My PII 920 Overclock

[tipmen]

Hello all, I recently overclocked my PII 920.

I have a Biostar TA790GX

Memory G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2GB) 4-4-4-12 at 900mhz (458mhz)

PII 920 at 3.2 ghz - FBS 229

All I did so far was set the voltage to 1.280 kept Quite and cool on.

Ran Prime 95 for 2 hours.

Temps reach 44c Max.

Don't worry about the 89c its a faulty sensor.

Any ideas to get more out of this set up or concerns?

 

[seabreeze]

That seems ok, but I think you get squeeze a bit more out of it. You've got your HT mulitplier at 8, any reason for this? I thought it should be 9.

Just so you don't run into crashes due to memory speeds, lower your ram down to 1:1. It would be 458 effective (229MHz) mathcing the current bus speed. Now increase the bus speed to 235, 240, etc, find out where it dies without changing voltage. That's good to know.

Let's say you get to 240 but 245 crashes. Try a voltage increas on 245 one increment at a time, up to 1.4V. Keep going up in 5MHz steps. Sooner or later temps will get you or it just won't fire up.

You might end up with something like this:
1.280V up to 235MHz
1.375V up to 245MHz
1.450V up to 250MHz
over 255MHz crashes, either max volts or max temps.

Keep on eye on temps. Have fun.

 

[tipmen]

I ran prime a bit longer sadly it crashed so i had to up the Vcore a bit more i had to bring it up to 1.30. My board won't let me bring the chip past 1.35 and when i tried to go up to 235mhz it became unstable even at 1.35.

How would i go about changing the HT mutiplier to 9 i don't see the setting in the bios.

Right now im pretty sure my system is rock soild at 3.2 ghz i'd like to 3.4 maybe 3.6 cooling shouldn't be a problem seeing how my max temp after hours of prime95 was 44C.

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/7509/89590910.png

 

[El_Capitan]

Your CPU is not a Black Edition, so your multiplier is locked. You can only overclock by increasing your bus speed.

You need faster memory if you want to overclock your bus speed any further. Once done, follow seabreeze's instructions.

 

[seabreeze]

Frist things first, your memory is running at 1:2 and the timings are very tight. If that's how they are normally (SPD) I'd still back them off one or two until you've found the limit of the cpu overclock.

1. Go into DRAM Timing Configuration and change the Memory Clock Mode from Auto to Manual.
2. Change Memory CLK to the lowest available.
3. In the DRAM Timing Mode, increase CL, tRCD and tRP timings from 4 to 6, tRAS from 12 to 18, tRC from 24 to 26, CR from 2T to Auto, everything else on Auto.

Leave the HT speed alone for now. I was just wondering why it was at 8 and not 9, but it appears the default setting keeps it that way. That's ok, better lower than higher when find the cpu overclock limits.

4 Set you vcore back to 1.35.
5. If you can see Core FID it's likely to be either Auto or x14, drop it down to 10 for now.

Now go back to 230MHz, then 235MHz, etc. so how you go, Prime95 testing. The aim is to find the maximum bus speed and record this as the upper limit. If it ends up being 245MHz at full volts with loose timings, low HT speed, lower than usual mutliplier and overall cpu speed (10x245=2.45GHz), then that's it.

Once you have that, go back an increase the multiplier until it's not stable again. Now you'll have both the upper limit for bus speed and multiplier to work with. Tweak it from there.

 

[tipmen]

Well i bumped up the FBS to 244 and changed the memory timings to 5-5-5-15.

My HT link is at 1950 is that a problem? It is stable at 3.4ghz at 1.350

 

[tipmen]

I lowered my NB speed in the bios to 1400 now its at 1700 i think thats a bit better. Maybe?

 

[seabreeze]

The way your BIOS provides you with choices of NB speed is (now obvious) in multiples of 200MHz, regardless of actual bus speed. So you've changed it to x7 by selecting "1400" as a setting. Of course, it's giving you 7x245=1715, which is what you've reported it as.

I'd still leave the HT multiplier alone for now. I'm sure you'd still be getting 245x14 whether it's set at x7 or x8. So long as it's x10 or less you'll be ok. Also, if you're changing the HT multiplier and bus speed, you've got one too many variables for determing your cpu overclock. I'll say it again: leave HYT alone, concentrate on bus speed.

The memory timings were the important thing to address for now. You mentioned before changing the memory timings that it was unstable at 235MHz @ 1.35V. Now with loose memory timings you've achieved 245MHz. Can you see that the instability you had before was not due to the cpu, bus speed or vcore, but the memory timings?

Leave everything as it is, keep going up in 5MHz steps until failure. The one before this failure, once known, is the one you work with.

Soon, you should be able to post something like: "It fell over at 260MHz, so 255MHz seems good for Prime95 and temps are ok. Now I will work on improving memory speeds, then tighten up timings." or words to that effect.

Write your settings down just in case you have to clear CMOS.