Overclocking Duron 600 problems

[dolemitecomputer]

I hope someone can help with this. I am overclocking my Duron 600 and so far I have it at 904. I seem to have a unexplainable problem where windows will lock up in games (Team Fortress Classic, Quake 3, etc.) but not in normal casual use (sending email, using the internet, playing mp3s, etc.) I could use windows for an hour or more but as soon as I jump into a game it would lock up right away. The frustrating part is that I cannot pinpoint it to a single temperature. Sometimes it will get to 45.5 C and lock up. Other times it will get to 46.2 C and be fine. Anyway it seemed to me to be AGP related so I went over all my settings in the BIOS and decided to disable AGP fast read/writes and AGP 4X. Well that seemed to work. I booted into windows 2000 and played Team Fortress Classic for over an hour with a average temp between 44.5-45.5 C. Then I tried Quake 3 and played that for an half hour with no problems. Here comes the unexplainable part: Now I boot into windows and immedatly (within 2 minutes) of playing either game windows locks up but the temperature is the same as noted above. No changes have been made. Also I get no error messages, registry problems, windows not loading problems which are pretty common with overheating. The front side bus is overclocked but I tried not overclocking it but had the same problem.Here are the specs of what I am using.
Duron 600@904 1.85 V 3.40 IO
Globalwin POP38 temp 41-45 C
Abit KT7A RAID FSB at 113.20
Crucial 256 133 mhz 2-2-2
TNT2 Ultra @170 and 120

[oc jason]

that IS weird-id say heat at first, but from your explanation it seems NOT to be the problem-id point a fan on it and make SURE thats not it-cpu's a finecky-Rule out that first and formost-after that, try disabling your tweaks/OC's 1 at a time and see if that helps, or maybe its a hardware conflict somewhere?? Just some suggestions-i had the same thing when i went into games-all else was fine, i changed the drivers and it or the fan pointing at the cpu-one of the two fixed it??

Good Luck

[William]

okay, lets tweak the multi some and get the bus speed either at 100*9(900) or 133*7(931) to get onto a more stable bus speed. That should solve the probs. Your temps are a little higher than you would want, are you using a thermal compound between the cpu and heatsink, not the pad on it. That should increase the performace quite a bit. Both of those should fix it. I think tweaking the multi to 9 for a 100mhz bus, or 7 for the 133 bus should solve it though. Hope that helps.

[dolemitecomputer]

I actually did try that. I set the multi to 9.0 and the FSB to 101. That was before I had changed the AGP settings so I have not tried that today. Anyway as an update I have tried again to play one of the games and went through a solid 30 minutes of TFC without a glitch. Maybe this might have something to do with it but I live in a one bedroom apartment and had the oven going for dinner so the whole place was kind of warm. That was when I could not play either game for more than a few minutes. Now that the apartment has cooled off it seems fine but I will try the 9.0 setting if it locks up again. By the way, I am using Arctic Silver paste between the heatsink and processor core.

[whiskey![Nw]]

i had the same problem, i turned down my overclock and it was fine. running certain games stresses your computer out and this is a way of telling you that your o/c is too high.

[Thelemac]

Definatley sounds like a heat related problem.

Have you got good case cooling? That's probably one of the more important things for you to have...right up there with cpu cooling. The cpu cooler can't do much better than a certain amount above ambient, so you need to keep the ambient down.

You might also consider bumping the VIO up a bit...that might help with your stability.

[proze]

your temperatures in themselves are fine. 45C is not bad for your cpu, and won't damage it. nor will a temp that low cause a stable system to lock.

it locks in games, and not in normal use because it just isn't stable. bottom line. it has nothing to do with temps directly. for instance, i can run my duron 600 at 113*10 in windows fine, and do whatever i want, but as soon as i try to run an intensive program (game, seti,mp3 encoder, etc) it hangs.. my temps are low, and my voltage maxed out, but it'll still crash. because my cpu can't take that speed.

drop your speed, and it will be fine.