How do I know when to raise MCH, ICH, etc, etc?

[davidc]

In my Abit IP35-Pro bios I can change:

vcore
ddr voltage
CPU VTT
MCH
ICH
ICHIO
DDR Ref (%)
CPU GTLREF 0&2 (%)
CPU GTLREF 1&3 (%)

The 1st 2 are obviously the biggest levers to play with but how do I know when/if to change the others? I've seen a number of things written especially about the MCH (and a little on the ICH) but can't find anything that outlines when to change them and what they allow me to do.

For example, right now I can't get my FSB past about 480. If I increased the MCH (and/or ICH??) can I try to go higher? How do I know if I've gone too high with the MCH, ICH, etc? What is the best way to use MCH/ICH when overclocking? Should I max FSB, raise MCH slightly, try to raise FSB again, rinse/repeat?

Thanks!

 

[Thanatos421]

You shouldn't ever have to change ICH voltage, because you were smart enough to lock PCI-e at 100MHz right??

You may need to bump MCH for that high of an FSB overclock. Just for reference, my Maximus shows I'm pushing almost 1.5v into the NB to keep my overclock happy. I believe the default NB voltage is 1.3 (someone verify, I'm not 100% sure on that). So, set your FSB to say 490, up the MCH .1 or maybe even only .05 and stress it. Rinse repeat You are pushing the FSB pretty hard already. You may hit a wall soon.

Also, you'll know if you go too high by monitoring your NB temperature. Everest is a nice tool to show you chipset temperatures.

 

[Dunkel]

I've not heard of this Everest tool. Does anybody else use it?

Thanks

 

[Thanatos421]

Well, it's not Freeware. You have to buy it if you want the full featured version. Of course, I'm sure there are other means as well. It is an all-in-one benchmarking, monitoring, reporting suite. You can download the trial if you want to check it out, but has very limited functionality.

 

[Dunkel]

Anything would be better then not trusting CoreTemp to calibrate SpeedFan. I'm a noob but it still took me three days to calibrate SpeedFan.

 

[Silverion77]

Why are you using Coretemp to calibrate speedfan???

Or Im not getting what you are saying?? Use ambient and CPUID and such in the guide.

 

[Groveling_Wyrm]

In my Abit IP35-Pro bios I can change:

vcore
ddr voltage
CPU VTT
MCH
ICH
ICHIO
DDR Ref (%)
CPU GTLREF 0&2 (%)
CPU GTLREF 1&3 (%)

The 1st 2 are obviously the biggest levers to play with but how do I know when/if to change the others? I've seen a number of things written especially about the MCH (and a little on the ICH) but can't find anything that outlines when to change them and what they allow me to do.

For example, right now I can't get my FSB past about 480. If I increased the MCH (and/or ICH??) can I try to go higher? How do I know if I've gone too high with the MCH, ICH, etc? What is the best way to use MCH/ICH when overclocking? Should I max FSB, raise MCH slightly, try to raise FSB again, rinse/repeat?

Thanks!

For going higher than the 480 FSB, you might want to look at your MCH, ICH, and ICHIO voltages. Typically, at that speed, you will definitely need to increase more than just one of those voltages to maintain stability.

Another thing to look at is your core voltage, and Vdrop/Vdroop. Too much of that and you have issues as well.

DDR voltage isn't much of an issue unless you are attempting to OC your RAM at the same time you are attempting to OC the cpu, which I do NOT recommend. Only OC 1 thing at a time, to keep it simple.