Need experienced overclockers help...

Hi - After running my pc for a few weeks with my new setup and getting everything just tikidee boo, I began to see if I could overclock my pooter.

Sorry for the long post;

As of today I have been able to get a cpu/video overclock of this

CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU
Stock Speed of CPU: 3.00GHz
Overclocked speed of CPU: 3150 MHz
MotherBoard: P4C800 Deluxe
Ram:Corsair DDR XMS PC3700 - 1024 MBytes
Video Card: Radeon 9700Pro
Stock Core of Video: 324
Actual Core of Video: 330.75
Stock Mem of Video: 310.5 mhz
Actual Mem of Video: 326.25 mhz
3DMark2001se: 17537

Now when I try to go any higher my pc reboots about half way through 3dmark01. From what I have read my pc has more potential than this.

Idle cpu temp = 36C
Idle system temp = 30C

Load cpu temp=41C
Load system temp=32C

My BIOS Settings are as follows;

--------SYSTEM FREQUENCY /VOLTAGE--------

AI Overclock tuner [DISABLED]
CPU External Frequency [210]
DRAM Frequency [400mhz]
AGP/PCI Frequency(mhz) [AUTO}
CPU Vcore Voltage [Auto]
DDR Reference Voltage [Auto]
AGP VDDQ Voltage [1.5v]
Performance Mode [STANDARD]

--------ADVANCED CHIPSET SETTINGS------------

Configure DRAM Timing by SPD [DISABLED]
DRAM CAS# Latency [3.0 clocks]
DRAM RAS# Precharge [4 clocks]
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay [4 clocks]
DRAM Precharge Delay [8 clocks]
DRAM Burst Length [4 clocks]
Performance Acceleration Mode [AUTO]
DRAM Idle Timer [Infinite]
DRAM Refresh Rate [AUTO]

Graphics Adapter Priority [AGP/PCI]
Graphics Aperture Size [256 mb]
Spread Spectrum [enabled]
ICH Delayed Transaction [Enabled]

MPS Revision [1.1]

Is there something in these settings that are causing a problem?
System specs in sig..

is this all it does it in? or does it perform any perculiar actions in other intensive programs? perhaps a touch more voltage on the CPU

It is stable at these settings, when playing games etc. As soon as I go up the pc reboots. This is not what I expected. I see others with similar hardware being able to oc alot more than this.

Lock the agp/pci at 66/33. Set cpu vcore to 1.6. Set ram voltage to 2.75. If it still crashes get the iso image of memtest x86 and burn a bootable cd with it. Boot from that and see if you're getting any memory errors. If you do chances are good that your ram is bad. It should have no problem running 210fsb at cas3. If it's not your memory then maybe your video card is being pushed pretty hard by 3Dmark and you could up the agp voltage to 1.6 and try again.

thanks for the tips. If the ram is bad will corsair replace it?

Yes they should let you rma it. One other suggestion - don't overclock more than one part of your system at a time. If you've got the cpu overclocked, video gpu and ram, any one of those could be failing and you'll be hard pressed to figure out which one. Try finding the limit of one thing at a time, keeping everything else as close to stock as possible. For example, try running your cpu and system memory at stock, and overclock your video until it fails. Then set your video back to default and overclock your cpu and memory until it fails. Then you know where to safely set each part without guessing what might be going wrong.

sorry but what is rma? yes I am a dope....

rma is return merchandise authorization. Basically you call them and tell them you've got defective parts. They issue you an rma number which you affix to the box when you return the dimms to them. It's like a case number.

thanks - when using memtest what should i expect? How long does it take to run a test. It seems to run about 10 minutes then stops.

The issue here is most probably not the RAM. That isn't to say I know what else it might be. Remember that overclocking isn't a God-given right? You aren't owed a 10% overclock. You aren't owed anything. That you can't get beyond 3150MHz is a real shame, and rather atypical. I would in fact say it's extremely uncommon. But I strongly suspect the bottleneck in your particular overclock is not at all the RAM, especially with your very loose memory timings. You might have just lucked out with a pretty low yield CPU that just barely met their certification for 3.0GHz. Try upping the voltage a bit. I personally try to avoid going beyond 0.025 volts extra (1.575 volts in my case, with a P4 3.06GHz as my main machine at the moment). But try +.05 if you need to. I'm currently at 3.4GHz with zero stability issues, haven't rebooted in 5 days in fact.