Lock, shmock? Huh?

[charlie]

All,
I'm starting a new thread to examine this peculiarity I'm seeing that may help to educate many people. I've already posted about my new rig and it's progress. I'm a bit perplexed with 3dmark2001 performance and thought some INTEL OC gods could help me out bit. Here's my setup
BIOS
Adv Chp Features
Dram - Manual
CAS - 2
Act to Pre - 6
Dram RAS to CAS - 3
Dram RAS Pre - 3

Freq/Volt control
CPU Volt - 1.675 (in reality 1.63v)
Spread spectrum - disabled
CPU Freq - 155
Fixed AGP/PCI output freq - disabled
cpu/agp clock ratio - Auto
Agp/Pci freq - 77/38
DDR/CPU ratio - 2.66x
DDR Speed - 413M
agp volt - 1.5v
ddr volt - 2.7v

Now the anomalies,
1) everytime I reboot or cold start I get a MS WIN :the system has receovered from a serious...
2) I can't run 3dmark2001 with the agp/pci output freq locked at 66/33??
3) At 3121 and 3141mhz, I run error-free until the last 30 seconds of "nature"
4) I can post at 3400+ on air under 35C
5) Frequently after 3dmark crashes(hard lock) or reset I get that MS win message that refers to the Radeon 9700 as the culprit
6) I run the newest ATI driver 6200
7) I have openGL and direct3d sliders set to perf.
Specifically, how does pci/agp/ddr/cpu speed interact and fit together? Where does the need to OC R9700 become obvious?
Any thoughts? Sorry so lengthy
oh,p4-2.66,Albatron845pe,pc3200c2,r9700,ttgi520, etc
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[charlie]

Oh and this...
btw my psu voltages, 5.03 rock solid 5v underload, 11.80 loaded 12v. 6 fans in system

[DoGMaN]

Set your AGP/PCI to fixed 66/33Mhz You will save yourself a lot of the headaches. Probably will cure some of your crashes too.

[charlie]

when i set the output freq to fixed at 66/33 I get 3dmk crashes at every clockspeed 2666mhz-3300mhz, EVERY time less than 10 seconds into car chase low detail...
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[DoGMaN]

Thats not good. Locking the freq should make things more stable.

[mike.elmes]

Charlie, do you have a different video card to try...those radeons in some boards are flakey. Mine is in an IT7 MAX and around 158-160 fsb is max on air. 160 is a no go for 3dmark too.

[charlie]

Mike,
Only a GF2 ;)
It'll OC well over 165 but won't 3dmark??
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[mike.elmes]

Charlie ...there is a thread on this site pertaining to the 9700's and their probs @high fsb. Good reading. I haven't seen many threads on that Albatron, but someone must have done some o/c'ing with that board.

Bushboy, has an IT7 that's seen some decent o'cing. The thing is only 2 weeks old,and he only wants 80.00 US.

Surely someone should know...wait FUGGER has a PE Board,I think.

[charlie]

Mike,
I even posted at 171 (3420) today...I don't think it's the board. Plus If I can do 167 (and I can) that's 3340 on air. Probably my max. I just want to be able to run 3dmark well in that 165ish range...
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[mike.elmes]

Charlie, when you say it posted...you mean you got a chirp ...then nothing...or blue screen...or spontaneous reboot??

What does it run stable at?? Can you burn it in for a day or two first...it has brand new ram?? mabe the ram and board,hell everything needs some sandra cpuburn...then try for more.

[charlie]

I can run sandra and use low stress functions, just no Prime95 or
3dmark...170+
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[charlie]

I reinstalled winxp with a clean install, radeon 6200 drivers, setup perfect. But it still won't run AT ALL with agp/pci locked??
But it runs pdg at 78/38!!:D

[antipop]

Originally posted by charlie
Now the anomalies,
1) everytime I reboot or cold start I get a MS WIN :the system has recovered from a serious...

