Liqourice

Hi.

I'd love to get some hints and tips on how to get the most out of my system. I've tested a bit but in all honesty I know to little on how to tweak it in the best way.

You can all see on my profile what hardware I have so I don't need to repeat it here. I've tried running AMD Overdrive but I really can't see that it does much more than I already have managed myself in BIOS so I don't think it will help me much.

I've managed to OC from 200 to 220 Mhz and that's it. Haven't touched ram timings yet and I haven't tried much with cpu voltage but I want to learn how to get the most out of everything. My 3870X2 is OC'd to max so I don't need any help with that.

Since the mems are 1066 5-5-5-15 I suppose I should easily be able to run them at 4-4-4-12 since I only have them on 800Mhz.

I'm getting a Phenom as soon as they release some faster ones and then I can use the full potential of the mems.

There's so many different settings in BIOS and I don't know for sure how to set them to get the best results.

Maybe the 64 X2 5200 just isn't capable of more than I already have it on?

Al_Vampyre

With the AMD chips the CPU is much more important than the memory speed so I always start with the CPU and tweak the memory later.

First thing I would do is turn off Cool n Quiet so that you can be sure that its not affecting anything. You can turn it back on again later.

What happens when you hit 220? Does the system fail to boot?

__________________
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" - Brian O'Driscoll - Ireland Rugby Team 2009 Grand Slam winning Captain.

Liqourice

Cool & Quite was the first thing I turned off when I installed the thing.

All is well up to 220, system is running very stable. I just can't get any higher than that. Just go to 221 and it refuses to boot. Tried 225 first but not even bios initializes unless I turn the computer off and leave it off for a minute when that's set. Had to reset cmos once to get it up and running again.

Tried to increase cpu voltage a little bit but no change, maybe I need to up it a little more.

Al_Vampyre

Have you made sure that the FSB/PCI bus is set to Async in the bios? It may be called something else on your board (never used a Gigabyte board sorry!) but it will be in the CPU settings or overclocking section. It sounds to me like these are still locked together and that you're pushing the PCI bus (hard drives etc) too far...

__________________
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" - Brian O'Driscoll - Ireland Rugby Team 2009 Grand Slam winning Captain.

Liqourice

Yes, I've checked that. That's not the problem.

H3X4D3C1M4L

The 220FSB wall suggest to me the chipset needs more voltage. If the chipset doesn't get extremely hot then I would try upping the voltage on that by 1 step and see if that helps.

By the way... your RAM should run fine at 4-4-4-12 at DDR2-800. If it's rated at 1066 5-5-5-15 generally it's also rated for 4-4-4-12 @ DDR2-800. OCZ does dual ratings like that... rated for one clock speed and one timings, rated for another clock speed with different timings etc.

procupine14

yeah the RAM timings are definitely going to work fine i think.

with your 'wall' im thinking chipset voltage.

I have a similar 'wall on my proc that i hope to blast through once my water cooling loop is up and running (hopefully tonight)

I hit just under 3Ghz on my 5200+ and can go no higher. ....still sitting at 2.989

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Liqourice

Well, those rams are not working for me, I have constant BSOD's with them. I've run memtest for 24 hours with no errors so I really don't know what's wrong. Put my old DDR2-800 back in and now my system is rock solid.

However, I know I need to raise some voltages to get a bit more out of the cpu. I just don't know how much. Default cpu voltage is 1.35V, I've tried to raise it to 1.375V without any real change, so how much should I raise it to be able to up the cpu a bit more?

H3X4D3C1M4L

If that doesn't work I'd stop at 1.425 if the clock speed you've got set doesn't remain Prime95 stable for 24 hours.

Liqourice

Well. I have it at 1.400 now and it's very stable with FSB at 220, at least for the hour I ran Orthos. I can get it to boot windows with FSB at 225, something I haven't been able to before without increasing cpu voltage, but it only takes a few minutes with Orthos before it fails.. I'll try with 1.425 and see if it works or not. I think that 225 probably is as high as I will get this CPU, if I get it stable.

H3X4D3C1M4L

It really depends on how comfortable you are with raising the voltage. If your cooling is really really good then you can likely go higher. There are some chips that hit a wall and no matter how much voltage you throw at it, it doesn't make them more stable (sometimes has the opposite effect). If 1.425 is more stable at 225, try 1.45 and see if that makes it 24 hour stable.

Liqourice

One thing I'm a bit concerned about is how the voltage is reported.

It's set to 1.400 but when I run Speedfan it reports:

Vcore1: 1.42V
Vcore2: 1.87V

And CPU-Z reports Core Voltage as 1.424

Liqourice

Well, I've been fiddling, tweaking, testing and scratching my head but I am now quite sure I've reached the upper limit.

I've found out that I can't set the voltage higher than 1.400. I can do that in bios but after I've booted it somehow falls back to 1.350, I guess it's some feature on the motherboard that prevents going to high, I don't know.

Anyways. With some other tweaks with memory and such I am running it stable with an FSB at 224 which gives me an overclock to 2912 MHz. I guess it's not to bad considering. CPU temp tops out at 56 C when running Orthos so everything seems ok.

I can definately notice an improvement in some games with those extra 50 MHz I squeezed out.

Waiting for the 45nm phenoms to arrive and then I'll try a bit more.