OC'ing help needed with Asus A8n Premium

[darrensen]

Hi,

I have a 3700 SD and currently i'm running prime stable at 257 x 10 =2.57ghz voltage 1.47.

Temps are nice and low 28-40.

i just want to push 2.7 ghz if poss.

I have not played with the Mem clock speeds all i have done it change the HT to 3x. I have been told to put a divider on, but i dont know where to do that in the BIOS? (so many menus)

Could anyone help me?

Thanks

Oc'ing noob

[Noni]

Go to CPU CONFIG

DRAM CONFIGURATION

set ram speed to 333mhz or 266mhz, that is the divider.

[darrensen]

Go to CPU CONFIG

DRAM CONFIGURATION

set ram speed to 333mhz or 266mhz, that is the divider.

thanks for the reply, should i also use 1T or 2T? i've only got X2 basic pc3200 samsung 512mb

[Hans Voralberg]

1T, if you are using divider.

[darrensen]

1T, if you are using divider.

It's was already on 266 so should i go lower?

The error i get in Prime95 is after about 15 seconds.

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.4998529702, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

@ 257x10 at 1.47volts it's fine for around 14 hours. Done memtests and thats fine.

EDIT: it doesnt like booting with the divider on 200.

[Hans Voralberg]

What's on 266 ?? CPU or the memory ? What divider are you using ? I suggest put it to 133. Try increase Vcore a bit.

[darrensen]

RAM was on 266. Will try that now

[darrensen]

Ok vcore is at 1.51 i have tried HT at 4 and 3 but still the same error. Did you mean run the memory at 133?

[Dark Horse]

There is a good guide here:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20823

Effectively you are doing this part:

Finding the max of your CPU\RAM

Finding the max of each component is very important in overclocking. Many people think they can just up the HTT and be done with it, but that’s not true most of the time because then you might get instability and not know what the source is. To me, not finding the max of each component is like fighting a group of people at once when you have the option to fight them one at a time. The first thing I like to do is find the max of my CPU and then my ram.

To find the max of your CPU you want to take out your other components as variables, so this is what I do:

CPU/FSB Frequency Ratio (CPU Multi) to default. Do NOT use the auto setting! Manually set it to whatever your default multi is.

LDT/FSB Frequency Ratio (LDT Multi) to 2.5x or 3x.
Setting this lower right now will make sure that your total HTT speed doesn’t cause instability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wildstyle
You are freely able to lower this value and not lose performance because even with a HyperTransport Bus frequency of 200MHz (LDT = 1x), due to the nature of the HT architecture, there is still enough bandwidth available to transfer data between CPU/RAM/HDD without bottlenecking; and at 200MHz the theoretical bandwidth limit is still higher than that of AGP 8X, so video card performance is not affected either.

LDT/FSB Frequency Ratio (Ram Ratio) to 100(Mhz)(1/02)
This is much lower then you should ever set this but it will make sure your ram is running way under spec and wont be causing you any problems at this point..

CPU VID (Voltage Identification) Control (CPU Vcore)
This is a tricky one.. Its gonna depend on how good your temps are and how far your willing to take it. For 90nm cores (i.e. Sandiego, Venice, x2, Winnies) its best to stick around 1.6v-1.65v MAX, For 130nm cores (i.e. Clawhammer, newcastles) you can go a little higher to 1.7v-1.75v but always make sure temps are good. If you have extreme cooling like water or phase then you can take the voltages higher. You could also try to see how far you will get on stock vcore first or just bump it up from the start. This is totally up to you and what you feel comfortable with. Some A64 CPU’s actually overclock better with less voltage that’s why its good to start off lower to find the max of that and if your unhappy or want more then you up it from there.

**Important Note**
Load is when your CPU usage is at 100%. This will happen while playing games and also when running the stability testing programs I listed above, especially OCCT and Prime as they will make your CPU usage 100% for sure. Load temps for CPU’s should always stay at or below 50c, a little over 50c wont hurt either but lower is always better.. If your temps are exceeding 50c by a lot then you either need to upgrade the cooling or lower your voltages and\or clocks.

Ok.. now that you lowered the LDT multi, put your ram on a ratio, set your default CPU multi manually and decided what vcore you want to start with its time to start testing..

You want to start raising your HTT\FSB in 10-15mhz increments and in between each move you want to boot into windows and run the SuperPi 32m test. It will take about 30-45 mins normally. If it passes that then keep upping the HTT until SuperPi gives an error then back it down a few MHz (1 or 2) at a time until its stable again...

**Remember to monitor temps**

Once you find the highest spot where SuperPi is happy you want to run the OCCT 30min test (Not the torture option.) This test is a little tougher then SuperPi and if OCCT fails then lower your HTT\FSB 1 or 2mhz until you can pass OCCT..

**Remember to monitor temps**

At this point you can run each 3dmark bench to see if they complete without a crash or error. Don’t worry about the scores being low, this is because we slowed everything else down except the CPU.. If they all pass then we are off to Prime time.. hehe. This is the last thing you will run to test the stability of your CPU . Many people are going to have their own amount of time they like to run prime. Personally I run it for 8-10 hours but some like to run it 24 hours before they consider their system stable. I can understand running it for 24 hours when you’re comparing between peoples stable clocks to make sure they are all stable with the same guide lines but I never felt the need to run it that long for my rig to be stable for ME..

If prime fails then back off on the HTT/FSB some until it passes at least 8 hours without errors.

CONGRATULATIONS !!
You just found the max mhz of your cpu..

Ram dividers work like this:

Dram Frequency Set(Mhz)

Settings = 100(Mhz)(1/02), 120(Mhz)(3/05), 133(Mhz)(2/03), 140(Mhz)(7/10), 150(Mhz)(3/04), 166(Mhz)(5/06), 180(Mhz)(9/10), 200(Mhz)(1/01)

This is your “Divider” settings-----most people will argue that the best results come from Synchronous setup or 1:1, or in DFIs case, 1/01. All other settings are Asynchronous. You can use the little App called memFreq 1.1 to compute your memory speed using a divider. With a 1/01 ratio (Synchronous)----the formula with any 400 mghtz RAM is simple FSB (HTT) x 2 so if I you are running your FSB (HTT) at 240-----your DDR speed would actually be DDR480. You would possibly use a divider if you have weaker RAM to allow a higher CPU overclock.

Here’s another chart to help explain it from Travis at Vr-Zone who I believe had Oskar Wu’s help to develop it:

Sorry for copying and pasting it all but its much easier when its all been explained by someone else!

[darrensen]

No thats fine, cheers for doing that.

[Hans Voralberg]

How did you get a PC3200 kit to run @ HTT 266 o_0 ?? And i meant put the RAM divider to 133.

[arthurleung]

Try 300x8, with 266 Divider, 3,8,4,4,14,17,3,2,1T
Or 270x9

Also try Vcore 1.5125, Ram 2.80, Chipset 1.6.
(I personally run max at 1.500, but 1.5125 should be fairly safe if your cooling is good)
If that doesn't work that means your memory is pulling you back. If that works, bump to 300x9, if that doesn't work, that mean your SD couldn't go that high.

The Premium is pretty bitchy about memory. It won't let me run my memory at DDR600, nor DDR500@CL2.5, where my memory could do 600-2.5 on the DFI board.

But I'm amazed how can you get windows running even if your Prime95 stopped seconds later. My windows will lockup at login screen without at least 20 minutes of Prime95 stability.

[Hans Voralberg]

I personally would go to max Vcore 1.6, some CPU really need that much juice. What's the max multi of the SD 3700 by the way ??

[arthurleung]

How did you get a PC3200 kit to run @ HTT 266 o_0 ?? And i meant put the RAM divider to 133.

2570/14 = DDR321.25
He is not running HTT266 but a 266 Memory divider
257HTT/400*266 = ~171Mhz ~DDR342, but the divider is just an approximation, and mem runs at a divider, in this case HTT is /10 and Ram is /14

[darrensen]

Ok i've got it to 2.6 but that looks as far as it'll go with this cheapo ram. tbh, i'm happy with that result considering my ram is worth about £55 for the pai.r Going to pick up some Geil stuff, then i'll give it another go.

I'm probably going to get a 4400 X2 as well, so i'll go to town on that!

Cheers for your help lads!!!

[darrensen]

2570/14 = DDR321.25
He is not running HTT266 but a 266 Memory divider
257HTT/400*266 = ~171Mhz ~DDR342, but the divider is just an approximation, and mem runs at a divider, in this case HTT is /10 and Ram is /14

Could you confirm where the ram divider is in the bios? I just want to make sure i adjusted the right thing.