Did I Do Enough ? Could I have Done More ?

Dear Wizards,

I performaed my first overtclocking last night:

P4 2.53 with DDR 333, on an MSI 655 Max series MS-6730. (533 Mhz, i.e. 133 FSB, fixed CPU multiplier of 19)

My additional limitation on this (Locked CPU) Ami Bios v3.03, seeemed to be that I could not adjust the PCI/AGP bus freq offset to more than 80/40 (original settings were FSB = 133, AGP/PCI = 66/33), which - given my limited understanding, restricted my reliable overclocking attempts to an FSB of 140 MHz - thus yielding an 2.66 machine (with the corsair memory overclocking reliably at 175 (i.e. 350 Mhz, and with more aggressive timing settings also).

Benchmarking and burn testing shows a reliable 4 to 5% uplift generally everywhere, without hint of instability. All well and good so far.

My questions please:
1, Is my understanding on the FSB-tuning limits imposed by the PCI/AGP offset limit correct generally, and with this board / biosspecifically ?
2, If there is something I am missing that could 'give more go', my objective would be to take it to 2.88 or 3.06 - if stable without fancy cooling.

Many thanks in advance of rall help and advice.

paul.

i belive you have a pretty good chance of hitting at least 2.88 but im sure you will get much farther than that. im not quite understanding you question though. is it maxed out at 2.66 or does it have more? are you unable to give it more? if not, i think you can raise the fsb much higher, but that may call for a slight voltage increase of either the ram or CPU. I have zippo experience with overclocking intel's so you might want to wait for some of the other wizzards here to help you out before you do anything. good luck!!

Thanks....But .......

Hi,

Thanks for replying. Sorry, I'll ask a more focussed question.

I did not think it was ok to raise my FSB setting about 140 Mhz, because I was limited to no more than a 40 Mhz off-set setting for the PCI bus value.

That is, the standard FSB = 133, and the PCI setting was at 33.

I thought I had to keep these 'in-line' with each other for correctness / stability ?

So, can I keep raising the FSB until something starts failing ?
Is my understanding about the relationship between FSB and PCI bus offset correct ?

Many Thanks,
Paul.

you should be able to go up to 150 fsb. that would be 75 agp and 37.5 pci. Most cards will handle this no problem.

Basicly you can up the psb till somethign acts up then back it off a touch.

Isn't it better to have "normal" frequency for your AGP/PCI bus? Personally, I like to keep those values as close to stock as posible. i.e. (AGP-66MHz/PCI-33MHz) It takes out a few variables when determining stability while overclocking.

Fortunately, The MSI 865PE-Neo2 motherboard BIOS allows you to keep the AGP/PCI bus locked at around stock values. IN your BIOS, in Voltage/Frequency control, arrow down to your AGP/PCI values and press return. Now you can use the +/- keys to adjust your bus AGP/PCI bus frequency. It will give you a set of values that will work with what FSB speed your set at. Play around with it.

Currently, I am running a 2.4B at 150 FSB and my AGP/PCI bus is at 67MHZ/33MHz. It's not exactly 66.66/33.33 , but it is very close to stock. And it's very stable.

Nun

Yes its better to try to keep it at 66/33 but it sounded like he didnt have the option to lock it. If you do have the option to lock it that is the best.

I ran my old system at 75/37.5 for 3-4 years with no trouble. went through 3 video card upgrades and a couple sound cards . all did real well ont eh higher frequency.

Thanks for the help.

successfully running at FSB 145, and PCI back at the regular 33