What to do?

[SpEeDyGoNzAlEs]

Hi there little boys and girls!

Here's my thing...

MoBo Asus A7V (Rev 1.02, BIOS Rev 1008)
AMD T'bird 800 Mhz (Locked)
256 Mb PC133 OEM Ram
30 Gb IBM ATA100 7200 rpm
Ati Rage Fury Pro 32 Mb VIVO
Media Forte Quad xTreme 256 R - SoundBoard
56k PCI Modem (Diamond)

One 80 mm intake fan in front od the HDD, one CoolerMaster HSF over the CPU, one 92 mm fan (Sonol maybe....) pushing air to both RAM and CPU...

I'd like to OC this stuff... But don't know what to do about VCore, FSB and stuff... Could you help me out giving me some ideas?

Thx!!

[Paul.K]

First of all you will need to find out does your board have jumpers or settings in the bios that will allow you to change the FSB, Vcore and multiplier settings. If so, yu are in luck. I also see that your CPU is locked, so you'll have to cross the L1 bridges to unlock the multiplier. I wouldn't recommend overclocking to much with the HSF you have. Look on the front page for coolers roundups which will give you an idea of what the best current HSF units are e.g Thermalright Sk6.....


Once you have unlocked the CPU and I recommend you to install (if you haven't got one already installed) a mobo monitor which will monitor your temperatures of the CPU and motherboard. You should start increasing the FSB or muliplier in small increments while also keeping an eye on temps. At each increase you should run some benchmarks e.g 3D2001/2000 bench marks tests to stress the CPU and see if it will work under the new settings. IF SO INCREASE IT ANOTHER NOTCH (small increments 5Mhz) AND BENCHMARK.


Once you go over a certain clock speed your system will become unstable.....e.g Window protection errors, blue screens of death which are good signals that you need to increase VCore. Please note: buy new HSF before increasing VCORE as this will generate more heat........

Hope this will help...

[Rob Cork]

Welcome to the forums! (I forget if I said that already :p)

First thing I'd do is get rid of that coolermaster hsf and get a decent cpu cooler. The best ones out there are the Swiftech MC462, Thermalright SK6 and Millenium Glaciator, but they'll all set you back a bit. Look out for heatsink-fan combos that include the delta 38 fan - that fan is reputedly unbearably loud, so try and get a hsf with a quieter fan than that.

If I understand correctly, you have two fans sucking air into the case? If that's right, I'd change it so you have one at the front (the 80mm would do), with the 92mm at the top rear of the case (just below or above the psu if possible) or mounted on the top of the case. That'll give you pretty much equal airflow into and out of the case, which is what you want to achieve.

Once your cooling is sorted, you can start overclocking. Seeing as the cpu is locked, I'd begin by raising the fsb for a bit of an overclock. The A7V won't go very high at all on the fsb - probably only to 110, and that's if you're lucky (mine gives up at about 105). It's a limitation of the actual chipset on the mobo (KT133), not any other components, so it's not really something you can solve without replacing the mobo itself. However, you could still try taking the fsb from 100 to 102 or 104 to start with.

One thing of vital importance - keep a close eye on your temps, and as a rule of thumb don't oc if they go much above 50C under load. Consider 60C the max - the cpu could probably survive up to about 70C without frying, but that gives you a bit of a safety net.

As you won't be able to get very far ocing on the fsb, you'll want to unlock that chip at some point. To do that you'll need to connect the L1 bridges on the cpu that you've probably heard of - there's plenty of guides on how to do that, but that's another story - get the cooling sorted first. Hope this all helps :)

[SpEeDyGoNzAlEs]

Well..

First of all thanks!!

The things I can change in BIOS are the FSB and VCore... I can also change RAM speed (Mhz), but I can't change multiplier... I can only do that with jumpers... But still, i've gotta unlock the CPu first...

And now, what I've already done...

I've incremented FSB to 105 Mhz.. This gives me 140 Mhz ram and 840 Mhz CPU speed. I left the default VCore... Temps are around 45 46ºC (cpu) and 35ºC (mobo)... This id idleing... After a few benchmarks with 3dMark2001, it gives me (Asus Probe...) 40ºC mobo and 50ºC cpu... I think that's not that bad... I've heard that Asus Probe gives about +10ºC than it actually reads... Is this correct??

I'd really like to buy a better cooling system.. But I live in Portugal... This means I can't find that fans around easy... And here's my real problem... I've managed to increment FSB to 113 Mhz... Giving around 904 Mhz with 113 Mhz ram ... But the temps raised to 62-65ºC (cpu) ... Too damn hot, I guess ... My actual config is 8x105 ... 840 Mhz... That's not bad, being the temps as high as 50ºC... And I'm affraid of blowing up my CPU if I try to connect the L1 bridges...

One other thing... Seeing my PC's specifications... A result of 1700 marks in 3dmark2001... Awfully bad, hein?... I OC'ed my video card with power strip (170 Mhz / 130 Mhz - Chop - Memory; the default is 140/118...) and I got an improvemente of about 100 3dmarks...

[theflyingrat]

For the 3DMark scores, you're about right on target with that old Fury. Won't get much better from there without a lot of help from the CPU.

I, too, have an A7V, and you have heard right. Asus Probe does inflate the CPU temp by about 10C, so your temps should be safe for now.

In order to use the multiplier controls, however, you will need to set a jumper on the motherboard to manual mode. Doh! This means all of the FSB speeds, Core voltage, and multipliers are controlled by jumpers and DIPs on the board itself. At least Asus documents these well in the manual, and it's really kind of fun playing with the stuff on the board! I've never been much of a fan of BIOS adjustments - they're convenient but a little too 'hands-off' for my liking.

BTW: My 800 has been running stably with 1.85 Core votlage at 1000 MHz for almost a year now. It's not a bad CPU. Paired with my GF2 Ultra, I've gotten as high as 4600 in 3DMark 2001, without a whole lot of tweaking or use of funky beta-drivers. In 2001, your score is almost completely dictated by your video card, so you have to make the rest of your system work hard for those points.