Unlocking Multiplier

[ajbrun]

ajbrun, if you've got the CPU at 200 x 11.5 for 2.3GHZ then that's a very good overclock at stock voltage. You can check it's stable by running the torture test on Prime95; keep an eye on the temperatures while you're doing it though. If it's stable enough for what you want to do though then maybe you don't need to worry.

Rave talked about prime95. I went onto what looks like it's web site, and now I'm confused.

[GreenPiggy]

Prime95 is a distributed computing project where all the participating computers perform calculations to check numbers to see if they are prime or not(You may see this on the news from time to time - some geezer discovered one the other week)
Anyway - Prime95 has a useful feature called a torture test.
This makes your CPU perform a number of calculations to which it already knows the answers. It then checks your computers answers agains the ones it knows to be correct.
If you have an unstable overclock then the CPU will start making errors and getting the calculations wrong. Prime95 will then stop the test at the first error giving you the time the test ran for and hence an indication of how stable your cpu is at its new speed.
Most people will generally run the test for an hour or two to check for stability but if you want to be absolutely sure then run it overnight as described above.
Hope this helps

[myth]

It has to do with finding prime numbers! But when you instal it gives you the option to stress test your PC! This is great for overclockers! Run it to test your system to see if its stable!

Edit: HEY! I was posting a response! How dare you....

[Rave]

Right. Prime95 is a program that looks for new prime numbers by testing lots of numbers to see if they are prime or not. Because that requires a LOT of calculations to do, and because if there are any errors the results will be invalid, it has a built in "torture test" function, which does a lot of calculations and then compares the results to answers that are known to be correct. I don't bother looking for Prime numbers because I'd rather try and cure diseases instead (www.find-a-drug.org), but whenever I get a new setup I make sure it's 'Prime stable' for at least 8 hours and preferably 24 hours with the torture test.

So, download the Prime95 program, and run the torture test. If either your CPU or memory is not quite stable you'll get errors in the calculation and the torture test will stop. AS Zak says, try and emulate the toughest heat conditions your processor is likely to encounter and then it should be stable all year round.

GL,

Rich :¬)

[Rave]

Most people will generally run the test for an hour or two to check for stability but if you want to be absolutely sure then run it overnight as described above.

You do need to run it overnight really. I could get my computer very close to stable at 200fsb but it'd always error out at about 1hr41mins on the torture test. It's rock stable at 189fsb.

Rich :¬)

[ajbrun]

erm - OK, after 1 min, I got an error. what should I do. Should I decrease the fsb from 200 to 166?

[GreenPiggy]

Nope, ramp up the voltage first but be careful with your temperatures

[ajbrun]

Is this safe? How much should I increase it by?

[GreenPiggy]

You do need to run it overnight really. I could get my computer very close to stable at 200fsb but it'd always error out at about 1hr41mins on the torture test. It's rock stable at 189fsb.
Rich :¬)

True for absolute stability but when you're trying to find a ballpark figure then an hour or two is a pretty good indication.

[GreenPiggy]

Is this safe? How much should I increase it by?

What are your temeratures at the moment?
It's safe at any voltage up to and probably past 2V but make sure you keep the temperatures below 60-65 degrees

Try it at 1.75V - used to be enough for my old Barton to do that speed

[ajbrun]

Yeah, but I ran it for only a minute and it found an error!

[ajbrun]

Temp now is 48C

[GreenPiggy]

It simply means your CPU isn't getting enough power. Give it more juice
Is that idle temperatures?
Also, what Heatsink are you using?

[ajbrun]

I'm using the heatsink that was supplied with the CPU, and the temperature is just as it is right now. I just have outlook express and internet explorer open (no stressful games)

[GreenPiggy]

hmm.
To be honest if you're going to go much further i'd invest in a better heatsink although you could probably chuck about another .2V at it without much harm.

[ajbrun]

I just had a though about increasing the voltages. My CPU is locked. This means I can't change the multiplier. At the moment, it is set at "H/W" (what ever that means - maybe "hardWare". Anyway, the voltage is also set at H/W. Could this mean that this is locked too?

I just want to check this first because when I change the multiplier, the system won't boot .

And I'm not too bothered about overclocking it anymore - it's just that I ran that prime 95 test, and it came up with errors.