- Apr 9, 2008
- 71
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I'm new to overclocking (never tried it until the other night). Read through the clunk's, graysky, and wolfram beginner's guides and got a good idea of it. Mainly followed Clunk's, I was overclocking fine when it came to booting, temps, and stability tests, until I realized the system wasn't stable. There would be mouse jitters, small lags... and furthermore, there would be huge FPS drops in 3dmark.
Anyway, I am doing it on my 4-year-old build:
E6750
4x1GB G.SKILL DDR2-800 RAM F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ (1.8-2.0V, 5-5-5-15)
Asus P5K-E WiFi AP mobo
EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro RS-750-ACAA-A1 750W Power Supply
Now this sounds like an entire noob question with a simple answer, but I have spent hours googling and couldn't find one. I set my BIOS according to clunk's guide. I set my ram timings manually to 5-5-5-15 and ram voltage to 1.8. I set my FSB
RAM to a 1:1 ratio, for mine that is 333:667.
Here is the problem: When I overclock my FSB up to to 399 MHz, (DRAM 799 Mhz), I can benchmark in 3DMark and the FPS looks normal. But as soon as I bring the FSB up one more interval to 400 MHz (DRAM 801 MHz), the FPS drops severely in 3Dmark, and the final score is about cut in half. The CPU score raises, but the SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores severly drop. Also I notice some jittering in the mouse, lagging while trying to scroll down fast in a browser... which, according to what I've read, sounds just like basic symptoms of an unstable overclock.
I had started initially overclocking it far higher, to around 3.6 GHz, with boots, temps, and 8 hours of stress testing OK. I thought I had achieved a very successful overclock, but it was the 3DMark FPS that clued me that something was wrong.
Things I have tried:
I thought maybe it was the PCI-E bandwidth messing with the graphics card, although CPU-Z never said 1x instead of 16x. I tried setting the bandwidth to 100 and that did not help. I then set it back to auto, and tried increasing the RAM voltage to 1.9V. Did not help.
Before bringing the clock back down a notch, I went ahead and ran Memtest with the 400:801 set. I ran it overnight (about 7 hours) and had no errors.
I've heard of people getting to 3.6 and above with an E6750... Do I just need faster RAM? I know people clock their RAM faster than it's rated all the time, so I don't see how 1 Mhz over is causing the 3dmark score to immediately cut in half.
More things I have tried:
I tried changing the strap from Auto to 400, which brought the RAM down to 800 MHz instead of 801. Still had the choppiness. I then set the strap back to Auto, but this time adjusted the timings to 6-6-6-12 instead of 5-5-5-15 (rated).
So with the timings at CL6, went ahead and tried the 3Dmark benchmark again and it ran smoothly.
So now I figured lowering the timings would allow me to clock up the FSB, and in turn push the RAM clock above 800. I tried 420:841, and then ran the benchmark. Immediately I could see the huge performance drop, so I rebooted and tried pushing the RAM voltage to 1.9V, but that didn't help. Set it back to 1.8V, and brought the FSB down to 410:821, then 405:811, then 402:805, and finally 401:803. Every one of these had the same severely reduced performance in the benchmark.
I then set it back to 400:801 (while maintaining the CL6 timings), which worked earlier as I had mentioned... and oddly enough, I had the same poor performance issue on this run. I did not expect that at all, as it worked a couple of hours ago.
So to recap, with 5-5-5-15 or 6-6-6-18 timings, 399:799 runs the benchmark smoothly, and 400:801 or anything above cuts it in half.
I have no idea what is causing this!
I'm pretty sure I've covered everything in excruciating detail, but if I'm forgetting anything, please let me know. Thank you!
Anyway, I am doing it on my 4-year-old build:
E6750
4x1GB G.SKILL DDR2-800 RAM F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ (1.8-2.0V, 5-5-5-15)
Asus P5K-E WiFi AP mobo
EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro RS-750-ACAA-A1 750W Power Supply
Now this sounds like an entire noob question with a simple answer, but I have spent hours googling and couldn't find one. I set my BIOS according to clunk's guide. I set my ram timings manually to 5-5-5-15 and ram voltage to 1.8. I set my FSB
RAM to a 1:1 ratio, for mine that is 333:667.Here is the problem: When I overclock my FSB up to to 399 MHz, (DRAM 799 Mhz), I can benchmark in 3DMark and the FPS looks normal. But as soon as I bring the FSB up one more interval to 400 MHz (DRAM 801 MHz), the FPS drops severely in 3Dmark, and the final score is about cut in half. The CPU score raises, but the SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores severly drop. Also I notice some jittering in the mouse, lagging while trying to scroll down fast in a browser... which, according to what I've read, sounds just like basic symptoms of an unstable overclock.
I had started initially overclocking it far higher, to around 3.6 GHz, with boots, temps, and 8 hours of stress testing OK. I thought I had achieved a very successful overclock, but it was the 3DMark FPS that clued me that something was wrong.
Things I have tried:
I thought maybe it was the PCI-E bandwidth messing with the graphics card, although CPU-Z never said 1x instead of 16x. I tried setting the bandwidth to 100 and that did not help. I then set it back to auto, and tried increasing the RAM voltage to 1.9V. Did not help.
Before bringing the clock back down a notch, I went ahead and ran Memtest with the 400:801 set. I ran it overnight (about 7 hours) and had no errors.
I've heard of people getting to 3.6 and above with an E6750... Do I just need faster RAM? I know people clock their RAM faster than it's rated all the time, so I don't see how 1 Mhz over is causing the 3dmark score to immediately cut in half.
More things I have tried:
I tried changing the strap from Auto to 400, which brought the RAM down to 800 MHz instead of 801. Still had the choppiness. I then set the strap back to Auto, but this time adjusted the timings to 6-6-6-12 instead of 5-5-5-15 (rated).
So with the timings at CL6, went ahead and tried the 3Dmark benchmark again and it ran smoothly.
So now I figured lowering the timings would allow me to clock up the FSB, and in turn push the RAM clock above 800. I tried 420:841, and then ran the benchmark. Immediately I could see the huge performance drop, so I rebooted and tried pushing the RAM voltage to 1.9V, but that didn't help. Set it back to 1.8V, and brought the FSB down to 410:821, then 405:811, then 402:805, and finally 401:803. Every one of these had the same severely reduced performance in the benchmark.
I then set it back to 400:801 (while maintaining the CL6 timings), which worked earlier as I had mentioned... and oddly enough, I had the same poor performance issue on this run. I did not expect that at all, as it worked a couple of hours ago.
So to recap, with 5-5-5-15 or 6-6-6-18 timings, 399:799 runs the benchmark smoothly, and 400:801 or anything above cuts it in half.
I have no idea what is causing this!
I'm pretty sure I've covered everything in excruciating detail, but if I'm forgetting anything, please let me know. Thank you!
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