Help me OC my P2 940

[alienware]

Hey all

Since recasing and fitting the duct I have shaved a few degrees from my CPU. As thus (and the fact it was pretty good on temps before) I would like to try and increase my overclock by say, 200mhz to hit 3.6. However I can't get it to go any higher.

Well, that's not strictly true as I can get it to 3.75ghz and into Windows and load Prime. However, as soon as Prime goes to the second stage (the bit where it starts to change and load up more lines of text) it simply reboots. On 3.8ghz I was not able to make it into Windows, it BSOD on the way in.

Now I have tried upping my MP, upping the FSB and upping the voltage (highest I went was 1.45v and the max is 1.52) but still I could not get it stable. Even if I up the multi to 17.5 for 3.5ghz it reboots in the same situ, at exactly the same time as all the other OC I have tried.

Now I read a tutorial this morning, but sadly the guy who wrote it deemed it necessary to spend about three days talking about it and it became incredibly confusing. Picking the peanuts out of the poo I was able to see that he mentioned the NB FSB and that it would be base @ 1800mhz. Now this is the part that has got me interested because he also said that if you don't raise this to counter the overclock the system will not be able to get enough juice to the CPU and 'keep up' and the CPU will be unstable due to the NB.

The problem is I have absolutely no experience with tweaking this and it frightens me a bit (just being honest) as I dont' want to kill my hardware. As I said, 3.6ghz is where I would like to be right now and I can't see why that would not be possible as the temps are like 1-2c above my 3.4ghz mark, only unstable.

I've heard Bryan (VB) mention all of this during reviews (namely the 1090T and when the CHIV was reviewed) but as I say, complete amateur and not in a position to go out and replace my board/cpu etc.

Can some one please offer me some examples?

Right now I am running...

P2 940 @ 3.4ghz via multi. 1.35v, NB @ 1800mhz (stock apparently).

Thanks guys !

Oh, also..

I have this spangly new Dominator ram (well it's new to me haha) and would like to set all the numbers (you know what I mean) in the bios. If I take a shot of my bios could some one tell me what to enter and where? I can get the ram specs no probs

 

[AMDFTW]

sometimes felle they just wont go,i was stable at 3.5 with bus 200 and a multi of 17.5 with 1.45v but it was getting very hot 63c

see i can boot into windoes at 3.8 and run it all day,bit as soon as it stresses booom BSOD and thats with 1.5v

i have tried 3.6 with 1.5v and it was not still not stable.

also i would just mess with the multi and volts it makes things easer

my point is they have to be very cool to be able to get say 3.8

the only way i found things stable was by going over the 1.5 threshhold so say 1.55v or 1.53v but of course your chip aint gna ladt long

 

[alienware]

Well firstly you shouldn't push a P2 above 55c apparently. That's where the transistors start to get hot.

However heat is not the issue. I fitted my Corsair H50 back into my P2 machine earlier because I am absolutely fed up of that NH92. Whether it is supposed to be good, was good, or just crap on AM2 (I suspect the last) the temps varied so much it was impossible to get any sort of documentation as to where to push to and so on.

At 3.4ghz my temps are 32 idle and 42 max load. 8c less than before. So I assumed I could expect *at least* 3.6ghz before hitting the same kind of brick wall? No.

Even with the CPU as cold as it will get without investing hundreds of pounds the same brick wall existed. I did get it to 3.5ghz but 45 minutes into Prime it reset. I could happilly get into Windows @ 3.8ghz with no trouble at all (40c idle 48 load before reset) but still the resetting persisted. So it's definitely not a heat issue.

Which leads me to believe that it's a TDP issue that the motherboard just can not handle. I noticed at 3.5ghz my CPU was eating 140w. Even now at 3.4ghz rock stable it is idling (after about four hours of Prime again, just to make sure I hadn't damaged anything) at 137.80w.

So it's got to be the board's VRMs. It just has to be, because it cannot possibly be anything else. Even @ 1.45v with 1.47 showing in HWMON @ 3.7ghz I was still idling at 38c. Running Prime would get through most of test one (1024k) but then as soon as it attempted to move to test two it reset.

I'm not bothered of course, because 3.4ghz with such a tiny idle temp and load temp is great (and the Corsair is utterly silent with the Silverstone fan on it) and my machine is pretty close to silent now with great temps (something I am very quickly getting used to).

I would imagine that the board has a total top out of 140w. And of course pushing harder will see the CPU needed more watts and the board just cannot provide them. Fair enough.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Look up the overclocking competition we had dude, think the thread was in news?

 

[AMDFTW]

nah pritty shure 60c is the max fella.

