Athalon 64, X2 or not

My next move will be to up the vDIMM by .05v from stock and bump the HTT to 285. That will continue until the wall, then add the relaxed timings to see if they help.

I just noticed an interesting thing. The mem div in the BIOS is set up at 333, yet CPU-Z states in the Memory section that it is running at 230. If I drop the mem div to 266, CPU-Z reads 180. Everest confirms 180. All other mem settings are still stock. Does this mean anything?

 

Well, I haven't pushed it any more yet. I installed Age of Empires 3 for my son and it froze within 5 minutes of play.

The CPU is up to 280MHz at std vCore. Dimm is all std exc for reduced speed (reduced from 200 to 133 to allow for advanced CPU speed.

This scenario passed the CPU stability test. Any suggested direction to take on this?

Thx, Lar

 

My thinking ....
You can very very safely push the VCore to 1.4 with no long term effects or shortened CPU life. And, I'd definately try running the same game with VCore at at least 1.4 - it should be quite telling. Think about it - going from 1.36 to 1.4 is a bump of .04 or 2.9%. A 5% increase is still considered to be very very modest. I'd continue to look at temperatures but I don't think this will have any significant impact because it is still a pretty low voltage in the total scheme of things. Secondly, I'd try up'ing your VDIMM a bit but take it in small doses and test it for days, not hours under real life conditions like Age of Empires etc. You should be able to increase that memory speed some too.

 

Thanks Rock, I've run up the vCore to 1.4 and the vDIMM to 2.9 at 333 (up from 2.75 at 266). Everything seems ok for now.

1. How to I ck on the health of my DIMMs with the voltage push and all? Asus PC Probe II has no references to it. Just look for stability errors?

2. Do I play with the PCI settings like Clock Synch (curr: Auto) or Bus Speed (curr: 100MHz)? Can I, can I, huh??

Thanks, Lar

PS- I have opened up another thread re a new issue regarding IE and OE connecting to DSL, now that I have a new game installed. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.IE now takes 50 seconds...

 

My son's Age of Empires 3 but the system to the test and I had to back off from HTT 290MHz to 280, though 290 had passed the the Journo test.

I wanted to bump my other questions, too...

Thanks, Lar

(P.S.- the forementioned OE/IE/DSL issue has seeming been solved.)

 

Only the RAM mfr. can tell you what's too much voltage for your RAM. I personally would never go above 2.9v and even then I probably wouldn't want to run more than 2.8v on a "permanent" basis. There's no way to tell if your RAM is being pushed too hard. The only way you'll know is when it dies. Anything above 2.9v is truly dangerous territory depending on your memory.

Since I don't really know what they are I can pretty much give you a resounding "NO" on that. Stick only to the following options (unless you've written a book on the subject) :

CPU multiplier
HTT multiplier
HTT "bus" (or whatever that's called - you have it at 280)
Memory Divider
CPU voltage
RAM voltage
RAM Timings

I can't even think of anything else that comes to mind. Those should give plenty of headaches, I mean fun, playing with them. Overclocking isn't exactly like the old days where there were a whole slew of things you could tinker with. I remember in the "old" days guys would do things like overclock the PCI and AGP buses when there was no AGP/PCI divider lock. In retrospect, that was a bit nuts.

Nowadays, our systems are so powerful that you really have no right messing with things that in the long run will not produce any significant improvement. If you truly "feel the need for speed ", go buy a Conroe 6600. The amount of computing power you get for money these days is astounding. Of course, this is from a guy who takes the memory on his video card from the stock speed of 600Mhz to 842Mhz for a 40% speed increase. Do what I say, not what I do!!!

Gary

 

Only thing I'd say is yes ........ you are walking a fine line pushing that kind of power through your memory. Its not necessary and its not healthy. If you are having stability issues, soften up the timings.

 

Go get an old Commodore C64, which runs at 1 Mhz . Then decided whether or not you need to overclock your current PC.

If you really need computing power, get Beowulf Linux and build a Beowulf Cluster (Cheap Supercomputer). There is one guy who built one inside of a tacklebox that fits under an airline seat. (article was in Linux Journal)

Personally, I think overclocking is nuts. However, I can't afford to destroy hardware, so I buy the best I can afford and live with what I have.

 

I wrote to Corsair about the vDIMM. I knew that their stated test voltage was already 2.75v. Their response was:

"Corsair Technical Support Responds: 2.75v-2.9v" (they apparently are not very talkative).

Nevertheless, lower is better. I have it down to 2.8 and all is well. I had read somewhere that someone was happy with a 2.5-3-3-7 timing (stock is 2.5-3-3-6) so I tried that. I may try to give the HTT a little bump and see what happens under the loathed Age of Empires 3 stability test.

I just ordered a replacement Northbridge fan from SVC. The Asus fan is notorious for failing early and I did not want to be left unprepared. They had a nice, well-reviewed Coolermaster Blue Ice 2 fan for $15 on sale. Besides, if it drops the temp some 7-10deg, then additional stability may be on tap.

Gary, thanks for coming clean with all that doom and gloom ( "do as I say, not as I do "). Video RAM OC, hmmmmmmm. We need to talk some more. I have a nice gaming card that I am SURE is prime for some playtime. I will have to check into that.

Thanks, Lar

 

Hi Lar,
If you seem to mainly have problems in games or graphics programs, maybe check if it could be a driver (chipset or graphics). Each time I have installed Win XP I have found the drivers needed to be updated or reinstalled. Last time, Windows just seemed a little "not right ", I knew it was a graphics drivers problem. It has run perfectly ever since.

After running a session of Age of Empires, do a check on your temps (even putting your hand at the air exhausts will give you a guide). Apart from high temperatures due to a heavy workload, poorly installed drivers can be a source of high temperatures because the devices are being run incorrectly.

Matt