Am I on the right track? First time ever OC'ing.

[texasnightowl]

And I'm doing it on a 3 year old system that is still my primary PC. It is a Athlon XP Barton 2500+ on a Abit NF7-S v2 board. I was considering upgrading but decided I want this box to last me another year. I just put a new video card and changed memory so that being happy with it another year is possible. Memory is 2x512 Mushkin for a 1gb total running in dual channel mode. 2-3-3-6 at 1:1 ratio.

So, I think I started OC'ing right. Started in the BIOS. FSB originally was 166. Multiplier of 11. Started with the FSB only. Moved up in small steps...170, 174, 180, 184. Those seemed stable...ran prime95 for an hour or so at 184 with no problems. Then went to 188...before I got around to running prime95 I walked back into a BSOD...Machine Check Exception. Rebooted..started prime95...died almost immediately with the same BSOD. Back to 184 and all seemed well. (BTW...have NEVER seen that Machine Check Exception before ever.)

So first I upped the vcore from 1.65 to 1.675 (side note: cpu-z always shows the cpu voltage as less than this. example at BIOS 1.65, cpu-z said 1.616. at 1.675 now cpu-z says 1.648). With vcore at 1.675, also changed FSB back to 188...ran a quick prime95...only 10 minutes or so...not enough, I know but since it failed immediately last time I started with that. Anyway, made it through 10 minutes so then I started playing Caesar IV. About 15 minutes in or so it died with the same BSOD Machine Check Exception.

So I went back into BIOS. Left FSB at 188 but reduced multiplier to 10.5. Went back to finish my Caesar mission which completed without BS'ing this time. Will do prime95 later.

Just wanted feedback on whether I am approaching this right. My understanding is that I'm looking for the right combination of FSB vs. Multiplier vs. vcore that lets me OC...at least get the FSB to 200...without increasing temperatures unsafely.

Am I on the right track so far?

Also, since cpu-z shows the vcore at less than reflected in BIOS, should I go ahead and bump that up a little more?

 

[texasnightowl]

And I'm doing it on a 3 year old system that is still my primary PC. It is a Athlon XP Barton 2500+ on a Abit NF7-S v2 board. I was considering upgrading but decided I want this box to last me another year. I just put a new video card and changed memory so that being happy with it another year is possible. Memory is 2x512 Mushkin for a 1gb total running in dual channel mode. 2-3-3-6 at 1:1 ratio.

So, I think I started OC'ing right. Started in the BIOS. FSB originally was 166. Multiplier of 11. Started with the FSB only. Moved up in small steps...170, 174, 180, 184. Those seemed stable...ran prime95 for an hour or so at 184 with no problems. Then went to 188...before I got around to running prime95 I walked back into a BSOD...Machine Check Exception. Rebooted..started prime95...died almost immediately with the same BSOD. Back to 184 and all seemed well. (BTW...have NEVER seen that Machine Check Exception before ever.)

So first I upped the vcore from 1.65 to 1.675 (side note: cpu-z always shows the cpu voltage as less than this. example at BIOS 1.65, cpu-z said 1.616. at 1.675 now cpu-z says 1.648). With vcore at 1.675, also changed FSB back to 188...ran a quick prime95...only 10 minutes or so...not enough, I know but since it failed immediately last time I started with that. Anyway, made it through 10 minutes so then I started playing Caesar IV. About 15 minutes in or so it died with the same BSOD Machine Check Exception.

So I went back into BIOS. Left FSB at 188 but reduced multiplier to 10.5. Went back to finish my Caesar mission which completed without BS'ing this time. Will do prime95 later.

Just wanted feedback on whether I am approaching this right. My understanding is that I'm looking for the right combination of FSB vs. Multiplier vs. vcore that lets me OC...at least get the FSB to 200...without increasing temperatures unsafely.

Am I on the right track so far?

Also, since cpu-z shows the vcore at less than reflected in BIOS, should I go ahead and bump that up a little more?

Update...I now have vcore set to 1.70 in BIOS but apparently my board (Abit NF7-S) does undervolt a bit...cpu-z reports 1.68. I also dropped my multiplier to 10 and raised FSB to 200. I've only run prime95 roughly an hour, but this was stable. Also, RAM is now at 2-3-3-11.

A few other scenarios tonight were not stable...resulting in the BSOD Machine Check Exception. At 200x10.5 with vcore of 1.675 or 1.7 I BSOD'ed. vcore 1.675 almost immediately after starting prime95. vcore 1.70 took somewhere between 5-10 minutes.

I'm going to try to push the FSB up at bit with multiplier at 10. Failing that I will up my vcore and try again. I'm also considering a better PSU. I came across a note somewhere the the Abit NF7-S will have trouble with high FSB if the +3.3v is less that 3.25. Mine is running at 3.22.

Comments?

 

[whataulooknat]

Those Amd XP's are horrid at overclocking not worth the time or effort. I had one in my last computer. your better off toughing it out a year then upgrading your hardware. BUT if you really want to overclock that XP you need to get the temperatures down with aftermarket cooling or it wont be stable. What is the temperature running at?