1.42v should get it stable at 3.5 anything over that you jus wanna go up to near 1.5v territory

it could be the motherboard regarding the TDP stick 1.5v on and see if it boots? cos if it cant handle over 140w then it shouldent boot

with your temps you should be able to get 3.6-3.7 as they are quite good,if you can keep these chips cool then they will OC if not they wont

 

[alienware]

Tried @ 1.45 which was 1.47 in HWmon, still exactly the same reset and BSOD at exactly the same point in time. It's not the chip dude it has to be something else (instability on the board or even possibly bad ram).

T'isn't the memory. Just ran a memtest and it came back perfect.

Right. I negated to mention that yesterday I had Prime going OK @ 3.5ghz when I untied it from the ram. This is why I believe it is the ram. Here is what I have in my bios.

And here is what I am getting in CPUZ.

However, when I looked for the spec on my ram I found this (on Newegg, seems Corsair have discontinued info on it).

Which as you can see is just balls different to what I am seeing in CPUZ. Now. Can some one please tell me where to put this 4-4-4-12. If I open up the top 4 settings for the ram I get 1-5 on the first three and something-15 on the fourth one. However, it's the sheer bloody ammount of them underneath that concerns me. As I said, I am 100% certain this reset/bsod issue is either RAM or board based, so I want to rule out the memory ASAP. Voltage makes no difference AT ALL, I just truly believe that when the CPU reaches a certain speed the ram timings are off and are causing the BSOD as the ram is set crappy.

 

[alienware]

EDIT. May aswell put this double to good use. AMD, read my latest post. My ram timings seem wildly wrong and I am almost certain that this is a ram based issue. As when I unlink it in Prime it's FAR more stable.

 

[AMDFTW]

dude your goin to have to try 1.47 and up for 3.6,it might be the board yes

 

[alienware]

OK I seem to be getting somewhere. I added the ram settings after spending a while looking at where they go, and I am now getting the correct reports in CPUZ. 4-4-4-12. I upped the multi to give 3.6ghz and I put the voltage to 3.5. It fluctuates between 1.44 and 1.47. I can tell within ten minutes if it's doing what it did before and it isn't. It's when it finishes test 1 and goes to test 2 that I usually got the BSOD and reset.

Temps are now idle @ 49 due to the voltage increase which isn't the best, but this goes down to 44c if I don't do anything with the PC. Max temp I saw was 59 at load after twenty minutes which is close to the edge but it didn't go any higher.

I am going to lower the voltage slightly as Prime seems to make the PC run hotter than anything else. If I can game in Warhead and others without it crashing or BSOD then I will be happy there. Nothing else I do even pushes it anywhere near those temps.

 

[AMDFTW]

i could game at 3.6 1.47v (bios) but prime was not stable,i could encode aswell but not fold lol.

idle temps do seem very hot but then again it is quite warm today (21c hear) if your upping the multi the ram should have no effect,but i guess setting it correctly wont go amiss

 

[alienware]

Well I just remembered that my board only supports a HT (hyper transport) of 1000mhz. The 940 uses a 2000mhz HT. It was set to 800 so I have upped it and OC to 3.6 with 1.32v (stock). And well, here I am. Idle has come DOWN to 40c which is less than a long idle @ 3.4 was. When I boot for the first couple of hours I get amazing idle temps. If I run Prime and get it all hot though they are far less respectable when I exit, because the entire liquid system is then really warm. The H50 is like that, because it doesn't use an awful lot of liquid. Getting the CPU to the thermal limit will heat it all up and then it cannot fully cool down and give off true results until you have shut down.

I remember saying that one of the frequencies would cause a stall if it was not high enough. It wasn't the NB freq but the HT link. New board support the massive HT links that CPUs need to coordinate properly with the NB when things are pushed super hard. I'm down to 137w too, time for some Warhead.

I don't fold and I don't encode, I game. So, if the system is happy with gaming then so am I. I don't want to push it to destruction just to prove Prime is stable tbh.

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Right, time to bring this to a conclusion..

It was the HT link. Simply as I am now on stock voltage and completely stable @ 3.5ghz. I would imagine this is what is causing the bottleneck because at 3.6 with no matter how much voltage it won't stay stable.

Just had an hour and a half Crysis : Warhead sesh and did the snow level (the one that runs like poo) and it was perfect. I've also noticed the micro stutter I get in some games has now gone. Now that can't be down to the 100mhz improvement so must have been the HT or the memory timing (and I suspect the latter tbh).

Orsum !

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Ugh. Maybe not so awesome. Well, that concludes it, there is no way past 3.4ghz with the setup I have