Overclock went bad from 2.0GHz to 2.6GHz

[jayjay]

Right after I changed the FSB speed and exited and saved it froze I figured it was because I needed to increase voltage, but it wouldn't load any thing on screen. Instead it showed a bunch of dots appearing and disappearing on the screen. I shut down took out the CMOS battery and cleared the capacitors and rebooted and it was fine. I changed the FSB up 20 with a multiplier of 10X so now it's at 2.2GHz. My question is what was the problem before? because my goal is to get at least 2.6GHz.

my processor is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

 

[Evilonigiri]

Perhaps ram?

Tell us every little detail.

 

[jayjay]

my specs are:
motherboard -asus m2a-vm socket AM2
ram -G.SKILL 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 PC2 6400 Dual Channel
PSU - thermaltake 500W
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
CPU cooling - ARCTIC COOLING ACF64LP 60mm with Arctic Silver 5 compound
case - cooler master centurion 534

I was running it at just 2.3GHz and seemed all good until about 2hours when I was just watching a video and the computer restarted.. Temps were normal too. So now I have the FSB back to OEM which was 200MHz

 

[Evilonigiri]

Perhaps loosen the timings on the ram to 5-5-5-15.

Not too sure on how the divider thingy works for the AMD but run Prime95 using blend test for 8 hours. If it fails, you ram isn't stable, so tweak it around.

 

[jayjay]

I don't really understand Prime95, am I suppost to be active on the computer when it does the test or can I just leave it on throught the night? Also you ment to do this on OEM settings right? then if it fails I need to adjust the timings?

 

[Evilonigiri]

You OC first, then run it. All you do is download Prime95, select stress test, then hit blend test. It should show you that it's running, using your cpu's power to 100%.

After that run small FFT's for 6hours.

You can keep using your pc if you like, but whatever you do, it'll be slow.

If your pc isn't stable on stock settings, you can use the stability check too.

 

[jayjay]

Can any of my parts get damaged by doing this? I'm kind of worried it might burn some thing out at 100% load on not so sure settings. Should I increase the FSB to 230MHz or 220MHz, what would you do? I'm not sure how big of jumps I should do but last time it was on 230 it restarted for no reason even though .3GHz increase isn't much to even bother.

 

[Evilonigiri]

If the pc restarted for no reason, I would highly suspect the ram. Get it stable.

As for damage, do you have adequate cooling? Most people who uses Prime95 are OCers, and thus their pc are equipped with good coolers. Perhaps you would want to invest in one before doing anything.

 

[Evilonigiri]

Oh and to answer your question, I'd directly aim for 230Mhz.

 

[jayjay]

I think my cooling is fine, I have this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119104 has vent just for CPU and side intake fan my cpu fan is this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186019 and I'm also using artic silver 5 high density thermal compound so would all that be adequate for my components?

and just to clear up all i'm doing is changing the FSB from 200MHz to 230MHz and leaving every thing else on auto for the time being correct?

 

[jayjay]

I noticed it doesn't say FSB it says CPU Frequency is that the same thing? CPU-Z shows it as bus speed.

I tried 230MHz again and once I logged into windows it restarted so now I set it to 220MHz which seems to be working pretty well so far. I'm going to do that test now.

 

[Solitaire]

3800+? That's 2GHz stock, and I assume running a /5 divider for the RAM (800MHz dead-on). Jacking it up to 230MHz FSB will OC the CPU to 2.3GHz - fine, but the RAM divider will stay in place and drag the RAM up 15% as well, to 920MHz. If that G.Skill is regular 5-5-5-15 it might not like being pulled too high especially at stock 1.8v, and even if its 4-4-4-12 (low-latency modules usually have more overclocking headroom) it won't enjoy thrying to run such tight timings at 920MHz.

Try dropping the RAM to 667MHz in the BIOS (in real life this simply forces the CPU to use the /6 divider, 2300/6 = 383, so at 230FSB the RAM will be at 766MHz) or even boosting vDIMM and loosening timings, if the BIOS has those options available. Then see how far you can push the CPU. Don't forget to drop the HTL from *5 to *4 past 230FSB, and to *3 past 260FSB (you might not want to push it that far as 260FSB = 2.6GHz on the 3800+)

If you can't drop the HTL from the BIOS, then (motherboard-dependent) you might have a hard limit of ~266MHz on FSB, any further and no Windows (d'oh!). Oh, and you'll be stuck using a utility to drop the HTL every time you get into Windows... it might not be stable with a HT of 1.3GHz+...

 

[Scotteq]

3800+? That's 2GHz stock, and I assume running a /5 divider for the RAM (800MHz dead-on). Jacking it up to 230MHz FSB will OC the CPU to 2.3GHz - fine, but the RAM divider will stay in place and drag the RAM up 15% as well, to 920MHz. If that G.Skill is regular 5-5-5-15 it might not like being pulled too high especially at stock 1.8v, and even if its 4-4-4-12 (low-latency modules usually have more overclocking headroom) it won't enjoy thrying to run such tight timings at 920MHz.

