Bad P4 Overclocks Support Group

Heheh... This one's for you, Chuck.

I am starting this thread for the specific purpose of providing a place for people to complain about the cruddy time they are having with overclocking their systems.

Now we all know there are people out there who have veritable jewels for CPUs... [email protected] on air. [email protected]. [email protected].

Unfortunately not all of us are so lucky. There are tragic tales afoot. Someone out there got all excited to get a chip packaged in malaysia and got home to find that it overclocked worse than his previous costa rica chip (god rest its soul). Someone out there got prometia and her 2.4c just didn't seem to appreciate it, refusing to stabilize at a certain speed regardless of the juice she poured into the chip. As you read this, there are presently a countless number of overclockers with heartbreaking, disappointed expressions on their faces as the little red icon in prime95 turns that particularly terrible shade of yellow... once again.

These are our stories. We are the irrationally persistent sort of tweakers chasing our own shadows. We've tried everything in the book to get these chips to perform. We've tried turning the bios inside out. Updating the bios. We've tried remounting our heatsinks. We've tried grabbing that 20" industrial fan that's been sitting in the garage and scooting it up to our open cases (for those of us not already using water cooling or other means). We've tried talking to our systems in soothing tones. Cursing at them when that fails. We've tried swapping out our RAM. We've tried converting from asus to abit (or vice versa) with disappointing results. We've tried getting more chips.

Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating. In most cases. The point being that no matter what reasonable thing we try or test, no matter what we do with the voltages, the timings, etc., some of us seem to have chips that just refuse to stay stable past a certain FSB when we had been hoping to take them much further. Some of us may stumble onto the answer one day and soar; some of us may get luckier with our next system. (Let's hope those P5s overclock, yeah?) Some of us with fat wallets might even decide to experiment with a couple of different chips. Some of us might think that such extraneous purchases are unnecessary and do what they can with what they've got.

In any case, this thread will allow you to freely express the kind of exquisite disappointment that only the unlucky overclocker knows. Post your horror stories! Vent! This is your chance to get it all out. Besides, we might just have the answer to your problem.

(official icon)

May I join?

P4 Willamette that does buggerall overclocking

absolutely, free to all! Welcome to the party.

yeah, i have a 2.4c that overclocks to a mediocre 3.2ghz, I was really hoping to get 3.3 or 3.4... and now I am thinking that the ram might be the problem, but I could get OCZ gold and still be outta luck for all I know.

Hehe... well, I guess I've been trying to tone down the "excitement" of super overclocks, especially with these C chips. Sure, 3.35GHz may be the average overclock, but then that means some will be over this and some will hit under this.

I for one hit way under this. 3.18GHz from 2.4C is the highest I can do, and that's with 1.65V. I don't feel comfortable with this, so I run 3.12GHz at 1.55V.

Even though an average overclock is just that, an average overclock, I think that people who do worse than they expect will almost always have a sad look on their faces... posibbly get frustrated and want to go out and look for that golden chip. I know I've pumped 1.725V into my CPU in the search for a but higher, but to no avail.

And also, if you think I'm skimping on the cooling, SLK-900U and a 92mm 60cfm fan sound good to you? 2x120mm fans each at 70cfms sound good to you? How about another 80mm 37cfm fan? Just cause I thought maybe more would be better... Nah, nothing in terms of cooling helped.

So, if you're disappointed in your overclock, this is the place to post. I'm here, substratus is here. We'd like to help you feel better by showing you not every chip is a winner.

Thank you.

I got a jewel of a chip, 3.6 on air

btw what happened to the gripes & moans board? I liked that board

Hey, then you're not allowed here! j/k... See, some people get lucky and others don't.. like me..

Hi my name is John and my 2.4C will only do 3.15GHz

And to make matters worse thats with 1.6Vcore and watercooling!

I can run a stable 3.5 on a 2.8C... but here's where it makes me sad:

With one of my sticks of RAM, I can run at 3.8GHz. With the other I can run at slightly under 3.5GHz. With both in I can run at exactly 3.5GHz with all GAT off.

Got one stick of ram that doesn't want the system to OC.

So with the FSB at 250 and a 5:4 ratio one stick of ram cries at me (2x512 OCZ PC-3500EL). The other stick rocks, but I'm going to try to RMA this stuff because 3500 shouldn't ***** at me when it's running at 200MHz.

Man, Faction.. that really sucks.. That's like worse than me, and I've got pitiful air cooling...

Sorry to hear that so many people got a bumb chip but I thought I had one too, turns it was just my memory holding me back. Now I can easily stay stable at 3.42 GHZ with default voltage, I had it up to 3.6 earlier but the ambient temperature is too high and I don't like how much voltage I had to put into it. I'm very happy with my chip

Im in the 2.4 stuck at 3.2 boat as well. Just hoping Abit releases some magic BIOS that lets me go higher :/

Wow, a lot of people have posted since I took a long nap.

Like Chuck, my inability to get past 3.2 ghz does not seem to be contingent on cooling... I have the lovely Zalman 7000Cu. (heh, I must have re-mounted it like nine times.) I have a lot of case fans. I have an unnecessarily juicy power supply (true 480).

I am thinking it might possibly be the ram but have no hard evidence to suggest this. There was the possibility that I may have had Winbond CH-5 modules on my dimms, which have a problem running at async ratios with the IC7 and IC7-G mobos. However I do not have winbond modules, I have infineon ones (those are the cheap ones that corsair puts on their value select ram, which is what I have, PC3200, 2x256). I am hoping that maybe the sheer cheapness of my ram is what is holding me back; it doesn't seem to matter if I run 5:4 or 3:2 though, and my timings seem to matter even less. I am grateful to have gotten my CPU to run Prime95 indefinitely at 267fsb (3204mhz) and 1.6vcore.

edit - nomed, what turned out to be the specific prob with your memory? I mean why was it holding you back? What kind did you have, what do you have now, and what are the reasons that the new ram allowed your CPU to soar?

I really do hope its a BIOS issue with running asynch CH5 thats holding us back. From what I understand, Abit realizes this too and will be fixed in the next bios update.

Let's hope so!

2.6c stuck at 3.2, no matter what voltage.
Although its mediocre... what makes me dissappointed is its a 2.6. I was hoping at least 3.4

Well let me join. 261 FSB @ 1.65V and 2.6c
IC7 + watercooling. I won't run Prime in fear that it might lower my overclock even more.

My first post .

Anyways, I have a 1.8B and only go up to 2.1 . For some reason windows XP just wont load up past it. Also, it seems to be running somewhat hot, up to 50c on a full load when its not even overclocked. Must be the crappy stock heat sink .

Melhisedek, course you can join! I have never heard about prime95 lowering peoples' overclocks... you may find it worthwhile to see if your system can handle the strain. My overclock kinda sucks, but running Prime95 for 24+ hours doesn't seem to "lower" the overclock.

Phoenix, welcome to the forums. Maybe get a new heatsink? lol... high temps, eh? Do you have an abit motherboard? They have crappy sensors that will lie to you about your temps, you can assume it's actually about 10c lower. But asus or other boards I don't know about.

Yes I have a abit board, BL7 to be exact. Does anyone know the max a 1.8b will go?