 OC (yeah this also has issues, and I have to downclock it from BFG settings)
Netgear 108Mb Super-G

My heatsink is the swiftec MCX-6400-V you know the one that looks like a porcupine. This one is the enthusiast version that has the larger copper base.
I have a 120 front case fan 120 rear case fan and a 80 CPU fan
My comp sits in the basement and it never gets above 85 ambient down there. (no AC in the house) Normal ambient is like 75 in the summer.

My objective is to hear some ideas from you guys on how I can possibly work around my current limitation of no more than 5MHz OC on this puppy. I don't want to spend a ton of money to do it. That defeats the point.

Basically Double U Tee Eff??? What is holding my system back? And don't say User ID-10-T cuz I know that one and I have used it on a few people face to face.

Also, do any of you guys have good pics/explanations of what exactly is the RIGHT amount of heatsink grease to use?

Thanks for any help!!!
 
I dunno if it would really be a heat issue. I mean if you only can oc + 5 MHz, then it would stand to argue that the processor would be unstable to begin with.
What thermal compound are you be using? If you had too little on there, it would prolly heat up hella far and overheat, and if there was too much, you'd prolly notice a good bit of leakage around the sides of the proc.
What sort of temps do you get on idle and load? What are your voltages at? Have you tried running prime95 or memtest at stock and seeing if that's stable?
 
does your system run perfect at stock? Run prime 95 at stock and see if it passes. If it does then you are overlooking some settings in the bios that will get you overclocked. If it doesnt pass then look at your hardware or still posibly your bios. On my DFI lan party it would not run stable at all until I did a crapload of tweaking. It wouldnt even run at stock speeds properly until i read the dfi street forums and applied the stuff i learned there and now my chip is at 2.4ghz with the fans turned way down.
 
Well, stock idle temps are around 50c on CPU and GPU, 35c in case. That's according to Ntune. I am using Arctic Silver (I think 5. whatever came with the swiftec HS) on the CPU, and stock cooling on GPU.

I don't seem to have any stability issues during stock except for this really annoying stuttering/laggyness in Call of Duty multiplayer. I doubt that's related tho since everything else runs fine. I played Doom3 last night for about 2 hours with no problems.

I am using SATA RAID 0. could that be an issue?

How long should I run prime95 to be pretty sure that the system is "stable"?

Thanks for the responses guys.

Edit: Oh load temps are like 55c CPU and 65-70c GPU I think. gotta go back and check that tonight.
 
Two things:

First of all, I remember there is an issue with the Neo K8n board with some of the SATA ports when overclocking. Two of them are good, two are bad, I forget which is which.

Secondly, make sure you are lowering your memory divider and HTT multiplier.
 
Oh that's a huge tip Talonz. I'll have to look that up on the SATA ports. I hope I can switch if I need to without screwing up the drive lettering and such.


Edit:

So if I lower HTT to like 4 instead of 5 and use RAM divider of like 166/200 instead off 200/200?
 
Yes, HTT mult should be 3 or 4. That's the problem right now, 1000mhz for HTT is pretty much the ceiling. Right now you are running 200x5, so 205x5 is too much.

Edit: your ram should hold up for a bit, but yes, lower the divider for it to see how far your CPU will go, then tweak for max performance afterwards

Edit2: Backup first, RAIDed drives in a regular sata port may not be pretty.
 
Ahh, I never thought of the HTT. Also I guess I just had an epiphany. Lower RAM, and then crank up the CPU to test how far it goes.

So by lowering the RAM and HTT I can see how far the CPU goes by itself. If that goes well, at least I have a place to start. At what range do you think it would be worth it for me to have the CPU OCed since the RAM will be slowed down, or is it possible to manually OC the RAM back up to speed?
 
Yep, that's the key, isolate components and test them individually for their max.

Play around with the settings, go HTT 3x and 1/2 ram divider for kicks, then work your way up finding the highest RAM mhz with decent settings and latencies. That's the fun part :)
 
oh my GOD! Thanks Talonz. I feel like a complete noob now. :p
Look in the forums tomorrow for a new topic I can humiliate myself with.
 
First things first, if you haven't already done so, check out Eclipse's OC Guide. Everything is short, sweet, and to the point....even a monkey can overclock using this guide.

On the msi neo boards, sata ports 1 and 2 are unlocked. Use ports 3 and 4 to lock the bus up tighter than a nuns ****.

Also, what brand/power psu are you using? A cheap, "hi-power" psu is just that: A cheap POS that alot of people overlook when trying to OC and wonder what they're doing wrong. If you don't already have a strong, stable, reliable psu then do yourself a favor and invest $90-$150 for a quality power supply such as antec, hiper, ocz or seasonic...to name a few. I can't stress enough how much of a diference quality power makes. How can you achieve a strong, stable, reliable OC without a strong, stable, reliable source of power?

Good luck, and update your results.
 
vmerc said:
oh my GOD! Thanks Talonz. I feel like a complete noob now. :p
Look in the forums tomorrow for a new topic I can humiliate myself with.
Click to expand...

My pleasure :cool:
 
Well, here's the update I am sure you have all been wringing your hands over. ;)

I moved my SATA over to ports 3/4 with surprisingly NO problems. I was amazed I didn't even have to go into the RAID BIOS and update. I was pretty worried that this part was going to nix my whole project.

I read up a bit on overclocking and how AMD buses and frequencies are all screwy, so I would have something to start with.

The first thing I did was drop the HT to 1x and the RAM to 100MHz and I loosened up the latencies too. Then I went into the MSI corecell thing in windows and let it run the auto. Basically it just ramps up the FSB till a crash, then when you reset it goes back a few MHz. So I sat there and watched as the numbers climbed. I know this sounds lame, but it's the easiest way to get this first step out of the way, and saves like 400 hours of waiting for my computer to reboot.

As it turned out, I still get no more than 8MHz max, and probably something like 5MHz stable out of it that way. That's FSB, so x11 gets me 55MHz overall, and that's with everything else in the system crippled like a one legged spider.
So basically I am cursed, and the curse remains. :(

To answer the question about power, I do have a nice power supply. It's a 520Watt Antec Stealth if I remember right. Got it from PhrozenCPU a while back. I remember I paid a lot extra for that peace of mind.

Nobody ever really responded to my question about the HS grease. Maybe I'll open a seperate thread for that one. I did find out that my HSF was not running at all during most of my testing, so I turned off the Target Fas Speed in the BIOS, and the CPU idle temp dropped to 15c. I have to be skeptical about that number, especially because it did climb back to around 30c idle after a while, and has not gone back down to 15c.
 
That's really strange.. how are your voltage on your core? (and RAM)

If this doesn't do it, I'm stumped :confused:
 
Talonz said:
That's really strange.. how are your voltage on your core? (and RAM)

If this doesn't do it, I'm stumped :confused:
Click to expand...
Well, I've got them set to defaults. looking at like 1.5v for both I think. I could crank up the voltages if I wanted to, but I don't want to. I really don't think that power is the limiting factor on this. Of course I could be wrong. After all, I'm the one that can't get a decent OC. :rolleyes:
 
Maybe I just have a lame CPU that won't OC? That would be my luck. I bought it retail boxed too.
 
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