Hi all
********
Summary as this is a very long post:
1. Post describes, in detail, what I've done so far. Which I hope helps you help me and also may help others starting off OCing as I am.
2. My question is, how do I overclock the FSB on my motherboard? A recent review claims to have had it up to 480Mhz on the same model. I can barely break 333Mhz (the MB's standard max).
Full details below.
Cheers
Guy
********
This is my first post in this forum (but have said "Hi" in the intros forum), I hope it's the right place for this.
It's a bit long so please get a cup of tea and some biccies. Hopefully it'll be useful for folk in the same boat as me or thinking of starting out overclocking. But I'm after some help too. Oh, and I'll tell you now, I'm hooked.
I hope you don't mind a bit of background so you can see where I'm coming from. I've been reading CPC for some years now (each issue, not just one - I'm not *that* slow a reader
and have done some mild OCing of my ageing AMD Athlon XP rig. I'd promised myself a new rig after moving house recently but have had to watch the pennies more than expected.
Anyway, the last few issues of CPC have stirred me into action, especially the review of the Gigabyte GA-P31 MB and the article on overclocking a Q6600. I had originally been planning on speccing a rig around one of the Asus P35 MBs with a Q6600 G0 but as I say, the price and review of the Gigabyte board persuaded me to dive in now and get a bit of budget OC practice in before building "The Big One!".
So, I went for the GA-P31 DS3L, an Intel E2140 and a pair of Crucial CM2X1024-6400 - the stuff timed at 5-5-5-15 @ 400. Graphics card is a 7600GT, HDD is a 160Gb SATA drive. Oh, the CPU cooler is a Freezer 7 - what else? All cheap and cheerful.
I know, hardly earth shattering spec but this is a practice rig just to get used to what can be done and so far I'm chuffed to bits with the results so if you'll please humour me I'll go into a little detail of what I've done so far.
First up I ran the CPC 2007 benchmarks at stock - so that's 200 FSB with the memory at 2:1 (400Mhz) and the CPU at 8x (1600Mhz). Not unsurprisingly a rather lowly score of 531. Still, beats my Athlon rig by over 200 points!
The next step was to see what I could get out of the CPU as I'd gleaned that the E21x0 Intels are good overclockers. I updated the BIOS to the latest (F6) version. I locked the PCI-E bus at 100Mhz. There isn't a setting I can find in the BIOS to lock the PCI bus at 33Mhz so, well, there's not much I can do about that. I backed the memory off to 1:1 (or 2x as the Gigabyte BIOS calls it) and left the timings at stock (5/5/5/15). I left the CPU multiplier at 8x (yes, I now realise the error of my ways and should have splashed out those extra few pounds on an E2160 or better still E2180 so I could take advantage of the 9 or 10x multi). With very little effort, a mere additional 0.0125 volts to the CPU and we were running 333Mhz FSB so 2664Mhz CPU / 333Mhz memory.
At this point I hit a wall that at the time didn't really click, but I've been doing a fair bit of reading the past few days so now I *think* I understand the problem although I'm struggling to find a way around it. Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself so will continue the story as I worked the FSB past 333Mhz. At 345Mhz nothing I did seemed to allow the PC to boot. The BIOS is great though because after a little think on reboot it resets all settings to "auto" to allow the PC to boot. F5 in the MIT BIOS settings (where all the OC tweaking is done) restores the previous, if unusable, OC settings ready for further adjustment.
Having added a further 0.05 ish volts (so up to 1.4v) to the CPU I decided more voltage wasn't going to help so backed the FSB back down to 333Mhz and the CPU voltage back to 1.35v. From here on, I started to have to get to grips with *understanding* what the likes of "quad pumped" and "DDR" *really* mean as I tried to reconcile what was talking to what at what frequencies. I think I've finally wrapped my head around it and now only talk FSB. Is that OK? I like to keep things simple.
