PLZ help a noob in need

[Snaggletooth]

I've been interested in ocing for a long time, but have never had the time or the guts to try it out. Finally i decided to give it a shot, here is what i've got:

P4 3.0
1024 mb ram (2 sticks of normal 256 kingston, 1 stick of 512 pny)
Asus P4P800SE
9800 pro

- what can i do with this, how far can i go without buying new RAM

thx a lot - snaggletooth

------------
plz excuse my inexperience, just try to remember i had
not intention of overclocking when i bought all these parts

[Kobalt]

we will need to know a lot more than what you have provided. Download CPU-Z (google it) and tell us the fsb and multiplier of the cpu. ALso, what speed is the ram? Pc3200? pc2700 etc...

For overclocking the 9800pro. Download powerstrip or rivatuner to overclock. All you have to do is test the memory OR gpu. NOT BOTH AT ONE TIME OR YOU WONT KNOW WHICH ONE IS CAUSING ARTIFACTS. Up the mhz on the graphics card memory a few at a time until you see artifacts, which are irregularities on the screen. They are blotches or a bunch of white dots. Then back down two levels or so. Then try the core. Up it 5-10 mhz a time and then back down when u see artifacts. Test for artifacts using 3dmark 2001 2003 or 2005. www.futuremark.com .

The key is to only overclock one thing at a time so you know what is causing errors. TEst for stability using 3dmark, and then run prime95 (find on google) overnight to check for errors. You only need to run prime 95 once you find your maximum overclock. Its a waste of time to run prime95 8+hours when youre no where near your maximum overclock.

[Snaggletooth]

Wow, ur right, i did leave a lot of things out, sry.... i have 3200 ram, 200mhz fsb, 15x multiplier. thx for the g-card info, i'll have to try that out

[Kobalt]

Why dont you up the fsb to 233 and put a divider up. Right now, the ram should be at 200mhz, but theres no way your budget ram is going to hit 233. You need to look for a setting in the bios that says ratio or fsb to dimm ration or divider or memory frequency. Set it at 5:4. If its in frequencies, like 200mhz, 160mhz, 133mhz, then put it at 160mhz.

THis is 3.5ghz, and it should be stable at this speed. Remember to WATCH YOUR TEMPERATURES. Dont let it go above 50°C. While its not going to burn out at anything near this temperature, 50°C is quite hot for intels and might shorten its lifespan.

Run 3dmark2001 a couple of times and play some games to test for stability. If its stable, try upping it to 240. THen 245. Then 250 etc...

You will come accross a point where it wont be stable. If your temperatures are fine, you may want to go ahead and raise the vcore .025 or .05volts. You shouldnt really go above 1.75vcore on intels.

[Snaggletooth]

LOL!!!!! Dude, i've NEVER seen my temp go under 47°C, i dont have a fancy heatsink though. I've been planning on getting a new one and today i got a Zalman 7000 CU. I'm about to put it in, so i'll see the difference soon, afterwhich i will oc my system.

I got my graphics card overclocked (378.00/338.00) -> (397.29/366.43), and scored 300 better on 3DMarks03.

[Kobalt]

365 is prolly near the limit of the memory on that card i think, but 430ish should be attainable on the core

[Snaggletooth]

hmm.... ok, i'll have to mess with that later to get core running faster. Anyways, for now i got hs installed, here are the results:
Before Zalman (intel hs) idle=48 underload*=67/68°C
Zalman (not OC'ed) idle=38-39 Full load*=52°C
Zalman (OC'ed to 235MHZ External freq.) idle=45-46 Full load*=61/62°C
- still playing with voltage to get stable, need to run tests, so far good though at 1.55v
underload* - Sandra burn-in test for 15min
full load* - Sandra burn-in test for 1 hour


Thx for the system info, though i still needa adjust to get to my liking in both temperature and speed. Speaking of tests, which test do i do under prime95,
i looked and i saw 3 tests, and a custom under "torture test".

One last thing that still puzzles me : RAM

How can u tweak RAM lat., mine is 3-4-4-8, i saw the manual tweak, but is it
recommended, and if so, how far do u think i should tweak it down to?
Does it cause lots of problems, wat are the consequences (high temp, unstable, etc.)
Why do u lower RAM freq. when raising FSB, wouldn't you raise RAM freq?
anything else you can tell me about RAM would be awsome

Thx for all of ur help, and more tips/suggestions would be really helpful

[VetteTheHeretic]

I have a newbie question as well. I dont mean to hijack but i dont want to make another noob question post. I have an Abit IC7-G Max 2, and I know that the CPU temp that it gives me is way off(atleast I hope it is. reads 47degrees C IDLE!!!!, on my non overclocked P4 3.0 with an XP-90 HS and a Vantec Tornado at half power). I was wondering how I can get an accurate temperature reading.

