Help with overclocking please

[spindle]

Hi

My system is as follows:

Asus A7V333 (board rev. 1.02)
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (Thoroughbred) cooled with a Coolermaster Aero 7+
512Mb PC2700

I want to overclock a little, to keep me going until I upgrade the cpu and mobo in a couple of months.

I sort of understand that it's a combination of Multiplier x Frequency. Currently the BIOS is set so the system is running at 1667Mhz, but this is a standard setting, with disabled options of 12.5 x 133.

By setting the 1667Mhz option to "MANUAL" I can change the settings. I read somewhere that I could get more performance without really overclocking by simply using 10 x 166, but as soon as I choose that and save, my system shuts down. Same with everything I've tried so far.

Also, my memory (SDRAM?) option in the BIOS (which is flashed up to date by the way) has options of STANDARD, OPTIMAL and TURBO. It's set to OPTIMAL, but when setting it to TURBO I get into Windows OK, then the system reboots.

Any pointers for a newbie? Ta.

[Howard]

Sounds like your doing everything right, but your hardware just can't handle being overclocked.
I'm not sure whether your processor is locked or not. Set it from 12.5 x 133 to 13 x 133 and see if it boots.

Basically experiment but don't go too high each time. If you're overclocking the ram, I'd leave it set to STANDARD.

[schrickvr6]

when you set the memory to optimal or turbo what are the memory timings shown?

it should show something like this>

tras - 6
ras - 3
ras to cas - 3
cas - 2.0

the lower the numbers the better the performance but to tight(low) and you will get errors or crashing.

you could try setting it to turbo,f10,back into bios a set to memory timings to manual,then raise the above values to say 6,4,3,2.5,altering the cas setting has the biggest effect on memory bandwidth.you just need to experiment untill you find a stable setting while keeping timings as low as possible,memtest or memtest86(bootable) are both good for testing for memory errors

[skattrd]

Unless you've unlocked the processor yourself then it will be locked, nforce2 mobo's unlock the multiplier, but the Asus A7V333 uses the KT333 c/set.

Unless you unlock the multi then you can only overclock by increasing the fsb, which should work, the RAM and c/set will do 166 (maybe more), but cpu will prob need more power to get near that

[spindle]

So excusing my ignorance, how do I unlock the CPU?

As for schrickvr6's memory settings, er... wha.... er... eh?

[spindle]

Sounds like your doing everything right, but your hardware just can't handle being overclocked.
I'm not sure whether your processor is locked or not. Set it from 12.5 x 133 to 13 x 133 and see if it boots.

BIOS options only go up as far as 12.5! Fell at the first hurdle there

[Proplus]

Many things can be holding you back:

- the CPU is locked (so you need to bridge the correct connections on the top of the CPU with a conductive pen).
- the CPU is a Palomino, and they tend not to overclock that much at all.
- CPUs are a luck of the draw thing, you CPU with 133fsb might not be able to handle 166fsb at all.


...if the above is the case, then looks to me you can only increase the fsb, and only a small increase at that.

[spindle]

Ah to hell with it. I've got enough problems with my PC at the moment without throwing overclocking into the pot. Shame though, it would have been fun...

[0iD]

Dont giv up m8, s'all abt perseverance Get yer PC stable first, good clean windoze re-install is always a good bet, then tweak till u kill it...clear the bios & start again. Becomes an addiction. A common one round these parts ;-)