A7V8X OC ?

[RCPilot]

A7V8X
XP 2400
2x256 Kingston Hyper X 2700
Geforce TI4600
WD 80 gig JB 8 mg
Antec 430w True Power PSU

I'm OCed, I'm sure of it, but want some info. I ended up OCed by accident. I was up late, had several beers & decided to see what I could do. I went into BIOS & selected 2500 instead of 2000 for CPU speed. Saved it & couldn't boot. So I went back into BIOS & reset it to 2000 & booted fine. I'm running the RAM in Turbo mode with aggressive timings. Went to bed.

Today I was benching with Sandra & saw it was running a FSB of 333. I thought that can't be right. Went into BIOS & was running FSB 166 @ 15 x 166 = 2490. Does that mean I'm running 2.49 gigs that easy? Or am I totally off here? I figure un OCed 15 x 133 = 1995 or 1.995 gigs. Is my thinking & math correct? I am running async with these 166 FSB with 2700 RAM actually running @ 3200 settings. Am I correct? I should be running 133 FSB with 2700 RAM with the 2400 to be in sync. correct?

After looking at the BIOS what happened was when I set the CPU to 2500 it raised the FSB to 333 at the same time. I didn't catch it. When I set the CPU back to 2000 I didn't even look at the FSB speed. If I didn't have the RAM to handle it I wouldn't have been able to boot @ the 166 FSB? I couldn't do it with the Samsung I just replaced.

I benched 3Dmark 2001 SE & gained 500 points. I'm at 47c under the burn in test with Sandra with the stock HSF. Sandra read temps higher that either ASUS Probe or Mother Board Monitor, at least for my rig.

If I'm correct in my thinking I've got a lot of head room left in this rig, or am I way off base here?

What should I do next with it?

If it ain't broke, take it apart & see why not!

 

[RCPilot]

Bump

If it ain't broke, take it apart & see why not!

 

[svol]

First download WCPUID and see if which real speed you're running, Sandra can give wrong info in some cases.

But if it indeed runs at 2.5 GHz that easy there is a great chance you can get it even higher by increasing the FSB some more (you said your memory was running at PC3200 speed, right?).

My dual-PSU PC is so powerfull that the neighbourhood dims when I turn it on

 

[RCPilot]

Well, I've got some learning & testing to do. I downloaded WCPUID & it says everything is pretty much un OCed I believe. Confusing really.

WCPUID says:
Internal Clock = 2000.07
System Clock = 133.34
System Bus = 266.68
Multiplier = 15

So it looks like nothing has changed. The BIOS reads FSB 333. So it's locked or something I guess.

I can't figure where I got the extra 500 3Dmarks. I'm going to reset the BIOS to 266 & rerun the 3Dmark to see if I loose 500 marks. Something is changed the way the games are playing.

If it ain't broke, take it apart & see why not!

 

[RCPilot]

Well I've had some time to play & research. BIOS settings as they are:

CPU Speed = 2000
CPU Freq. multiple = 15.0 X
CPU External Freq. = 133/33
Memory Freq. = 333

The Memory Freq. is the one I'm changing. I thought that was the FSB. The choices are 266/333/400/Auto. @ 266 I get 11365 3Dmarks. @ 333 I get 11802 3Dmarks.

So what am I OCing? The RAM? That's all I can figure.

If it ain't broke, take it apart & see why not!

 

[svol]

Yes, you only increased the memory speed, not the CPU and/or FSB speeds.

You might want to try 166/33 FSB and 13x multiplier and see if that works (your higher multiplier range should be unlocked (13x and higher)). This will give you a CPU at 2167 MHz with a FSB of 166 MHz. If it doesn't work directly but your temps at stock speed weren't that high you can up the VCore a little.

My dual-PSU PC is so powerfull that the neighbourhood dims when I turn it on

 

[RCPilot]

That's what I thought. Man that's some difference in 3Dmark. I'm running it out of sync. then. Does it hurt to run it that way? I'm just wondering. I'm going to set it back to sync. & then go to 166 FSB. It won't boot with the RAM timings I have. Going to play a bit.

If it ain't broke, take it apart & see why not!

 

[svol]

Well if sync or async runs better depends on many factors. In theory sync is the best because you wont have any waiting latency between the FSB and memory clock, but if your memory can run at fast timings at a higher clock and in some cases async with a higher memory clock will actually work better. I think that if you run memory at the same timings at 133 and 166 Mhz with 166 MHz being async it might improve performance in some cases because the total memory speed increased. If you can chooce between fast timings 133 (or 166) in sync and slow timings 166 (or 200) async then fast timings with sync should always be better.

My dual-PSU PC is so powerfull that the neighbourhood dims when I turn it on