The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

its hit and miss above 3.45ghz but at or bellow that its rock solid, i put some ram sinks off a gcard onto the power regs and it keeps the power almost vdroop less. it will post @3.6ghz but windoze crashes as soon as i try to do anything.

i guess i was lucky with mine as its taken all the abuse i have thrown at it but it still wont do a x7 multi and i would like to see how it does 500x7 but hey ho, want a pcie 2 mobo now to see if that helps any.

im looking at getting 2 2gb sticks of ram next tho as vista munches thru it, 600mb just for my desktop.

 

Lol nope mine weigh maybe a pound at the most, they're only like 2" woofers, they're exclusively reserved for mid & treble, but they have no trouble pushing volume as extreme as the sub.

Marsey: Welcome back mate, sorry to hear about the crap from the ISP, I've been there before, but with AOL of all people.
3.45Ghz on a 4300 is pretty damn impressive, I can't make mine above 3.15Ghz with my current voltage settings, and with an nf600 chipset I'm even more impressed.
Funny you should mention the RAM, I'm supposed to be picking up an extra 2 gigs today. I'll have to see how that impacts my overclock. All four slots filled could potentially be a problem - I'll have to weigh up the max overclock versus the gain of having the extra RAM.
On that note, if I don't actually overclock my RAM, are there any definite reasons why I should expect problems upping my FSB? Or is it just that overclocking RAM in all 4 slots is a bad idea? If that's the case, then I can settle for 3Ghz with my RAM at stock speed, which I'm perfectly happy with. If I'm looking at something like 2.4 though, I may not be so impressed.

 

its good to be back m8y.

most issues with ram slots and ocing are due to the bios handling the mem controller, if its a big enough issue they normally release one to fix it.

im at a bit of a crossroads tho, i cant decide wether to get 2x2gb and sell mine or get another 2x1bg ones and put the rest to (heres the kicker) somthing else im not sure if i should get a 19/12 24" screen or water cooling or a new mobo and cpu. tax return time so i know i have a few hundered quid around easter.

if i had enough i would do it all but atm im not full of money (sorry for the pun).

 

Put it this way - at present I see no reason why I would upgrade anything in my PC except my RAM. A large monitor is always pleasant to have, but at present, no upgraded GPU or CPU really makes much of a difference in what I could/couldn't run. The benefits of having a 3870 or 8800GTX are too slight to justify the outlay. That's for my specs, not sure on yours.

 

i wouldnt bother with a gtx now the g92 is out, i sold mine just before xmas and got a gts512 just after and it scores higher at low res than the gtx did and my temps are all about 5c lowwer too.

high res is where the extra mem bandwidth in the gtx helps but its old tech now, wait till they strap 2 g92's for the 98gx2 and it only uses about 20% more power than 1 88gtx. the 3870...well i wont say too much as i know your a fan, i will just say its good for its price.

check my sig vvv

 

quite happy with my 3870

not sure if im going to flash the bios and go for the 1ghz core that alot of people are getting though.

 

System booted up fine today at 2.88ghz (1650 qfsb). Went on the Asus forums as suggested and they talk about a FSB hole typically between 375-405 which would explain why it refused to run at 1600. Think I'll leave it as-is now, happy with a 1.02ghz o/c.

 

1.02Ghz is certainly nothing to be sneezed at, but I managed 1.2Ghz with the P5N-E SLI, let alone the board I've got now, so something tells me you can probably get more out of it. Just takes patience I suppose...

 

@maccerm
looking back thru your posts heres what i would try;

firstly get everest or pcprobe to see what your voltages are doing on auto, then you know where to continue from. then set your ram to unlinked, set it at stock timings and volts for now and leave it, your mobo will change the speeds of it to work with the dividers its has and it will take it out of the equation for now. you can always play with your ram once you know where you cpu limits are, and trust me this will take some time and patience. once you have done that you should be able to keep uping the cpu. also try bios 803 as from what i have read it is the best one for overclocking, not sure about cpu support tho, should work, dam my mobo doesnt even offically support my cpu so...