Try dropping the RAM to 667MHz in the BIOS (in real life this simply forces the CPU to use the /6 divider, 2300/6 = 383, so at 230FSB the RAM will be at 766MHz) or even boosting vDIMM and loosening timings, if the BIOS has those options available. Then see how far you can push the CPU. Don't forget to drop the HTL from *5 to *4 past 230FSB, and to *3 past 260FSB (you might not want to push it that far as 260FSB = 2.6GHz on the 3800+)

If you can't drop the HTL from the BIOS, then (motherboard-dependent) you might have a hard limit of ~266MHz on FSB, any further and no Windows (d'oh!). Oh, and you'll be stuck using a utility to drop the HTL every time you get into Windows... it might not be stable with a HT of 1.3GHz+...

Quoted For Truth

 

[jayjay]

Thanks for the help so far guys. I can't find the RAM timings in the BIOS and my timings are 5 5 5 15. In CPUZ I can see my RAM info and it's DRAM Frequency right now is 440MHz (which I guess is times 2 since it's Dual channel 800 RAM) So my RAM right now is at 880MHZ after increasing my FSB by 20MHz X10. I know it's the RAM now expecialy since it's cheaper RAM ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098 )
How can I change the timings? Also the 3800+ can handle 2.9GHz ( http://www.legitreviews.com/article/229/1/ ) That link show them OC'ing it to 2.7GHz

Oh by the way, my computer passed that Prime95 8hr test at 220MHZ FSB. But it wasn't 100% load like you said, it was 50% load, not sure if it's suppost to do that or what. It was using both cores too.

 

[jayjay]

I found the RAM Frequency settings they were kind of hidden in the BIOS. I did what you said, dropped the RAM timing to DDR2 667. I changed the FSB to 230MHz to see if it would boot flawlessly and it did. I'm going to continue upping the FSB to see if I can get it to at least 2.5GHz. One more question what are good temps for the CPU to be in? Also should I be concerned with any other temps?

 

[jayjay]

MY FSB is at 250GHz and it boots fine, but it instantly fails the prime95 test. It says "FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4 Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file. Torture test ran 0 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings. Execution halted." What can be causing this? BTW I was unable to find the HTL options in the BIOS, this might be the problem then. but what else can the HTL be called in the BIOS?

 

[Solitaire]

IIRC it can be called HTT Link and (IIRC) LTP on some cheaper boards *cough*MSI*cough* On many newer boards its locked at *5 unfortunately...

At 250FSB you'd be looking at DDR2-833 (2500/6) so I doubt the RAM is the problem. You can try knocking it down to 533 (ie. CPU/8) but that will kill your performance. The HTL or even the CPU itself is more probably it. Try increasing the CPU voltage as little as possible and try again, OR try using a utility such as nTune or CentralBrain to knock your HTL down a notch once you get to Windows - *5 to *4 will drop 250FSB HT from 1.25 to 1GHz.

Most boards list the maximum stable speed around 1GHz but in reality it varies from 1.1-1.2GHz. 1.25 and up will give most people grief; stable enough to boot, not enough to load the CPU and expect anything back other than gibberish....

 

[Mugz]

Voltages?

 

[jayjay]

I think I found HTL in the bios named LDT Bus Frequency, it was under chipset subsection. It's options are (1)Auto, Which is checked (2) 200Mhz (3) 400MHz (4) 600MHz (5) 800MHz (6) 1GHz. Would that be it?
I took some pictures of CPU-Z that shows my settings (all are currently on auto) http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9251/overclockingxo3.jpg
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6741/overclockinggin4.jpg

Today I tried to bump FSB up to 245MHz (which is 5MHz more then I am using) And it was working fine, but it won't pass prime95 memory test. It was running fine in the other tests too. I tryed for the hell of it bumping FSB to 250MHz and it wouldn't boot into windows, which is odd since I was able to get into windows at 250MHz before just wasn't stable. I think this is due to the fact I stopped manually setting the voltages and just turned it to auto. Also, back on the RAM right now the timings are 667 and is at a near perfect 800Mhz accourding to CPU-Z which is fine because I was able to run my RAM flawlessly at over 860MHz before, so I'm not sure exactly why the RAM is acting up.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

When you find the HT multiplier, it should be locked in at 5x stock, you will want to drop it to 4x, with the lower ram setting of course, then crank up the FSB, which should yield you a better OC.

 

[jayjay]

I did a test to see if LDT was really HTL and it was. I looked at my HTL speed on CPU-Z then went and changed the LDT to 800MHz (from auto) and it changed my HTL speed to 959.3MHz (from 1199.1Mhz).

It's not locked, but it doesn't show 5x, 4x, it shows frequencies so what would be best for me to run (1) 200Mhz (2) 400MHz (3) 600MHz (4) 800MHz (5) 1GHz ?

 

[jayjay]

Even with the HTL speed lowered to 600MHz which I belive is *3 I still instantly fail the blend test on prime95. My FSB is 250MHz which makes my CPU 2.50GHz. I tried to benchmark my computer with 3D Mark and it crashed out at the CPU test. My core voltage for CPU is 1.424V and my HTL speed is showing at 749.8MHz. My DRAM Frequency is 416.5MHz which should be fine too. Does any one have any more helpful information that might fix this?