I've had some trouble like this ob my sys while i was using some high fsb (170fsb on a kg7 and pc2100 ddr), i jsut needed to reboot again and everything was fine. I just lowered the fsb a bit and everything went back to normal. I don't know if that helps cause we totally different systems

[charlie]

bump
any ideas 'bout this whole deal with the agp/pci lock and why mine works better without ti?????????????
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[charlie]

A little more C1 salad:banana:

[retrospooty]

by reading your problem, i can see you are quite familiar with your bios... one way to attack the problem is go and load the bios defualts for everything... see if all is well at stock speed. Then if all is well, OC or tweak one item at a time util the problem comes back. That way you know the last change you made caused the problem

[charlie]

BTW,
My best 3dmark has a NATURE score of only 113fps, I've heard a lot of talkabout this infamous stage of the benchmark, what does it stress and whatdoes it take to improve? I THINK it's a mem intensive test that needs oc'd R9700 memory, like 700+
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[KnightElite]

The only reason I can think of that might cause problems with the AGP/PCI lock, and I'm not sure if this is the issue, or what you could do to fix it, is a buffering problem, since the clocks are running asynchronously. It would work fine with the lock off, since the clocks would be integer multiples of each other.

Have you tried a BIOS update?

[charlie]

Knightelite,
Maybe...
I have a lot of agp options in the BIOS, agp/pci lock at 66/33,
unlocked, and cpu/agp ratio adjustment. I can put these numbers just about anywhere! I just wish I could find a resource that specifically discussed the nuts and bolts behind cpu/pci/agp speeds, ratios and their effect on components. Just not sure how high to push the agp...my 16,73dmark was at 80.
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[JCviggen]

Originally posted by charlie
BTW,
My best 3dmark has a NATURE score of only 113fps, I've heard a lot of talkabout this infamous stage of the benchmark, what does it stress and whatdoes it take to improve? I THINK it's a mem intensive test that needs oc'd R9700 memory, like 700+
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you would be correct.... more or less. Nature is mostly graphics card, it eats GPU and memory speed on the card...

It is CPU/system dependant up to a point where your card is just the real bottleneck. I am not scoring better at 4.1 GHz than at 3.70 GHz in nature... exactly same scores...

[Galifrey]

just stick it a 166 :D

no lock issues then :D

[charlie]

here? Any tips for improvements? What's the significance of 166, it did seem to open up and perform much more stably at 166??
Using 2.5X cpu/agp ratio = 66/33
????

[KnightElite]

Originally posted by charlie
here? Any tips for improvements? What's the significance of 166, it did seem to open up and perform much more stably at 166??
Using 2.5X cpu/agp ratio = 66/33
????

AT 166MHz FSB, your AGP and PCI should go back into spec with a 5:2:1 FSB:AGP:PCI ratio coming into effect.

[charlie]

Just out of curiousity, does anyone know what the HIGHEST ambient air cooled 3dmark2001 rig SCORE is? I'm sure I won't get close, but it'd be interesting. I looked on the orb, but there's no filter for cooling??
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[charlie]

Still working at it...
Anyone know how high a 2.66/R9700 on air, no voltmods or cooling mods can go? Total MHZ and 3dmark 2001??
I just don't know if my numbers are "there" or should I be 2000 points higher?
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[Hallowed]

Someone by the handle "Yuri" has that very rig. 18k + on air. Overclocked card too, not sure what speeds.

[charlie]

Hallowed,
Yeah, I used Powerstrip to give the card a little bump at 3340, Turbo (2.66), 370/356 @ 1.5vagp and hit 17,6 3dmk2001. With ramsinks and a coolermod I should do ok. For now I'm gonna just burn in the new cpu with a few days of background Prime95. For now, I'm just gonna look for some of those, you know...the 30 points here by disabling this and 100 by doing that. I can run 3dmark2001 at 3340, After a little burn in I'd like to try it at 3360-3400. I might try a stick of PC3500 Ram, because at benchie speeds my PC3200's at 440-450. I originally wanted 3GHZ maybe 3100 stable, so I'm really happy with this rig. It was not that expensive, and I'm satisfied.
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