[domwells]

I think that the latest bios is meant to give a more accurate reading, but appart from that you can't get one without using an external sensor (correct me if im wrong) because the sensor reading made by the ABIT board is wrong. I have heard of them being as much as 10'C too high... I'm not sure how much truth there is in that as I have never used a probe to measure it.

[Kobalt]

Snaggletooth- You need to find the timings on your ram. If theyre cl 2.5, then you can go ahead and lower the timings to 2.5-3-3-7 and see if its stable. This will make it perform better, but your ram may not be able to handle it. You need to lower ram frequency when overclocking because your ram cant handle 235mhz, since its only 200mhz ram. IT sounds like generic ram, so at best it could do 215mhz.

Btw are you sure you applied your heatsink correctly with arctic silver? 60°C sounds kind of high..

[Snaggletooth]

Well, i'm pretty sure, what i did is put a pile about 4x4 mm big, over the core and then layed the 2 pound heatsink on top, twisted a little because needed to move hs around to get it perfectly on top, but thats about it. I made sure i didn't lift hs, so no air pockets get in. I read that ar5 needs about a week to get to it's fullest potencial:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

"Important Reminder:
Due to the unique shape and sizes of the particles in Arctic Silver's conductive matrix, it will take a up to 200 hours and several thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction and for the heatsink to CPU interface to reach maximum conductivity. (This period will be longer in a system without a fan on the heatsink or with a low speed fan on the heatsink.) On systems measuring actual internal core temperatures via the CPU's internal diode, the measured temperature will often drop 2C to 5C over this "break-in" period. This break-in will occur during the normal use of the computer as long as the computer is turned off from time to time and the interface is allowed to cool to room temperature. Once the break-in is complete, the computer can be left on if desired."

anyways, my ram is 3-4-4-8. if i take it down some, will it become too unstable?
in other words, should i leave it be, or can i have some faith that it'll gain performance
if i lower, and not just instability problems?

[Snaggletooth]

if i were to buy new ram, to cope with the higher fbs, what speed would u recommend? 4300? Eventually in the future, i'm hoping to buy a water cooling system, which would u, or any1 reading this recommend? thx

*oh and any1 who wants to help, feel free to im me, i'm almost always on either aim or msn

[TheTrebleKing]

i got some generic PC3200 and it does 213mhz @ 2.5-3-3-6

so u can try those settings to see if it runs ok :D

[Kobalt]

dont invest ANY more money into your current set up. You should think about upgrading very soon...

[jumanji969]

Also about your temps, prescotts tend to run hotter than the northwoods. So you shouldn't be too alarmed abuot 60C+ load temps with a prescott. On a northwood then yes.

[Snaggletooth]

oh, thx. Kobalt, wat u mean upgrade, other than g-card, i dont think i need
anything else, what should i get? oh and how do u change clock on ram? i dont
think i've seen anything on ram freq in bios, maybe i've missed it though, or
weren't looking. the only thing that might do it that i can recall is the ratio, i
have these options for the ram :533,500,400,320,266.

[Kobalt]

yea the ratio is that. what is it at right now? prolly 400....lower it one level. and try 235 fsb

and as in upgrade....i mean motherboard / heatsink / ram at least soon. but by then you might want an athlon 64. athlon 64 > intel

[Snaggletooth]

i got external freq to 235, and really stable at 1.56v, thx for all that help, umm heatsink
- i'll probably end up getting a water cooling system, i'll get an athlon 3200 probably too
eventually and sell my 3.0 to make money for it. Same for motherboard, but r athlon
64's really that good? i'm pretty happy with intel so far, and dont know wat is so good
about athlons, there frequency is lower also. What makes them so awsome, my friends
recommend them for gaming so i'll probably get one eventually, what makes them better
for gaming???

And again, which ram u recommend i get (manu., speed)
One last thing that just came to me, is there a way to change the multipier of the cpu?

[Kobalt]

You cannot change multiplier of intel cpu's. Another negative.

Athlon 64's can perform many more instructions than Intels and are highly effecient. They are very good for gaming because the memory controller is on the cpu, removing latencies.

AThlon 64's perform better and are cheaper than intels. To really benifit from intel's long pipeline, you need to run the chips past 4.2ghz.

[Snaggletooth]

wow, u've convinced me! lol, i'll get one when mines either goes bad, or get too old to play any new game. That or when i start making money to spare. Awsome stuff, thanks for all this help!

