Is this a good overclock?

[XSlingerX]

I just bought a new cooler. An Asus K8 MH7S so I could do some overclocking.

Is this a good overclock? What could I do to push my system further safely? Should I try OCing my video card? (Its an X1900XTX)



Idle Temps:


Thanks,
Slinger

[UnderdawgIV]

Have you done stress testing yet? If you can pass 12-24 hours (the longer the better) of Prim95, you're golden. I wouldn't overclock the X1900XT, the X1900s are pretty much at their limit anyways.

[XSlingerX]

Have you done stress testing yet?

Nope. When I click torture test in Prime95, which setting should I use?

[UnderdawgIV]

Nope. When I click torture test in Prime95, which setting should I use?

Go to Torture Test and check off Blend and then OK, then leave for about 12-24 hours. Observe Temps. If the test fails, your overclock isn't stable.

[XSlingerX]

I left it on for 10 hours, no errors or failures. Does that mean I could go a it further?

Sometimes when I'm playing a battle in M2TW it freezes up and I have to reboot. I don't think its the CPU because its stable with everything else.The temps are low too. I have a new good power supply, and so I'm thinking its the ram. I set the VDimm voltage to high so I don't know why there would be any problems. It's 1 Gig of PC3200 DDR.

Any ideas?

[SPARTAN VI]

I think 2.7GHz is excellent. I have the same exact CPU and was only able to hit 2.7Ghz with my old Chaintech VNF4... why oh why did I get rid of that motherboard?

My Asus A8N-E wont let me go over 235x11 without crapping out.

[OTZ]

No need to change the RAM settings as they are independent of AMD CPU overclocks. Depending on the voltage you have it set at, this could be the reason for the freezes. I am not sure why you upped the RAM volts anyway, you have it gorssly underclocked @ 160.

[belson]

It looks good on paper, but any speed increase that you've gotten has been taken away by the underclocked RAM.

If you did that on purpose and are now starting to find the RAM's max, then nevermind, its a good oc.

[XSlingerX]

I am not sure why you upped the RAM volts anyway, you have it gorssly underclocked @ 160.

Heh...about that. I didn't think it looked right either, I had a 1:1 divider. So, I just updated my bios and now it is displaying correctly. Was my bios keeping the RAM at that speed, or was it just displaying as that?

[belson]

Then your ram is running at 245MHz? I would say that is really good.

It might have been that CPU-Z wasn't reading your bios correctly (the bios fault not CPU-Z). BTW, where did you find your new bios and what mainboard are you running, just curious?

[XSlingerX]

Ok it turns out my ram was running at 160Mhz. I updated the bios and it runs at a fast speed. I have the RAM at 240 MHz but Medieval 2 seems pretty unstable with the RAM. The thing is, my Multiplier is locked at 11 so I would have to use a RAM divider. The divider that takes away the least amount of RAM leaves me with 180 MHz roughly, which is an under clock What should I do about that?

BTW, where did you find your new bios and what mainboard are you running, just curious?

My mainboard is an Asrock 939-Dual Sata II(AGP and PCI-E Slot).
I got my bios upgrade here:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.as...=939Dual-SATA2

[invictus]

Im not big on overclocking but i do have an x1900 and you dont really need to overclock it. Off topic though, nice avatar under, the mystic striker demands curry though! -Leon

[belson]

Do you really mean your multiplier is locked, or is it capped? Can you move it down at all? If you can't move it down, then you're stuck with the underclocked RAM (or you could buy DDR500 RAM which runs at 250MHz stock).

Have you found the max frequency your RAM can run yet? In other words, the max overclock for your RAM. If you havn't then follow the process under 'Finding your memory’s max FSB' on this page. You may already have a better guide, I just did a quick search for this one.

[SPARTAN VI]

Do you really mean your multiplier is locked, or is it capped? Can you move it down at all? If you can't move it down, then you're stuck with the underclocked RAM (or you could buy DDR500 RAM which runs at 250MHz stock).

Have you found the max frequency your RAM can run yet? In other words, the max overclock for your RAM. If you havn't then follow the process under 'Finding your memory’s max FSB' on this page. You may already have a better guide, I just did a quick search for this one.

Capped, most likely. These 3700+'s cannot go above 11.

[belson]

Well, assuming that you can move it down, and that you can hit 2700MHz (you only have 2695 listed, but I think you could make it). Then you can run your cpu at 300MHz * 9=2700MHz, your ht link at 900MHz (300MHz * 3), and your ram at 200MHz (0.67).

[UnderdawgIV]

Well, assuming that you can move it down, and that you can hit 2700MHz (you only have 2695 listed, but I think you could make it). Then you can run your cpu at 300MHz * 9=2700MHz, your ht link at 900MHz (300MHz * 3), and your ram at 200MHz (0.67).

Sound advice.

[XSlingerX]

Thanks for all of your help. I've done a few tweaks here and there and I'm now able to hold a stable overclock of:

Athlon 64 3700 @ 2.7 Ghz (10 x 270)
PC3200 @ 225Mhz. (5/6 divider)

My RAM is unstable after 236 Mhz, but I think I can push my CPU further.
Does anyone know how I could adjust my RAM timings for maximum performance?

[belson]

First and foremost, make sure the command rate is 1T. For timings, its the lower the better, so start with the clock speeds given by your RAM manufacturer. Then, once you find the settings in your bios start with 'CAS# Latency' and lower it step by step till you can't pass memtest86 anymore (for testing purposes, 2-4 hours is probably long enough, but you can't call it stable till it has passed the 12 hour mark.) Then do the same thing working down the list (in that order) on the memory tab of CPU-Z. On some of the higher clock speeds you can go down by 2 steps at a time if you want to. A good motherboard will have all of them, but some will only have the first 4. If there are more latency settings in your bios to play with, add those to the end of the list. And If you find yourself wondering something like whether 'cas to ras delay' or 'ras precharge' would help you more, the only real way to know is to do some benchmarks. Good luck and have fun.

[Garnier]

I have an AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, at 2.6 Ghz. How would performance improve if I overclocked it to say 2.7 Ghz?

(other specs):
2 GB corsair ram
X850 XT

[belson]

The only real answer we can give is that it would go up. I know this isn't the answer you're looking for, but a lot of it depends on what else you do to your system and what you mean by performance. If you're talking games, you won't see much improvement in the graphics; overclocking your graphics card would do a lot more for games (and is easier.) If you're talking processor heavy applications, then it'll be pretty linear at the low overclocks. What I mean is, if you oc from 2.6 to 2.7 thats a 4% speed increase and will probably give you a 4% performance increase. If you oc from 2.6 to 3.5, thats a 35% speed increase but probably wont give you a 35% performance increase.