Overclocking my rig

Hey all,
I don't visit often but there always seems to be the best tech help here and most informed people here. I mean you have to have the most informed for OCing.
ANYWAY, my new system that was christened at the beginning of the new *school* year has gotten all the bugs ironed out. It is working well and reliably so far so good. I was wondering about overclocking it though. It would be kewl to over clock the system... I mean you can always use some more speed !


My soon to be OCed system is as such:
P4 2400
Gigabyte GA81HXP
256mb Kingston 1066 Rdram
Leadtek GeForce 4 4400

So far I have a rudimentry knowledge of OCing sytems and the risks involved. You basically adjust the fsb for the processor and find the limit then adjust the voltage afterwards.

I've tried a couple settings for OCing but no results YET.
FSB 140, 144,145,150
FSP 145,150 (vcore +.025)

My questions are as such:
-Is there other settings to use for OCing besides the fsb and vcore?
-Does the adjusted FSB affect the other peripherals? And how so? (like can it fry something?)
-Should I worry about the software when it crashes from testing?
-Also I've read up on RDram on the boards... doesn't seem like too good a subject for OCing.




p.s. Anyone have a link to OCing geforce4 vid cards? Ive only done it on geforce 2s.

Is there other settings to use for OCing besides the fsb and vcore?

Click to expand...

directly to overclocking - yes, things like Dividers for your PCI, voltages for your memory, agp...graphics card overclocking itself...memory timings and what not, most depend on your motherboard - but if you look around the different forums you will find stickies on what all these mean.

Does the adjusted FSB affect the other peripherals? And how so? (like can it fry something?)

Click to expand...

yes, it will effect not only the clock of your processor, but the speed at which your pci/agp bus run at - these can be set with various dividers or locking - but heat is the way you fry something so dont go crazy with setting it up

Should I worry about the software when it crashes from testing?

Click to expand...

if it isnt stable step it back - you might want to look at increasing voltage or cooling depending on what appears to be causing it - and if you have reached your limit then get it stable - then congragulate yourself on a job welldone

Also I've read up on RDram on the boards... doesn't seem like too good a subject for OCing.

Click to expand...

havent tried doing that myself, but my friend has a decent overclock on his 1.6A - something like 2200MHz, there was a thread about overclocking limitations on using more than one stick of ram, I would like to think its more to do with that rather than the architecture of DRDRAM in general.

overcloking your GeForce 4 wont differ from your GeForce 2 - case of setting your Core and Mem settings up, and again making it stable (no visual artifacts etc)

I am not the best of members to talk of this as I have about 1 1/2 years experience with hardware in computers - so im limited by experience, not really had a motherboard with dazzling options to play with nor great processors etc to do it to...but there are ALOT of experienced members in here that will show you the light when they get reading your thread

couldnt have said it better.

synik said:

Hey all,
I don't visit often but there always seems to be the best tech help here and most informed people here. I mean you have to have the most informed for OCing.
ANYWAY, my new system that was christened at the beginning of the new *school* year has gotten all the bugs ironed out. It is working well and reliably so far so good. I was wondering about overclocking it though. It would be kewl to over clock the system... I mean you can always use some more speed !


My soon to be OCed system is as such:
P4 2400
Gigabyte GA81HXP
256mb Kingston 1066 Rdram
Leadtek GeForce 4 4400

So far I have a rudimentry knowledge of OCing sytems and the risks involved. You basically adjust the fsb for the processor and find the limit then adjust the voltage afterwards.

I've tried a couple settings for OCing but no results YET.
FSB 140, 144,145,150
FSP 145,150 (vcore +.025)

My questions are as such:
-Is there other settings to use for OCing besides the fsb and vcore?

Click to expand...

Yes:

• Multiplier adjustments, for AMD boards/CPUs only
• Vmem adjustments to increase memory voltage
• CAS latency setting, to adjust RAM timings. lower is better, but higher can be more stable when overclocked.
• PCI dividers and AGP dividers and memory dividers determine how the PCI and AGP speeds are calculated from the FSB

Any good software you guys would suggest I use? Like to monitor the aspects and see *excactly* what is going on.... and not just the vagaries of pc info.

depends what your doing...theres plenty of stuff outthere, all for different things.

memtest86 and prime95 are widely used as stability tests, personally I just memtest and dont bother much with prime95 (thats not saying prime95 is crap, I havent really used it that much)

benchmarking your system comes always down to 3DMark2001SE - although other benchmarks of Memory bandwidth, HDD speed found in programs like sisoft sandra are cool to - there are alot of other benchmarks that you can get...

you have an Nvidia based card so I would recommend rivatuner as a tweak/overclock utility for it - now there are a couple of others out there, that are probably just as good I used NVMAX before Rivatuner, liked that to...

some guy posted about a program called Pc Experience Wizard, if you can find that - its pretty decent, mainly just an indepth system audit - but tells you temperatures so not bad.

WCPUID, tell you all manner of craziness about your CPU - plus has a real time clock checker which is funky.

HDD Temperature pro - tells you temps of you HDD, not that useful really, but could help diagnose problems if you stuck for answers.

fraps - nice little program that counters fps in your games.

I used to use some program for messing around with dual monitors - cant remember whats its called though

but thats pretty much it for me - have used other things, but most dont really stick...

stability

ya thanks for the advice on programs. Maybe these "stability" programs will help me understand why my computer seems to be less stable then others.

Or for that matter stubborn for overclocking =)

Some people even use Folding@Home as a burn in. Also if you have Matlab theres benching functions that work real nice. Just check the help, cant rem the names off the top of my head.

Besides that I dont think theres any other widely used progs.