overclocking help

[camztheman]

Hey guys glad to be a member of hexus.net

I've just started overclocking and am working out the basics.

I have this setup:
CPU: amd64 3000+ venice 939
MB: Gigabyte GA-K8NSC 939, nvidia Nforce 3 250gb
Mem: 1gb ddr400
Gfx: ati x800xl 256mb
PS: 450w

I have currently overclocked my amd64 3000+ from 1.8ghz to 2.1ghz. The only bios settings i have changed are increasing cpu freq to 240hz, changing the HT multiplier down to 3x, as i was told HT runs at 800mhz on my MB, i have disabled Spread Spectrum settings and have the agp/pci locked at 66/33 respectively.

What i am after is an overclock of 2.25ghz using 250mhz cpu freq increase so that my HT speed reaches nearer to 800mhz as it is currently 720mhz, but so far every attempt i have made to reach that has resulted in the system not booting properly.
What should i do to stabilise the 250mhz increase? do i need to increase voltages and if so which ones? and also do RAM frequences need to be changed?
Also i am only running stock cooling will and cpu runs comfortably at 31deg and maxed to around 38-40 playing BF2. is this ok?

There is prob an easy solution to this problem but im a newbie so im not sure lol

Thanks for the help guys, Cam

[rainbow]

right wat i would try first to save cutting speed on the ram which we wil talk about later should this not work is increase your cpu voltage from 1.4 to 1.425 or like two notches up and also do this for the ddr voltage which is the ram those temps are fine btw, try this and post back with results, if this doesnt work try upping the volts two more notches on the cpu not the ram then see what happens if this doesnt work then you will need to puta divider on the ram , but try this first, welcome btw

[camztheman]

Ok i just tried the power increases but no luck.
I set the cpu freq at 250mhz then increased the DDR to +.1 and the CPUV to 1.475. This gave a response when booting : 'load error: load needs DDLs for kernel'.

I then increase the CPUV some more to 1.5v which loaded into the 'boot from cd' screen but stopped there.

I then increase CPUV to 1.525 where a black screen appeared so i increased to 1.55 when i got the error: 'missing <windows root>\system32\hal.dll

Is a change in ram freq my next best bet or should i go higher still with the cpuv?

thanks for the help, cam

[-ChEM-]

keep the ram much lower than it needs to be for now and focus on your cpu, once you have an idea of the cpu you can notch up the ram to a suitable figure

youre obviously having no luck with the core voltage so it looks like the ram could be holding it back, whack it all the way down to 133mhz/DDR266 or whatever you can then put the core voltage back down to stock

for the HT why dont you put it on 4x240, your board should take 800 and 1000 cpus unless you have some early revision that couldnt, was it on 4x or 5x when you started as venice cores should be on 5x200?

that leaves everything else sorted and you can put up the htt gradually, hopefully you can do that at stock core voltage, otherwise increase it bit by bit like you did before... it is a possibility youve already hit the top with that board though

then once youve maxed the cpu put the ram up to ~ddr400 and lower the timings to whatever will work

good luck

[camztheman]

Ok.. i set the ram to 133mhz and the cpu to 250mhz. that worked fine so i increased the ram to 166mhz and it is currently running fine now at 250mhz cpu increase. Using cpu-z my ram frequency is 204.5mhz is this normal?

"for the HT why dont you put it on 4x240, your board should take 800 and 1000 cpus unless you have some early revision that couldnt, was it on 4x or 5x when you started as venice cores should be on 5x200?"

The board was 5x200 stock but i was told to decrease it to 3x as my MB runs at 800mhz ?

Also how do i lower the timings and find out what levels i should be using? will it change my performance significantly by keeping ram on 166mhz setting running at 204.5mhz or should i try and set it back to the 200mhz setting using timing?

cam

[-ChEM-]

well if your going for a serious overclock its usually best at 3x... but its just maths, if youre are 250htt then 4x is perfect as youre back on 1000, if you take it up to 300htt then 3x will make sure it doesnt get too high as 1200 might be pushing some boards (its still not that high though)

if you dont know, memory speed is a two pronged thing, you have the frequency which by the looks of it is 204 now (i guess the bios still thinks youre at 200 x 0.83 = 166 but instead youre at 250 x 0.83 = ~204)

then you also have the timings, these look something like:
2-2-2-5 (best possible)
or
2.5-3-3-6 (average)
the names of these timings are:
CAS-tRCD-tRP-tRAS

when you increase the frequency (good) you also tend to have to increase the timings (bad) so now that youre running slightly above spec its likely that the timings have auto set to a much higher setting... you can make things a fair bit faster if your memory will work at lower timings but obviously too low = no boot, and it can damage things if you do it too fast

get memtest and run it each time you lower something, and only ever lower one at a time, if it doesnt work put it back up and try another one, the CAS setting should be the lowest, tRAS should be the highest, the other two should be in the middle and about the same as each other but the tRP should be the lower of the two

[camztheman]

Ok at the moment my ram is running at 209.3mhz with a 2.5 3 3 7 ratio.. i know this is poor but i have pretty crappy ram (Infineon). Will it harm my ram having it run at these values? im just a little wary of changing current values if it can hurt my system as i said my ram is pretty cheap lol

whats the best ram to buy for overclocking with ? well for poor uni students like me anyway lol

thanks for the help, cam

[-ChEM-]

its all about the chips, you need tccd, utt or bh5 chips and all manufacturers have some models that contain them, theres not too much difference between everything beyond that... but they will be the most expensive sticks around, &#163;70 for 2x512mb is a fair price

im not sure what you can damage if you screw up but those timings are ok anyway, you could squeeze maybe one or two percent more performance

id keep it like that, your ram seems ok and certainly not worth the money if youre on any kind of budget, maybe if you go for some super cpu you would want to upgrade but as everythings going ddr2 now it would probably be a waste

edit: by the way for the last (tRAS) setting, lower isnt always better so you might want to try and find the best for your chipset