Having got stuck at 333Mhz FSB or thereabouts and having realised that beyond that point I'm actually overclocking the *motherboard* I decided to see what I could get out of the memory. I've not finished yet working out what the memory will do. It's stable at 416Mhz (5:4 with 333Mhz FSB) on the 5/5/5/15 timings as although the MB will allow a 6:5 memory : FSB ratio which gives a stock speed of 400Mhz I was curious to see whether it'd cope with 5:4. By backing off the CPU multipler and FSB but bumping up the memory multiplier I've had the memory up to 475Mhz on 6/6/6/18 at stock volts (1.8v I think) but it wasn't 100% stable (produced a few errors at 40% on memcheck although half an hour on Orthos was OK). Still, I know there's some headroom there and can always get back to it. Right now I want to get the FSB higher if I can.
I re-read the CPC overclocking article and also the GA-P31 MB review where CPC claimed to get an FSB of 480Mhz with an overvolt of the FSB and Northbridge by 0.3 volts a piece. I don't know what other voltage tweaks they made though, which could be where my problem lies?
And this is where I get stuck. Using the maxim of a little at a time what I've done to try to determine what the FSB will do is put the memory back to 1:1 (timings unchanged so should be nice and lazy and good for 400Mhz FSB if I can get it) and the CPU back to 6x multipler - the E2140 only has the option of 6,7 and 8x multipliers, hence my chagrin at not splashing the extra few quid on an E2160 or E2180. I understand they are all 200Mhz FSB at stock speeds.
What I then did was to up the FSB in 5Mhz steps starting at 335Mhz. At 345Mhz, no boot again. So I bumped the FSB and Northbridge up 0.1v each (the GA-P31 works in increments, not absolutes, for all voltages except the CPU). Still no boot. So plus 0.2v to the FSB and Northbridge. I also, eventually, bumped the CPU voltage up four notches to 1.4v but this also didn't help. An extra 0.1v to the RAM didn't help either. I couldn't see much point carrying on further as I feel I'm not going about this right. So I'm baffled as to what I need to tweak or where to go from here. As I say, CPC claim to have had one of these boards up to 480Mhz. I'd be happy with 375Mhz (which would allow me to try for 3Ghz from the CPU. 400Mhz (3.2Ghz) would be awesome. But I'm not going to be able to even try for more than 2.66Ghz if I can't crack FSB overclocking.
I do fully understand each piece of kit will perform differently but gut feeling is I'm hitting a wall, not just fizzling out. And having backed off the CPU and RAM I know the FSB must be the sticking point? Yes?
In case you don't know the MB, it has overvoltage controls for:
DDR2,
PCI-E (which I've locked to 100Mhz so I've not played with voltages on this)
FSB,
(G)MCH (Northbridge),
CPU.
There's also something called CPU GTLREF volt ratio which is currently set to 0.636. I've not played with this either as I've not managed to find anything to explain, to my satisfaction, the benefit or otherwise of tweaking this. I understand it's the ratio of CPU volts (currently 1.35v) to the GTLREF voltage (so I guess that'd make it 2.12v or thereabouts) but what I should do with this, if anything, I've not managed to work out. The ratios can only be adjusted down (i.e. below 0.636) therefore, assuming I've understood correctly, increasing the GTLREF voltage for a given CPU voltage.
Frantic Googling hasn't really helped beyond this point. Referring back to the CPC article there's a (sort of) link to these forums so I thought I'd barge in with a gazillion word post and ask for ideas please.
I did say at the beginning I was happy so far with my efforts and at the moment I'm running 333Mhz FSB with the memory at 416Mhz (or 833Mhz if you say it that way - that's how the motherboard reports it but I'm happier using FSB as a datum) and the CPU at 2664Mhz without too much effort. CPC 2007 benchmark score has risen to 845 on the best pass so far. So I really can't complain (but do now regret not getting an E21x0 capable of a higher multiplier) as I've got 60% more for free.
But it'd be great to understand how to go about cracking the 333Mhz FSB barrier stably.
Thanks so much for reading this far. I hope you don't mind me going into the detail above. I'm kinda hoping it'll be of help to someone setting out just like me. After all, this rig set me back less that £300 (I didn't need a PSU, I had a nice Antec one spare) so if I toast a few bits it'll just be a few less takeaways this month and not a re-mortgage. And maybe others will be encouraged to take the plunge. I hope so. As I said on the intro forum, this is getting addictive. I could just wimp out and buy an E2160 / E2180 but I've got to see what I can do with this E2140 first.
So any thoughts or ideas would be very much appreciated.
