C2D 4300 OC question....have I reached my chips ceiling?

What are your temps - room temp, idle & load?
Also, what are your RAM speed & timings set at?

room temp is around 72 F
CPU temp stays between 30 - 32 idle and 52 - 54 full load.

Not sure that temps is playing a part because the system will not evern boot past the BIOS test sequence. I get an error (EMT64 CPU) and it tells me to adjust my CPU timings and try again. I have tried upping CPU voltage all teh way to 1.35, FSB voltage to 1.4 and MCH to 1.55 and still nothing.

Temps can play a part even before the chip heats up. The CPU can "feel" the efficiency of it's cooling so-to-speak. You might try resetting the cooler, also revaluate your case's airflow. You're temps are not particularly high, but they are not great either.

1.35V is not really high for that chip, plenty of people run theirs up to 1.45V....but it's usually not neccessary unless you're pushing much higher.

I think you're RAM might be limiting you, not the CPU...please answer the question I posted before.

RAM timings are 4-5-5-15 speed is unlinked from FSB and set to 800.

Well, 2700MHz is a 50% OC, and your 2812 is by no means bad. But, most are getting a bit higher. One other idea is to try a larger jump to your next attempt...I've read a few times that there as stability "holes"....for instance, if you were testing every FSB speed at 10MHz increments....you start at 200MHz (stock speed) and begin working toward 400MHz (100% OC), but you reach instability at 320MHz....so, go to 330MHz, and see if the stability returns.

Also, do you have the most recent BIOS??? If it's an early eVGA baord, they had a recall, where you could send your board back to them, they would do a resistor mod for you, and return it. It was mostly for those running quad cores, but I guess many people had better luck OCing.

So I reseated my HSF and added AS 5 to it. The temps dropped to 27C idle for a while and then they have started being 30C + again. I know AS5 is supposed to get better after a few heat cycles and I am having no luck. I wonder if it got jarred around a bit. I think there is a BIOS update available for my board. Just need to drag out the floppy drive and hook it up. That is the only reason I ever use one so I don't have one in the system on a normal basis.

Any other suggestions?

Venkmen...

Proc - C2D 4300 (Batch Q645A528)
MB - GA-P965-DS3 Ver. 3.3 Bios=F-10
Mem - Patriot DDR2 PC2-6400 2-GB (4,4,4,12-2T)
HSF - Stock

I'm responding to your post because I have the same E-4300 batch as you, and mine overclocked easily on all stock settings. Actually it runs undervolted. (Processor @ 1.325 vs 1.35 and memory @ 2.0 vs 2.2 rated)...Funny how procs differ from even the same batch. I did Memory and Processor tests while slowly overclocking and I safely reached this 3243 with my current hardware setup. I'm not one to get too crazy with overclocking requiring cooling and hardware mods, I just tested to see what this E4300 could do stock. I'm really impressed with these processors and run mine 24/7 @ 2700mhz (9x300). That's a 50% overclock and it's smooth as silk. My board allows auto power saving adjustments (EIST) and it throttles down from this set upper clock of 2.7 to a stock 1.8 when just cruz'n. But, it can kick itself up in a hurry when it needs to...Kinda like having a V-8 in a volkswagon...  ...

Good Luck with yours... 8)

Probably a FSB hole, or RAM running too fast.

Try increasing the FSB a bit.

try lowering your memory speed or set to auto on timings that worked for me... deferent cpu do
also make sure you have the correct voltage on your memory my problem was that my MOBO was setting my memory voltage to low 1.8v and my memory runs at 2.0v

also dont let your memory overclock stay below its stock speed or keep the stock speed

Then do 10 or 5mhz increments check for stability and raise the Vcore if needed

this advices are based on my experience im not an expert  

Good luck!!  

8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O

Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 3000mhz 375x8 1.38Vcore
Zalman 9700 (18-27c idle up to 34c load) NICE!!
1GB Kit HyperX DDR2 6400 (800mhz @ 735MHZ) Dual Channel 2.0v
Asus P5WDH DELUXE Digital home
WD 250GB SATAII 16MB buffer
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512MB Zalman VF-900CU (35-40c idle 45-50 load)
Enermax Noisetaker 701AX 600W
Lite-On DVD-RW 16x SATA
Sound Blaster Audigy 4 7.1
Logitech X-550 5.1 speaker system


AMD 64bit X2 4600+ @ 2.65 HTT 1319mhz!! Stable!!
1GB kit Kingston Valueram 667mhz
Asus M2R32-MVP AMD 580X CrossFire Chipset+ATI™ SB600
Maxtor 250GB SATAII 16MB Buffer
2 ATI X1600XT Crossfired 256MB
Plextor DVD-RW 16x

well I have first had experience of that "black hole" My computer would hang and not always post at 1675 FSB - 1800 but I pushed it straight up to 2000 fsb and it works fine, talk about weird. I tried 2050 and that just bsod's windows. I do have my voltages setup high though for now, now that I reached the ceiling im going to start to drop them a bit and see if its still stable.

So far i let windows run for 7 hours with folding@home running and no problems what so ever. I am running water cooling so that does help keep temps at around 40-50c depending on what im doing but it averages aroudn 38 -40c

so yeah, up the voltage and make a huge jump in fsb.

That's what I was talking about. Thanks for the help cranbers!

Yeah I didn't even know about that black hole thing until I read it here. I mean who would of thought that would be an issue. I mean I was always thinking my cpu couldn't go past 2.9 ghz because it simply wouldn't post correctly or it would bsod windows during start up.

I did notice one thing though, after messing with my voltages, that thing can't handle anything stable below 1.5 volts, not even 1.493 is entirely stable. But at 1.5 I tortured that thing with everything I could throw at it. It does crash orthos with a rounding error on cpu 1, but other then that i can't get it to actually lock up or crash.

I did however start playing with the ram speed, I have the timings at all 4-4-4-12 I got it all the way up to 900Mhz adn it seem to be ok but I couldn't run 3dmark 06, it would just lock up. So I have it running now at 865 and everything is running good. Folding at home now gets 18s per frame down from 21seconds before. That is running the normal graphical client though no smp.

Pretty amazing those c2d chips. I have never heard of a cpu over clocking almost 100 percent. I mean that's cool but it sounds like Intel is just playing a game. That is using chips they know can go much much higher at slower speeds.

go into your bios, set the ram to the lowest speed posible, set the ram timings to real loose specs (CL5 or higher), and see what happens then.