 

Thanks guys. I’m pretty sure I’m not near the limit of my cpu yet, after all I’m only at 1.42v and that’s perfectly stable. I’m just concerned about the temperatures. I think as you say I should get Pc Probe or Everest etc on there – I’ll do this tonight. With Speedfan I get the core temps for my cpu, which seem to be about right, but I get a lot of nonsense readings like ‘Temp 3: 102c’ ‘Temp 1: -50c’ – I can’t identify the 3rd cpu sensor reading so I’ve no idea whether I’m staying safely within the 60.1c thermal spec of the cpu. On the voltage side it reckons my vcore is 1.33 when I’ve set it manually!
When I run Orthos torture tester my Core 0 & 1 temps hit 55c – is this safe and does anyone know what that would translate to roughly as the overall temp of the cpu taken from the 3rd sensor?

 

if you can get the new speedfan beta it is spot on for your core temps but the older one isnt, everest says the same as coretemp which is ment to be the best for cpu readings so...

if your concerned about running too hot get somthing like throttle watch 2 (there are others too) to see if your cpu is holding itself back when it gets warm, if it is throttling it means your pushing it too far, if not carry on

 

I'm at 1.39V on my E4300 and made 3.15Ghz. At 1.42V, you should be able to push slightly further. Have you considered upping your chipset voltage?

 

Well until I get another monitoring programme on there I'm not certain of the stock chipset voltage, and I'm not sure if the m/b controls it dynamically anyway when set to 'Auto'. On the Asus forum there was a thread about cold start probs and someone on there said to set the n/b voltage to 1.35v. I'll get some new monitoring stuff this evening and try and work out exactly what everything is set to.
As you say tho I should be able to get higher than 2.88 at the current vcore. It booted at 2.88 at 1.418v and ran 3dmark fine but froze on Orthos. Perhaps 2.95-3.0 ish at my current vcore of 1.425v - Upping the n/b may well let me get higher, perhaps even lower the vcore down again. I'll let you know how I get on later. Oh and Sam, I have asked about a thousand times! But just to pin you down on this, you think up to 80c on the cores is safe?

 

Using CoreTemp specifically, I pulled temps of up to 81C on my cores, with no ill effects. I can't say what speedfan/Everest values to look for, because I never used them back when I ever had temperatures that high. Using Speedfan though, anything up to c.51/52C for the CPU itself should be fine.
As for the NB voltage, all I know is that at beyond 2.67Ghz 'Auto' wouldn't boot, 1.5V would.

 

cores are about 10/12c above what speedfan reports for your cpu. everest is spot on for my setup. you should have no trouble hitting 3ghz on 1.4v it must be ram or chipset (maybe cpu vtt) that is stopping you but my money is still on ram.

edit

my chipset only needed 1.2v to do 1333 fsb and only needs 1.4v to hit 1500 but i think i was lucky with my board.

 

I've just run coretemp and the cores are 33c - identical to the idle temps that Speedfan is reporting. (I don't have an intelligible CPU readout tho!) Coretemp states my tjmax is 85c, so at 55c full orthos load I can assume I have a little thermal headroom then? Enough to get me to the 3ghz mark. I haven't tried to go higher than 2.88 yet, so I haven't come across a limiting factor yet - I think it was just having a funny five when it wouldn't boot the other day, it has been fine since. Just got my chipset fan thru so I'm gonna fit that then see what it'll do!!

 

"having a funny five" is how I'd explain the behaviour of my P5N-E SLI pretty much exactly. Inexplicable changes in performance, whether it will boot or not and so on. Reliability wasn't that board's strong point!

 

Sorry to barge in here like this guys! But I have come across a slight problem... According to this 3DMark06 run: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4184277

He got 5835 Marks for the CPU at 3.9Ghz, and with mine at 4.05Ghz, I got 5547. Shouldn't I be getting more than him??? I have the ram at 2.2v (stock) at 5-5-5-15 from the stock 4-4-4-12 and I believe it is a 901Mhz, and the CPU at 1.6v. The high voltage on the CPU is only for benching, so don't freak out!

Is there anything else I should be changing? I think I should be upping the NB voltage a bit as I cannot run 3DMark06 with anything below 1.6v on the CPU. I get a error, but maybe that's a Vista problem? I try to run it in XP (duel boot) but it stays idle at the loading screen and the process usage for it is always at 25.

Any ideas as to getting a better score, bringing down the voltage and fixing 3DMark06 in XP?

Sorry for the long post guys!!

 

better memory bandwidth perhaps?

 

Waymon3x6,
Do you have any Sandra 2007 benchmark scores? They would help in pinpointing the problems. could you post Screen Shots of the CPU Arithmetic and Memory Bandwidth benchmarks. That would give us an idea of what's going on inside your computer!

Best Regards,
Russ