Heads up - XP SP2 can affect your overclock

[Jimbo Mahoney]

COPIED FROM ANOTHER FORUM I FREQUENT:
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Hey guys,

Wanted to let you know my findings on this as it had me stumped for ages.

Now it may only affect DFI NF4 boards becase they seem to be 'clever' and reboot themselves before the OS loads if you have pushed them too far.

Luckily, I set my system up on Day 1 with 2k SP4 for benching 3DMark01 and having a less bloated OS to do some Prime95'ing and CPU-Z'ing :D

I found my max stable (enough for benching) overclock of 9 x 324 HTT = 2.91 Ghz.

Now, installing XP SP2 for some 3DMark03 and 05 goodness caused a big shock:

I couldn't boot past 9 x 290 (2.6 Ghz) :eek:

I had installed the OS with the system at stock to avoid any corruption, although I had used a tweaked (nLite) XP SP2 slipstream CD.

Changing the HAL (Computer Type) to ACPI PC rather than ACPI Uniprocessor PC helped me get stable up to 300 HTT, but that was still 200 Mhz away from the previous setting!

I then installed XP SP1a and hey presto, back to 9 x 324 :D

Today I tried again with a non-tweaked (although still slipstreamed) XP SP2 CD and once again, no boot at 9 x 300 or above.

Hope this helps some of you get better clocks!

I would prefer to run SP2, but if it hurts clocks that much, I don't think I'll bother!

Sigh, back to XP SP1a then, thank goodness for Ghost!

:rolleyes:

[Damien]

That's odd...never heard that before. But it's something interesting i may try when I'm not too lazy to dig out my extra hdd for backup and waiting for windows to install

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Oops, should this be moved to the Overclocking section rather than the AMD section?

[i found nemo]

how do you change HAL

[JDizzle]

That's really strange, I've never heard that either. I've used both SP1 and SP2 with my current rig and my overclock sucks on both, I max out around 285x9 on both.

[[timko]]

how do you change HAL

Right Click "My computer" on the desktop...

Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager

Expand the "Computer" branch and right click the item that appears

Select "Update driver" and skip (select "No, not this time") any window that pops up asking you to connect to "Windows Update" and press next.

Select "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" and press next

Select "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install" and press next

Select "Advance Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC" from the list and press next.

It will then do it's stuff and then prompt you to restart windows. Once it restarts it will prompt you via a small balloon message in the systray that another reboot is needed.

Once you've done that then it's all finished :)


Note: The above is the exact instructions as needed on my XP SP2 install. It may differ for XP SP1, XP SP1a, XP plain and Win2000.

[s7e9h3n]

Just an FYI, you can't beat win2003 in terms of stability....... ;)

[IYP]

what the :banana: :banana:

[ZhaoYun]

Thanks for the heads up. :toast:

[Jimbo Mahoney]

what the :banana: :banana:

Just what I said when I booted SP1 no problem and SP2 refused.

[STEvil]

ACPI Multiprocessor PC is the one you want.

[Damien]

So is this confirmed? Should i really go back to SP1a for a better o/c?

[Jimbo Mahoney]

OK, we found the reason.

It's the DEP feature in SP2.

This doesn't seem to be a problem for everyone and appears specific to DFI NF4 mobos and Venice chips.

Solution here:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.php?p=121098&postcount=50

Since all you need to do is edit the boot.ini, not reinstall the whole OS, if people could try it and give feedback, we can start pinning down which hardware is at fault.

It mya just be that lower speed Venices like mine (3000) happen to be weak in the area of the chip responsible for DEP.

[TransNone13]

Where do I edit boot.ini. It's not part of sysedit.

[TekXoID]

Just go type C:\boot.ini in explorer to open up the file. Be careful because one incorrect character can mean no boot, not that I need to tell you that. ;)

I gotta say, all this word of Windows having a massive effect on max stable O/C
has made me very curious. I'm going to boot Win2k later this afternoon and I'll
post back with my results. Currently my max FSB Prime95 24HR+ stable is 9x305.

I'll see if I can get my prime stability at 9x312 past it's current 45 minutes.

[TransNone13]

Lol ok.

[Damien]

Yeah didn't help me at all. Then again, it's a Neo2 and winnie :p:

[Daveb2012]

I think its just win xp peroid compared to win 2k, the system requirements are higher for xp. it worse for over clocking but for most its pretty marginal. Im dual booting with server 03 and xp and get more stablilty with server for some reason.

[Damien]

Well, did this tonight with my DFI Ultra-D and 3000+ winnie...clocks went up 55mhz (from 2.7 to 2.755) with a voltage bump from 1.6 to 1.63...before doing this I could barely get 2.7 stable, so this works!

[Cornelious0_0]

Hmm, I'll be installing Server2003 X64 Enterprise edition tonight or tomorrow night and I'm running an Ultra-D and 3000+ Venice.....you guys sayin' there's a way I might see a boost in my OC?

[xgman]

The first thing I always do on a fresh or re-install is get rid of the DEP in boot.ini. It messes up many things when enabled.

[ChongL]

i disabled dep and still have not noticed a difference...the OC is still the same fo rme :(