X2 overclocking troubles

[Mackid343]

well i just bought a new x2 3800 when the prices dropped from newegg and have been playing around with it for a few weeks now. however, i've run into some problems when i try to run superpi to see if my overclock is stable....either one instance of it will hang or say "super pi has encountered an error and must close" or both instances will do that. very rarely both will finish but only up to 4m.

also, windows will randomly bsod on me and restart every so often. i was able to run a 32m a few days ago and thought i was stable finally (this was at 275x10 ram 10:12 w/ 1.66v in bios). then i was just doing some work on the computer later and it just suddenly went blue and restarted. i wasnt doing anything strenuous or anything even close, just browsing some websites and whatnot.

any ideas as to what might be the problem or how to fix it? i've been trying to run 250x10 (ram 1:1) on 1.55v in bios to try and stablize it but i'm still having the exact same problems....this is really frustrating
thanks in advance

[davidk21770]

You need to find what your CPU will do first by putting your memory on a divider to keep it at or below 200 MHz (lower is better). Otherwise, you don't know which if failing: memory or CPU.
SuperPI is not a strong enough test. I find that I can easily pass dual super pi through to completion (32m) and then fail dual prime95 in a few minutes. See this thread on how to setup prime95 to run in both cores: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16445. Before booting to windows with a higher OC, I always run a quick memtest86+, test #5 to make sure that I don't have an obvious problem (only takes a minute or so).
Once you know how fast your CPU will go, then you start upping your memory to find how fast it will go. I use memtest86+, 20 cycles of #5, then a full run, when I think that I've found the max, I prime95 to make sure that it'll do it under stress (it won't, you'll need to back off, usually 2-5 MHz).
My final test is prime95 for 8 hours followed by 3dmark01se, 3dmark05 and 3dmark06.