[Snaggletooth]

- One last thing if i may, all this overclocking is awesome, but one thing I was terribly
distraught about was the fact that my 3200 ram, got downsized to 2700 ram :(. But I
need faster ram I guess if I want it to hang with the oc’ed system. What RAM can I
get, and make it cope with a 3.5-3.8GHz (so 940-1020MHz bus or 235-255MHz external
freq) and not use dividers. What are my options, for example, should I overclock higher,
like a 3.7/3.8 (FSB=> 986-1016) what ram should I get, and if I decided to stay lower
3.5/3.6 (FSB=> 940-960) what should I get (speed). My multiplier is 15.


In case I have NO way of getting better RAM, and I decide to go back to my 3200
rather than the 2700 I have now, is there a way to push my 3200 RAM higher and get
some extra MHz out of my system. Example what “TheTrebleKing” said “I got
some generic PC3200 and it does 213mhz @ 2.5-3-3-6”. If I can do that, and
clock it higher somewhat, how would I go about doing it? (Sorry for all
these questions, but everyone has to start from somewhere right?)

Under prime95, WHICH TORTURE TEST DO I DO!!!!! Which test is the famous
test overclockers use, the one that you said to run for 8hrs+ to test stability. I see the following:
A) Small FFTs (maximum FPU stress, data fits in L2, RAM not tested much)
B) In-place large FFTs (maximum heat, power consumption, some RAM tested)
C) Blend (tests some of everything, lots of RAM tested)
D) Custom
-i can tell "blend" if for testing ram mainly, but the others......

[STEvil]

Run two instances if you have an HT enabled processor

First instance: Custom and enable "Run FFT's in place" with memory size set to 0.

Set Min FFT to 8 and Max FFT to 8

in second instance to the same but set Min FFT to 1024 and Max FFT to 1024


That should really get her running warm ;)

To test your ram, you can download clockgen for your board from www.cpuid.com and run your system 1:1 and your voltage/ram timings preset in the bios.

use clockgen in combination with prime set to test memory (one instance) and work your FSB up 3-8mhz at a time until prime fails.. then turn it back down about 5-8mhz and that should be pretty close to your maximum stable memory clock.

You can use use a bootable cd of the program memtest86 to do the same if you wish, test 5 is good for quick testing.. 8 for prolonged testing.. its a good idea to use this program when testing timings that you cant adjust from within windows.

Heres a short run down on the 4 "important" ram timings.

CAS - Dont worry about it, run 2 or 2.5 if you can keep your FSB good, 3 wont hurt.

TRCD and TRP - These are what are important. Running them at 2 is good, 3 is ok, and above can hurt performance a bit more than some like ;) TRCD is the pickier of the two so you may have to run it at 3 or 4 while TRP may make 2 or 3.

TRAS - 5 is the fastest setting on Intel boards. 6, 7, and 8 may increase stability some but this does not effect performance substantially... so if you can get a couple mhz FSB extra with 6,7, or 8 its probably worth it to run 6/7/8. Dont leave out other numbers of course. Some ram comes with 10 TRAS being recommended for example.



Chipset stability and overclockability can be influenced by how many ram modules you have inserted and ram amount. You have 3 so it may be hindered somewhat, but shouldnt be too much. Dont worry about voltage to the memory too much. Without a fan you should be able to run 2.85 easily enough as long as your case has some airflow to keep the ram from cooking ;)

[Snaggletooth]

hmmm, ok, I understand, I’ll have to test all this out a little later (tomorrow there's school
and have postponed my homework till last minute. Now I wish I hadn’t, but its too late
now). So all I need to know though, is that I wont fry my ram without any special
cooling, but yes I have plenty of air going through, so I think I should be fine. Any more
tips would be awesome, thx.

[STEvil]

as long as your ram has some airflow 2.85v should be fine. Just keep an eye on it and if they get too warm for your liking then drop back some.

[Kobalt]

Ive never heard of anybody frying their ram...

Maybe if you put 3.6volts through it and contained it into a box it would fry...

[STEvil]

i dunno.. my bh-6 go over 70c with 3.1v an no airflow.. they still work there of course, but I dont consider that safe for 24/7 operation..!

[Snaggletooth]

Nice.... i got my ram at 220mhz (cpu 3.3) and lat. at 2.5-3-3-6, i'll needa see
how much i can tweak it using that boot program (memtest86) and get it fine
tuned. I live by the saying "Your only as fast as your slowest point". So, i've
decided it is better to have faster ram (3200 OC'ed to 3500) and a little bit
slower cpu than i had before (3.0 OC'ed to 3.3). Plus i scored a bunch higher
with faster ram, rather than a faster cpu on 3DMarks03. Until i buy better ram
(PC4000+) i'll stick with these settings. I dunno about heat, but i'll take my
chances and pray it doesn't burn out :) Thx to everyone for all this help.
:toast:

[STEvil]

np ;)