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HELP! Really odd results from overclocking, what do I do?!

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spam

New Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2002
Location
Sweden
I would really appreciate any help and advice in this matter. My latest overclocking adventure didn't at all turn out the way I expected and I don't know why...

First let me point out that I am no elite OC'er, I use aircooling and I usually only mod mutiplier and FSB, not voltage or memory´so I am really bad at that. I want to learn more about this thoough so PLEASE explain what I have done wrong :)

Also I am not after maximum benchmarking results, I want optimized 3D performance for playing games.

Until recently my system looked like this:

AMD 1333@1432 (10x143FSB)
512 Mb PC2100 DDR CAS 3
Asus A7M266
Point of View Geforce 3 64Mb @ 230/500
Win 2K pro
Directx 8.1
Detonator 23.11 (I had 22.80 installed before 23.11 and didn't uninstall it before installing 23.11 if that matters..)

With this setup I managed to get 7239 in 3DMark2001
http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?2454468

I also tried 145Mhz FSB but I only managed to get 6745 at best
http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?2408495

I assumed some parts of my system (RAM?) didn't like the high FSB so I stuck with 143Mhz instead... The same thing happened when I tried to use CAS 2, that is I got worse performance than when using CAS 3. (As I said I am not good tweaking RAM..)

Of course I wanted better performance and as ASUS A7M266 does not support variable multiplier so I decided to but a new motherboard. All said and done, now my system looks like this (I formatted my HD and reinstalled win2k and all drivers):

AMD 1333@1529 (11x139FSB)
768 Mb PC2100 DDR CAS 3
IWILL XP333-R rev 2.1
Point of View Geforce 3 64Mb @ 220/500
Win 2K pro
Directx 8.1
Detonator 23.11

The first thing that surprised me was that I could not get FSB higher than 139Mhz without the system becoming unstable, and this was at x 10 clock. I thought this might be because of the new 256 Mb pc 2100 that I installed, I now have 3 x 256 Mb pc2100 and all are of different brands.... I know how incredibly bad this is but I just couldn't afford a better solution.

However I got a lot happier when I discovered that I couls change the clock to x 11 without any problems (as I said I don't know when and how much I should increase voltage and so on so I didn't try that.).

I started off running SiSoft Sandra 2001 and my new setup got much better results in the CPU and Multimedia benchmarks, the memory benchmarks only showed a slight improvement.

I was really excited over these results and started up 3DMark2001 I got suspicious when I watched the demos run cause I thought they didn't really run very smooth. I got very disappointed to see that the final result was 5292!!! This result is actually worse than before I overclocked my old system at all (FSB and Geforce3).

Ok, now I have a ton of questions!

1. Is it better to decrease FSB and try getting lower CAS?
2. How is it possible to get higher results in Sandra for all parts, and so incredibly bad results in 3DMark??
3. My IWILL XP333-R makes it possible to use PCI dividers from 1/3 - 1/6, could I increase FSB by using these? Will they make my RAM more stable or just PCI?
4. Could I increase the clock even higher than 11 x by increasing voltage? (It wont post at 11.5 now) If so, how much should I increase it?
5. Is it likely that it is my RAM that is limiting FSB and causeing the crappy benchmark results?
6. Are there faster drivers than Detonator 23.11 for a GeForce 3?
7. Would it be more reliable to measure 3D performace in fps in i e Q3?
8. IWILL XP333-R rev 2.1 offers a TON of possible settings and tweaks and I just don't know how to make best use of them...

And as I said, I need to use my complete system, I know I could get better benchmark results by just using one of my 256 RAM sticks but I want to optimize the system I actually use, and I need a lot of RAM. I have no problem with heat so far as I have very good cooling (for using fans that is..), that is something I actually know well ;)

I know this is a really long post but if you can help me I will be VERY grateful, there is a ton of general guides out there but I need advice that works....
 
i think what happened to your benchmarks was you graphics card throttled down to 2x AGP at 145MHz fsb

1. cas latency is very important, 150MHz cas 2 is better then 170MHz cas 3
2. yep, sisoft sandra does not deal with 'real' benchmarks only theroitical ones
3. the deviders are for pci only, try and mantain the pci at 33MHz
4. increasing the voltage allows for more speed, but also more het keep an eye on it. dont worry about how much, it cannot do over 1.85, which is fine
5.yep, but i duno bout the graphics card, remove and reinstall the drivers first
6. try all the newish ones an see which works best for you
7. use both
8. just stick to the ones you know will work
 
Thanks for the reply!

1. I just tried setting my RAM CAS to 2 and my clock to default 10x133 and got the exact same result for mem speed in Sandra mem benchmark. Dunno what I am doing wrong, I guess I'll go for higf FSB afterall...

3. Is there no way to keep the bus speed down for the RAM? I suspect that it is my RAM that is the bottleneck although that doesn't explain how I could run 145 FB fine on the old MB and only 139 on my new :/

6. I am actually getting suspicious about that my OC'ing of the Geforce 3 doesn't work. I got a BIG improvement going from 200/460 to 230/500 using my old system but on this new one I hardly notice anything, that doesn't feel right at all...

Thanks for the advice. Please keep posting :)
 
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