Guy
********
Summary as this is a very long post:
1. Post describes, in detail, what I've done so far. Which I hope helps you help me and also may help others starting off OCing as I am.
2. My question is, how do I overclock the FSB on my motherboard? A recent review claims to have had it up to 480Mhz on the same model. I can barely break 333Mhz (the MB's standard max).
Full details below.
Cheers
Guy
********
This is my first post in this forum (but have said "Hi" in the intros forum), I hope it's the right place for this.
It's a bit long so please get a cup of tea and some biccies. Hopefully it'll be useful for folk in the same boat as me or thinking of starting out overclocking. But I'm after some help too. Oh, and I'll tell you now, I'm hooked.
I hope you don't mind a bit of background so you can see where I'm coming from. I've been reading CPC for some years now (each issue, not just one - I'm not *that* slow a reader
and have done some mild OCing of my ageing AMD Athlon XP rig. I'd promised myself a new rig after moving house recently but have had to watch the pennies more than expected.Anyway, the last few issues of CPC have stirred me into action, especially the review of the Gigabyte GA-P31 MB and the article on overclocking a Q6600. I had originally been planning on speccing a rig around one of the Asus P35 MBs with a Q6600 G0 but as I say, the price and review of the Gigabyte board persuaded me to dive in now and get a bit of budget OC practice in before building "The Big One!".
So, I went for the GA-P31 DS3L, an Intel E2140 and a pair of Crucial CM2X1024-6400 - the stuff timed at 5-5-5-15 @ 400. Graphics card is a 7600GT, HDD is a 160Gb SATA drive. Oh, the CPU cooler is a Freezer 7 - what else? All cheap and cheerful.
I know, hardly earth shattering spec but this is a practice rig just to get used to what can be done and so far I'm chuffed to bits with the results so if you'll please humour me I'll go into a little detail of what I've done so far.
First up I ran the CPC 2007 benchmarks at stock - so that's 200 FSB with the memory at 2:1 (400Mhz) and the CPU at 8x (1600Mhz). Not unsurprisingly a rather lowly score of 531. Still, beats my Athlon rig by over 200 points!
The next step was to see what I could get out of the CPU as I'd gleaned that the E21x0 Intels are good overclockers. I updated the BIOS to the latest (F6) version. I locked the PCI-E bus at 100Mhz. There isn't a setting I can find in the BIOS to lock the PCI bus at 33Mhz so, well, there's not much I can do about that. I backed the memory off to 1:1 (or 2x as the Gigabyte BIOS calls it) and left the timings at stock (5/5/5/15). I left the CPU multiplier at 8x (yes, I now realise the error of my ways and should have splashed out those extra few pounds on an E2160 or better still E2180 so I could take advantage of the 9 or 10x multi). With very little effort, a mere additional 0.0125 volts to the CPU and we were running 333Mhz FSB so 2664Mhz CPU / 333Mhz memory.
At this point I hit a wall that at the time didn't really click, but I've been doing a fair bit of reading the past few days so now I *think* I understand the problem although I'm struggling to find a way around it. Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself so will continue the story as I worked the FSB past 333Mhz. At 345Mhz nothing I did seemed to allow the PC to boot. The BIOS is great though because after a little think on reboot it resets all settings to "auto" to allow the PC to boot. F5 in the MIT BIOS settings (where all the OC tweaking is done) restores the previous, if unusable, OC settings ready for further adjustment.
Having added a further 0.05 ish volts (so up to 1.4v) to the CPU I decided more voltage wasn't going to help so backed the FSB back down to 333Mhz and the CPU voltage back to 1.35v. From here on, I started to have to get to grips with *understanding* what the likes of "quad pumped" and "DDR" *really* mean as I tried to reconcile what was talking to what at what frequencies. I think I've finally wrapped my head around it and now only talk FSB. Is that OK? I like to keep things simple.
