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Unable to OC, Low Framerate, grrr

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Mike521

Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2001
Wondering if anyone can help me out.. I recovered from a crash recently and reinstalled my OS and drivers on a newly formatted HD... everything should be running wonderfully, however..

I'm completely unable to OC my CPU. Every time I do it and then play a game, I quickly get a blue screen of death error saying "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION". There's a bunch of other stuff there but I can't read it cause the machine reboots almost instantly. I'm on Windows XP Pro, by the way

In addition, I'm getting a relatively low framerate on Tribes 2. Before the crash, with the same hardware and drivers, I was getting 100 - 200 fps. now I'm getting 75 - 150, with the occassional drop to BELOW 30 during action sequences, which obviously is unacceptable!

I don't know what the problem is... can anyone help? hardware is listed in my sig.. ignore the overclocking status though :(

Here's some driver info:

I dl'd the latest mobo drivers from Abit's site, and installed them. They are the same drivers I had installed before the crash.
My nVidia drivers were 44.05 (or whatever the latest is exactly) but I downgraded to 43.45 (thinking it might have been the cause) but still am having the same problem..


Thanks in advance..
 
Your sig is not there,but anyway did you set your bios back up exactly the way it was before and what temps are you getting when it goes BSD
 
hmm I don't know why my sig isn't showing up for you, it is for me.. well here's the specs:


Abit NF7-S nForce 2 mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 2.08 ghz
Corsair PC3200 XMS 512 MB DDR RAM
PNY nVidia Geforce4 Ti 4200 64 MB RAM 4x AGP
Thermaltake Volcano 9 Smartfan


the temps are usually between 54 and 58. very rarely it will go up to 60ish..

BIOS settings are exactly the same
 
Did you install Windows with your system completely unoverclocked, and with APIC disabled? If not, do so, and it should be fine.
 
Was the system stable (BSOD free) before the crash and windows reinstallation?

Your sig says the AGP bus is running at 85 MHz. Is there a reason for not running PCI/AGP locked at 33/66 MHz for nforce2 motherboard.

The volcano 9+ w/ TT SFII HSF is not the best for overclocking CPU on air, I estimated it would lose about 300-400 MHz compared to a SK7 or a SLK-800/900U with a high CFM adjustable fan (which your TT SFII is). Your 2600+ CPU currently around 2.08 GHz (from sig) is about right for that HSF. Were you able to go higher before the crash?
 
what are you psu specs? nforce2 mobo's are very power hungry.

also, your temps are pretty high for that cpu/hsf combination. you should rarely be above 50C at load.

also, drivers don't affect overclocking.

btw, what caused the crash? and are you running a new hdd?

installing windows while overclocked will not cause problems unless your oc is unstable.
 
OK sorry I didn't have the chance to answer these yesterday, and thanks for all the responses! I hope you guys are still reading this thread.. here goes:


Gautam:

I did install windows with the system un-overclocked. I don't know what APIC is though, could you tell me what it is?


hitechjb1:

The system was quite stable before the crash. The only problem I noticed was that, on restart, I would often go into checkdisk before getting to windows, as if I had a bad shutdown. However my shutdowns always seemed to go smoothly.
My sig is no longer correct as to my overclocking status--I have everything at the default settings now, after the crash. Before the crash, thats what my system was at, and it was stable.
So yes, before the crash I was at 2.23 ghz, max temp around 60 C, but that was rare, I mostly saw it at 58 C. I wouldn't mind a nicer fan, or water cooling, but I can't stand the noise..... I'd like to switch to water cooling, but thats a big job, and I just don't think I know enough about it to make my own setup. I had a kit but it didn't cool things well enough, so I switched back to my fan.


Cujo:

My PSU is only 300 watts, and is a weak link at the moment. However, it is the same PSU I had before the crash, when everything ran smoothly...
As for what caused the crash, I have no idea, unfortunately. I turned on my computer one day and got the message "Your Windows\System\ folder is missing or corrupt. Please Repair or Reinstall Windows XP." That was it, no other options. Many failed repairs and reinstall attempts later, I just gave up, formatted the drive (full format) and reinstalled everything from scratch..


Thanks again guys, I really appreciate the help.. I hope I can get this problem solved. :(
 
I asked any reason to run the AGP at 85 MHz with a nforce2 motherboard, rather than having the PCI/AGP locked at 33/66 MHz.

Checkdsk pointed to hard drive erros and may be related to high PCI bus.

Also many system at maximum overclocking one/two months ago, may have stability problem recently due to higher ambient temperature. A 5C higher ambient temp may require reducing overclocking speed to get full stability under load. I assume you are in summer now?
 
yes I am, it is a bit hotter here, which is another reason why I would keep the overclocking to a minimum for a while anyway. But nevertheless, even with no OCing, it's still running like crap...
 
well those temps are pretty high for tbred b with volcano 9. even with retail goop they still shouldn't be anywhere near 50C cept maybe full load (all this unless your ambient temps are insane like 30C or something). as for the psu. doesn't matter whether it's same psu or not. if a psu is being pushed then it could just fail one day and never work properly again... especially a generic one. also, psu could be responsible for those improper shutdowns. it may have been in such a hurry to stop working so hard that it was shutting down before your hdd stopped doing it's final writes.

suggest upgrade psu especially since you're overclocking. suggest reseatting hsf with some as3 or even retail stuff if you have any left. use only a tiny amount. i once had temps (on a system a couple years back) that were much higher than they should have been. i realized it was because the hsf (volcano 7) was on upside down. why thermaltake sells these things with the grills upside down i don't know but i've now had/or seen 3 volcano 7s, 1 volcano 9 and now my volcano 11. every grill has been upside down... at least when using msi or asus mobos of various models.
 
could someone post a picture of what the proper amount of thermal paste is? I'm using arctic silver but I may be using too much or too little, these terms are relative.. I could really use a pic if someone's seen one anywhere?

About the PSU.. yea I could replace it I guess.. I might just go for a while new tower/psu in that case, cause my tower is medium sized and its really cramped..
 
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