Old School OC'er Looking to get back into the game

[purelithium]

I'm an old hand at OC'ing, I think the last time I over clocked was when I had an AMD K6-2 366 on an Abit board with the dip switches to select multiplier and FSB.

I have no clue as to where to start now. You can see my rig in my signature, and I've looked at the AnandTech article about overclocking the X2, but am quite lost as to where to start in my BIOS. I know I have to adjust things in the Power BIOS section, but am really confused by the Hypertransport ratios and Memory timings and all that fancy new stuff

Can anyone help an old fogie figure this out?

 

[cisco]

there is probably software that came with your motherboard that will overclock it right from your desktop. If there isn't all you need to increase in the bios is the FSB which is probably set to 200mhz just increase it in small increments until you get to the speed you want. You can adjust the timing higher (2.0 cas to 2.5cas and so on) for your ram to allow for higher FSB speeds. But at first you may just want to get your feet wet by just bumping up the FSB a little. Its really not too difficult. Hypertransport is a name givin to the integrated memory controller and full duplex FSB.

 

[purelithium]

there is probably software that came with your motherboard that will overclock it right from your desktop. If there isn't all you need to increase in the bios is the FSB which is probably set to 200mhz just increase it in small increments until you get to the speed you want. You can adjust the timing higher (2.0 cas to 2.5cas and so on) for your ram to allow for higher FSB speeds. But at first you may just want to get your feet wet by just bumping up the FSB a little. Its really not too difficult. Hypertransport is a name givin to the integrated memory controller and full duplex FSB.

Heh, as for the desktop overclocking tool, I doubt it. I use Linux as my main OS, and I hate booting into windows, so the bulk of my overclocking will be with the BIOS.

I have tried to bump up the FSB, but my system gets unstable at about 205, which sounds strange to me. Maybe I got a bum CPU?

 

[cisco]

I doubt its a bad cpu. I would guess you need to bump up the timings on the ram. Most Corsair ram generally runs at its fastest timing as soon as you install it. If you have enough cooling on your cpu, it's more than likely the ram.

I'm running OCZ Platinum ddr400 @
CAS 2
TRCD 3
TRP 2
TRAS 5
Command Rate 1T
At these timings I can't take it much past 210 fsb

You will also sometimes have to adjust the voltage up as well with the higher FSB to make it stable. If you look around the web there are lots of sites dedicated to overclocking that can do a way better job of explaining it.


I'm running linux as well on one of my machines. SuSE 10.0

 

[purelithium]

yeah i think my ram is running at the rated 2-2-2-5 timings... i didn't realize i had to play with that. Ok well there's something else that I need to paly with!

 

[krazyIvan]

You don’t need to have some program OC for you!
You will NEVER get the best out of your machine that way.

The thing to remember is the entire system is tied to the CPU frequency as a multiplier, so in order to achieve stability it’s necessary to decrease the multipliers because the Ram and HTT bus can’t take the same increase the CPU can.
Also make sure the PCI bus is locked, as it can’t go up either.

In order to obtain a higher CPU freq (my 3000+ (1800) 939 Venice is OCed to 2400Mhz!) you will need to decrease the HTT multiplier by 1 or more to keep the HTT bus stable. CPU Freq X HTT Mult = HTT BUS speed. You need to keep it close to 1000Mhz as you OC.
You will also need to decrease your Ram timing to 333Mhz for the same reason.
You should additionally increase your Vcore to 1.5, DDR SDRam to 2.7 and HTT to 1.25 or 1.3.
That will give you more room to raise your CPU freq before instability sets in.
Start in increments of 5Mhz and run Prime95 for .5hr after each increase.
When you start getting errors in Prime95, back-off 5Mhz and run for 12hrs in Prime95.
If your system locks-up and wont boot after changing the settings in BIO’s, clear CMOS and try again.

 

[purelithium]

Bah, windows users and their fancy programs (Prime95).... I guess I have to break down and see if my windows install is broken or not haha.

Anyway, It's late here, so I'll try all of your suggestions tomorrow! thanks!

 

[krazyIvan]

I’m sure you can find a Lunix version of Prime95, in fact most of the free software comes in Lunix versions any more.
The important thing is get to know your BIO's, its the best way to get the most out of you system. And really, its not hard to do. One thing I would caution, you are not going to see the % increase in OCing that I have experienced w/my 3000+. Your X2 is already pushing close to its max now on stock cooling. I wouldn’t expect more then a 200-400Mhz increase (2.2-2.4Ghz CPU) and CPU temps may be a limiting factor (60c max under max load).

 

[purelithium]

Well I found it, it's called MPrime.

Ok, I've got it up to 2.3ghz and it's somewhat stable. It's actually very stable in the OS, but when you run Mprime, after about a half hour, it craps out with a hardware error. that was at Vcore= 1.35v So I've upped it to 1.375 vcore, so maybe it'll be a little better. We'll see.

 

[krazyIvan]

If you need, 1.4 won’t hurt if your base is 1.3, also don’t forget you may need to bump-up the HTT and DDR voltages as well, just keep an eye on temps.
Another program you might like (its right down your Lunix Avenue :lol: ) its called MemTest86 and its a self booting Lunix ISO program you burn to CD. It doses a compressive Burn-in test on memory. If that fails it’s probably because your memory timing is so tight (which they are). You might try dropping your memory speed down to 266 or loosen up the memory timings (T2 for instance).

 

[purelithium]

Yep, trying all sorts of settings.

I'll check it out. Thanks,

Just so you know, it's Linux, not Lunix. LUnix was a light unix variant from the early eighties for the Commodore 64. I'm quite a bit further along than the Commodore

Thanks for the tips!

 

[krazyIvan]

Ahhh... loved my Amiga 500!