Having got stuck at 333Mhz FSB or thereabouts and having realised that beyond that point I'm actually overclocking the *motherboard* I decided to see what I could get out of the memory. I've not finished yet working out what the memory will do. It's stable at 416Mhz (5:4 with 333Mhz FSB) on the 5/5/5/15 timings as although the MB will allow a 6:5 memory : FSB ratio which gives a stock speed of 400Mhz I was curious to see whether it'd cope with 5:4. By backing off the CPU multipler and FSB but bumping up the memory multiplier I've had the memory up to 475Mhz on 6/6/6/18 at stock volts (1.8v I think) but it wasn't 100% stable (produced a few errors at 40% on memcheck although half an hour on Orthos was OK). Still, I know there's some headroom there and can always get back to it. Right now I want to get the FSB higher if I can.
I re-read the CPC overclocking article and also the GA-P31 MB review where CPC claimed to get an FSB of 480Mhz with an overvolt of the FSB and Northbridge by 0.3 volts a piece. I don't know what other voltage tweaks they made though, which could be where my problem lies?
And this is where I get stuck. Using the maxim of a little at a time what I've done to try to determine what the FSB will do is put the memory back to 1:1 (timings unchanged so should be nice and lazy and good for 400Mhz FSB if I can get it) and the CPU back to 6x multipler - the E2140 only has the option of 6,7 and 8x multipliers, hence my chagrin at not splashing the extra few quid on an E2160 or E2180. I understand they are all 200Mhz FSB at stock speeds.
What I then did was to up the FSB in 5Mhz steps starting at 335Mhz. At 345Mhz, no boot again. So I bumped the FSB and Northbridge up 0.1v each (the GA-P31 works in increments, not absolutes, for all voltages except the CPU). Still no boot. So plus 0.2v to the FSB and Northbridge. I also, eventually, bumped the CPU voltage up four notches to 1.4v but this also didn't help. An extra 0.1v to the RAM didn't help either. I couldn't see much point carrying on further as I feel I'm not going about this right. So I'm baffled as to what I need to tweak or where to go from here. As I say, CPC claim to have had one of these boards up to 480Mhz. I'd be happy with 375Mhz (which would allow me to try for 3Ghz from the CPU. 400Mhz (3.2Ghz) would be awesome. But I'm not going to be able to even try for more than 2.66Ghz if I can't crack FSB overclocking.
I do fully understand each piece of kit will perform differently but gut feeling is I'm hitting a wall, not just fizzling out. And having backed off the CPU and RAM I know the FSB must be the sticking point? Yes?
In case you don't know the MB, it has overvoltage controls for:
DDR2,
PCI-E (which I've locked to 100Mhz so I've not played with voltages on this)
FSB,
(G)MCH (Northbridge),
CPU.
There's also something called CPU GTLREF volt ratio which is currently set to 0.636. I've not played with this either as I've not managed to find anything to explain, to my satisfaction, the benefit or otherwise of tweaking this. I understand it's the ratio of CPU volts (currently 1.35v) to the GTLREF voltage (so I guess that'd make it 2.12v or thereabouts) but what I should do with this, if anything, I've not managed to work out. The ratios can only be adjusted down (i.e. below 0.636) therefore, assuming I've understood correctly, increasing the GTLREF voltage for a given CPU voltage.
Frantic Googling hasn't really helped beyond this point. Referring back to the CPC article there's a (sort of) link to these forums so I thought I'd barge in with a gazillion word post and ask for ideas please.
I did say at the beginning I was happy so far with my efforts and at the moment I'm running 333Mhz FSB with the memory at 416Mhz (or 833Mhz if you say it that way - that's how the motherboard reports it but I'm happier using FSB as a datum) and the CPU at 2664Mhz without too much effort. CPC 2007 benchmark score has risen to 845 on the best pass so far. So I really can't complain (but do now regret not getting an E21x0 capable of a higher multiplier) as I've got 60% more for free.
But it'd be great to understand how to go about cracking the 333Mhz FSB barrier stably.
Thanks so much for reading this far. I hope you don't mind me going into the detail above. I'm kinda hoping it'll be of help to someone setting out just like me. After all, this rig set me back less that £300 (I didn't need a PSU, I had a nice Antec one spare) so if I toast a few bits it'll just be a few less takeaways this month and not a re-mortgage. And maybe others will be encouraged to take the plunge. I hope so. As I said on the intro forum, this is getting addictive. I could just wimp out and buy an E2160 / E2180 but I've got to see what I can do with this E2140 first.
So any thoughts or ideas would be very much appreciated.
Guy
