Increased FSB = Less 3DMark points......

[nealhowden]

Hi Guyz

This is my very first post on Hexus so go easy on me and I'm sorry if sommet similar has been posted previously.

Anyway, to the problem, back in july when i got this rig set up, I oc'd the 3700 up to 2.5ghz and scored 16498 on 3D '03, I thought i'd leave it at that for the time being. Days passed when i came across a a review of the 3700 and saw it was clocked to roughly 2.8 on air cooling, so i thought "y not?". So I've stepped up the fsb slowly but surely to 2.8, here's the CP-Z Stats:
Core Speed - 2812.2MHz
Multiplier - x11.0
Bus speed 255.5 MHz
HT Link 766.9 MHz

Voltage - 1.392 V

So when i stepped it to 2.7ish I did the 3D '03 again and to my amazement, disappointment, anguish, total disbelief....... it scored 10702.

A: why?!
B: WHY!!!!!!!?????
C: Is it something really simple I have not noticed?

I haven't had any probs with crashes or anything, I not run Prime95 or such as yet, but it does seem quite stable.

The system is as follows: Athlon 64 3700, Asus A8N-sli mobo, OcUK 2x512Mb **Correction, It is DDR400, not 200** PC3200, Asus 7900gt 256Mb. Those the important parts anyway

All help and advice is welcome, and don't forget, I'm quite new to the OC scene so speak newbie

Thanks all

Neal

[magneticman]

In my experience that happens because you have overclocked it too far

try turning off unnecessary stuff off in your bios like virtualisation and that, to reduce the strain off the chipset, also it could be something do to with your memory....

[DanceswithUnix]

Sounds to me like your RAM is now underclocked, if the motherboard is on auto RAM timings then it will do that automatically and be rather conservative about it (I have the same mobo). Try running a memory speed check at overclocked and normal speeds.

To clarify: default 200MHz bus gives perfect timings on PC3200 memory. Upping the main CPU clock will try to push the RAM freqency over 200MHz, so the motherboard automatically switches down a peg to keep the system stable. Unless you manually set the RAM timings, the RAM will never go faster than default and will generally be slower. In the real world that tends to not matter a jot, but it can turn up in benchmarks.

[nealhowden]

well during the POST it states the RAM is 333MHz which is what it says in the BIOS But CP-Z is telling me its running at 200MHz. And the timings are 2.5 3 3 7.

Whats a good prog to test RAM speed?