anyone got unreal tournament 2003 running stable in their oc'ed system?

My oc'ed Asus P4P800 deluxe runs fine on all prime95 tests but only crashes on unreal tournament 2003. I heard UT2003 is pretty sensitive to overclocking. I was wondering if anyone had success in their oc'ed system?

My oc'ed settings (see my signature for all the components):
P4 2.8C
FSB: 216Mhz
2 x Corsair XMS 3500C2 memory running at 1:1 FSB (432 Mhz)
ATI radeon 9700 pro (with Catalyst 3.7)
Win XP pro (pretty much with all latest patches)

Prime95 isn't the be-all end-all of stress tests. I ran Prime95 for 32 hours straight with my OC'ed system, never getting a single error, only to have my system consisitently bomb out when rendering video. UT2K3 is a stress test in itself, so if it isn't running 100% stable you need to clock back on either the Vid card, CPU, or memory.

I have a similiar system to you, and I have never had a problem with UT2K3. Have you run Memtest3.0?

Since you have the stock HSF on there, what are your temps? Maybe UT2k3 just barely pushes it over the edge.

I'm not OC'ed as far as you but yes UT2k3 runs fine I use it test to see if my rig is stable, that and prime

Hey Needitcooler, what are your BIOS and ATI radeon settings?

My vid card isn't overclocked at all. I tried tuning it down to AGP 4x and fast write off but to no avail.

Haven't tried Memtest yet.

Needitcooler said:

Prime95 isn't the be-all end-all of stress tests. I ran Prime95 for 32 hours straight with my OC'ed system, never getting a single error, only to have my system consisitently bomb out when rendering video. UT2K3 is a stress test in itself, so if it isn't running 100% stable you need to clock back on either the Vid card, CPU, or memory.

I have a similiar system to you, and I have never had a problem with UT2K3. Have you run Memtest3.0?

Click to expand...

I doubt it is your video card causing the problem if it isn't overclocked at all. I would guess it is your memory, because 216 fsb is not going to overly stress a 2.8c. What are your memory timings? Are you running them in SPD?

Some things to turn off in your bios are:
ICH Delayed Transaction
Spread Spectrum
Legacy USB support
Serial Port *
Parallel Port *
Onboard Audio *
Onboard RAID *

* - If you are not using these of course.

Like KaHNZa said also, you may be overheating with that stock heatsink. You might want to invest in a nice heatsink.

When running UT2003 my cpu temp max was probably about 50C, which I think it's not too bad. When I run prime95 stress test I have hit 58C, and prime95 was running w/o errors for >24 hours. Based on this I don't think my cpu has been maxed out under UT2003.

My corsair memory are running at 2.85V. They are PC3500 (DDR 433). So they are just running within specs at 216FSB at 1:1.

I already set disabled ICH transaction, mem acceleration, turbo mode in BIOS. Dunno what else I can do...

Have you adjusted the memory timings at all? Also, I had 2 sets of PC3200 Corsair XMS that could barely run 200 fsb with loose timings. My Brother had the same experience with Corsair and his P4P800. I would definetely suggest running memtest3.0.

Have you played any other games for an extended period of time?

Download memtest

Unzip, and run the memtest .bat file. It will create a bootable floppy which you run memtest off of.

Needitcooler said:

Have you adjusted the memory timings at all? Also, I had 2 sets of PC3200 Corsair XMS that could barely run 200 fsb with loose timings. My Brother had the same experience with Corsair and his P4P800. I would definetely suggest running memtest3.0.

Have you played any other games for an extended period of time?

Download memtest

Unzip, and run the memtest .bat file. It will create a bootable floppy which you run memtest off of.

Click to expand...

Haven't tried memtest yet but will run it soon. Thanks.

The Corsair memory sticks should be running fine for 200FSB. Did you use 2.75V or above for memory?

I think I might have figured out the cause of the UT2003 crash. I have lowered my ATI smartgart setting to AGP 4x and it's running fine for now. Heard there's a lot of stability problems with AGP8x on Asus boards...dunno who's the culprit here.

The "Gaming" machine in my sig is pretty much used only for ut2k3. I remember having this very same experience with prime95 and ut2k3 when I first started oc'ing this rig late last year. I could run prime95 in the 2800MHz range indefinitely but ut2k3 (and 3dmark) would crash pretty quickly. So I basically started using ut2k3 as the test for stability.

In my case it turned out to be memory but not necessarily that the memory was bad. I went through many sticks and different brands with roughly the same results: prime95 would run at a higher fsb and multiplier than ut2k3. Ultimately I had to back off the multiplier by 0.5 and the fsb by about 6MHz to keep ut2k3 stable. I play at least an hour or two of ut2k3 almost every night ( ) and can't remember the last crash I had with it.

I think ut2k3 simply requires too much memory and slops it around too often to run at the max oc my chip/board will do (especially in dual ddr mode.) That's my non-scientific evaluation anyhoo

mine runs perfectly on a [email protected]

I pretty much agree with Cúchulainn. Anytime that I have had a problem with just about any game and an OC it was due to memory timings being just a bit too high, or I needed to back off of the fsb a bit. Prime 95 pretty much just stresses the cpu, not neccessarily the memory at full load. Not to mention that Prime isnt making the cpu send hardly anything to the pci bus or the agp. In my expeirience with OC'ing, games have almost always been the true test to how stabile your comp is with an OC and sometimes even without one. I have run UT2k3 on several of my machines OCed but never quite as high of one as you are currently trying. I would just try backing off of the fsb 3-4 notches and see if things clear up.

Thanks for your responses guys. I agree UT2003 is definitely a better test for overall system stability.

About my overclocking attempts:
After experimenting with various BIOS settings, I have backed off the FSB a little bit. Now I'm running at 220FSB (CPU at 3.08Ghz) and memory at 1:1 ratio. My Corsair PC3500 memory is running barely above specs.

I tried running at 230FSB at 5:4 ratio but my CPU fails on Prime95. Think my 2.8C cpu with stock heatsink may be running beyond the limits. I'm gonna get a nicer thermalright HSF and see if it'll improve.

My OC'ed system runs UT2k3 like a champ.

I remember it used to crash, but after I raised the RAM voltage it was fine.

Yeah, I agree. I used to have some weird stuff with UT2003 but I reduced memory timings and it got better (ran prime95 rockstable with tight settings, ram voltage is at 3V). Still I have another problem with the game which isn't necessarily related. Starting the game for the first time almost always results error with Direct3D, after that it starts everytime (unless there have been some time after last session, like 1 hour).