Taking it to the next level

[t_wheeler]

So, my boss gets a new system and is talking to me about overclocking it... plus we get new development boxes and since we picked all the components ourselves with the intent of overclocking... so anyway I had my system set up fine 'n dandy and now I've got the OC bug again. So here's where I started and what I did:

The system: Epox 8RDA+ motherboard, rev 1.1; Athlon XP 2500+ (barton core, unlocked); Apacer 2x 256MB PC3200 DDR400

- First, got the latest rev of Sandra and baselined my system. Currently running 210FSB, stock voltages, 3-3-3-6 on my memory.

- Changed memory to 3-3-3-11. That improved my memory bandwidth all of .5%.

- At 223Mhz FSB, W2K blue-screened during boot. I bumped Vdimm from 2.63 to 2.77 gigawatts. Or is that volts? :D

- At 228Mhz FSB, W2K blue-screened during boot again. I dropped back to 225 for stability's sake.

Temperatures are fine. Now I'm wondering... how do I take it to the next level? Should I increase Vdimm again to 2.90? What about changing memory timings again, say 3-3-4-11 or 3-4-3-11 or 3-4-4-11? Perhaps I should increase CPU or chipset voltage?

I especially don't care to break anything, most especially my unlocked Barton. But if I can toss in a few more tweaks with a comfortable safety margin, I'm willing to give it a try. Any thoughts you all have are appreciated. Thanks!

Oh, here are the numbers from Sandra's combined performance index wizard:

Initial (FSB 210):
CPU Arith: 11881
CPU Multimedia: 43140
Memory: 5773

Final (FSB 225, Vdimm=2.77):
CPU Arith: 12705 (6.94%)
CPU Multimedia: 46137 (6.95%)
Memory: 6595 (14.24%)

The percentage values are percent improvement, in other words (new - original) / original.

Update: After further testing it appears I'm not entirely stable at 225Mhz. I'm going to drop down to 220Mhz. But I may go back and try to play with memory timings or voltages... what's everyone's thoughts?

Update 2: I boosted Vcore from 1.65 to 1.7. The system now appears to be stable at 225. At 230, I got a blue screen while booting. Temps seem alright if not great, 43 idle and 48 loaded.

Oh heck, I'm gonna try increasing Vcore again and see if I can get 230 stable. I'll be back :).

Update 3: Okay, going from 1.7 to 1.75 almost worked. I could boot, but running anything CPU-intensive crashed the system. I'm also running 46 idle.

So... what can I do to boot at 230? Bump memory voltage? CPU voltage again (yeesh)? Get some better cooling?

[werley_123]

Sounds to me like you've maxed out the chips voltage. Cooling won't help that aspect and continuing to push it to instability will just hurt your computer (your decreasing he longevity of your computer by increasing the voltage at all).

By the way, it's measured in volts, not gigawatts....a gigawatt is enough energy to run a city block; if you had that much power in your computer, it would blow up! :shock:

[Dyck15]

By the way, it's measured in volts, not gigawatts....a gigawatt is enough energy to run a city block; if you had that much power in your computer, it would blow up! :shock:

I think that was a joke, concidering he proceeded to use volts during the rest of his post. Most likely coming from Back to the Future?

[t_wheeler]

Yes, Dyck, that was a reference to BttF. Glad someone spotted it :).

I've seen other people run Vcore as high as 2.0. What makes you say I've maxed the voltage, werley?

[werley_123]

Yes, Dyck, that was a reference to BttF. Glad someone spotted it :).

I've seen other people run Vcore as high as 2.0. What makes you say I've maxed the voltage, werley?

Well, odds are they have a better mobo or powersouce than you; if I understand correctly, three aspects controll whether or not your computer can handle a certain voltage: Chip architecture, board architecture, and how good your powersource is. The chip you have may be able to handl 2.0 vcore, but one of the other two aspects may be too weak, I'm not positivley sure, though I am pretty sure; that's how it was with my AMD, I was only able to juice it up about .5 because I have a really crappy mobo.

And I did think of Back to the Future and Doc brown's gigawatt comment as I read your first post, but I never made the correlation. Well, if your computer is running off gigawatts and is being powered by plutonium (damn!), make sure you don't rip plutonium rods off of Libyan nationalist, else there is a good chance those phsycotic people will be paying you a vist very soon! :snip: