Newbie needs help tweaking Barton 3000Xp, X800 XT PE

Hi all, been searching around for a decent site with top info and found this little gem. What a great site with so many helpful people. First off I just want to apologise if this is in the wrong section. Ordered a X800 XT PE yesterday. Thought I could do with an upgrade so went for this 1. Can't wait for it to arrive. Anyway the reason I posted is because i'm new to overclocking. I dont really have much on an idea what to do.

System specs:
AMD Athlon Barton 3000Xp (2.17Ghz)
1024 DDR RAM
160GB Samsung Hard drive
Radeon 9600SE ~ Shortly to be Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition
Windows Xp Home Edition

Not a bad setup I got(in my eyes anyway). Although its quite high specs I would love to do abit of tweaking to get abit more from my machine. I went into my Bios and tweaked my FSB from 13x166 and changed it to 13x180. It was running at 2.17Ghz and its now 2.34Ghz. Everything still seems to be running fine, havent noticed any instability and it hasnt frozen once. Well this is where I need your help. I have 2 fairly decent sized fans in my pc and have a large desktop fan blowing into 1 side on the tower where I have removed the panel. Last time I checked temp was around 52-55 degrees. Has anybody tweaked their Barton 3000Xp further than mine? Could I increase it more? I read somewhere that you can get 300% more from these but I havent tried pushing it that far. As i've increased the FSB should I increase the voltage? I was going to but didnt have a clue how to do this. I couldnt find an option in my Bios. Any help with this would be much appreciated. Also what other tweaks could I do to my machine? Any guides on tweaking my new card when it arrives? Looking forward to reading your replies. I'll try and add anything else that I might have missed out when i've read through everything again. Thanks alot, Pac2003

Hey there Pac2003.

Cooling is important for overclocking, are you using the retail heatsink?

Motherboards also play a big role, which one do you have?

Name brand (instead of simply high wattage) power supplies are also very important, which one do you have?

PC2700 average generic RAM sticks do 166 to maybe low 190s FSB at the most.

PC3200 do 200 FSB and up if your motherboard supports high FSB speeds, which RAM do your have, PC3200?


You would need to increase the voltage for higher overclocks but when you do, your temperatures would go up and if they go toward 60 C, that's probably a bit too high for most people.

Case airflow is particularly important in the summer so you need fans in front blowing air in, and fans in the back, blowing it out, post your case temperature if you can.


When you overclock, booting into Windows is not enough to keep things where they are, stability tests tell you if you need to increase voltage or back down...

Here's how you work one of the stability tests:

To test the stability of overclocked CPU, download the latest bug fixed version of Prime95:
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

Double click on PRIME95.EXE to start the program.

Just Stress Testing (if prompted) > OK >
Options > Torture Test > Blend (if prompted) > OK


The program should not give any errors.
It may be necessary to run the program 12-24 hours to make sure an overclocked system is stable (no program errors displayed).


If you get errors only after several hours, this is a result of slight instability because the system is running with little or no margin. It's stable enough to boot and to be moderately stressed, but as soon as the system is under enough load to go over that critical point, it will freeze. To be 100% stable, Prime95 should run 12-24 hours without any errors.

The point of testing is to see if you get errors or not thus testing the stability. The meaning of errors themselves is not as important.


Running Prime95 Torture Test for 5 to 30 minutes is enough to get a feeling about general stability. If it seems to be stable, increase the FSB (with 0.025V Vcore increase if needed), or increase the multiplier by 0.5.

Reboot and run Prime95 Torture Test for 5 to 30 minutes and repeat this until the Program displays errors.
It's then time to back down and repeat the Torture Test until there are no errors for at least 12 hours.

It's OK to use the computer while Prime95 Torture Test is running in the background.


After finding your stable point you may want to then retest by going to the Advanced section, setting the password to 9876 and then setting Priority to 10. (You won't be able to use your computer while Priority 10 Prime95 Torture Test is running, but it'll confirm your system stability.)

Use 3DMark to test video card stability.



Good luck, and by the way it's the mobile Bartons (available at places like newegg.com) that overclock readily from 2.4 to 2.7 GHz, desktop CPUs like yours, (in addition to being multiplier locked), do 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 GHz if your other components are there to push it that high.

here is my system http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=326694&highlight=xp3000 it goes great i am upgrading to water now

and here is another half way down 2651mhz http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=327782&highlight=xp3000

latest updates http://photobucket.com/albums/v51/slackware_geek/

Winning the lottery can be a way to earn a living in theory.

computer_geek's desktop CPU is "one in a million." If that doesn't get said, then all these folks are being set up for disappointment.

2.3 GHz has always been a very good overclock for a desktop Barton. Whoever achieves that, did a great job imho.

Thanks alot for the help people. I tried upping abit more yesterday, got to about 13x184 and then it wouldnt load up windows. Just got the the Windows load up screen with the green bar that goes across and it restarts itself. Think i've hit my limit as I havent a clue how to increase the Multiplier or Voltage or anything else for that matter.

My motherboard is (looking at my booklet) "ASRock K7S8X/K7S8XE" Hope thats helps.

For my fans theres the Case fan that comes on every pc but also another fan that has "Artic Cooling" wrote on it. Maybe this is standard for pcs these days, I don't know.

My power supply says "Model Number: PM-350S". The yellow sticker on the side of it says "AC 230V" but I take it this is just the standard voltage, lol. Dont know if this helps at all.

My Ram is Elixir 512Mb DDR 400 PC3200U. Is this any good?

Hope this info helps with anything you would like to add. Many thanks people.

Your CPU will bottleneck the XT quite a lot. I know mine does.

Lol i'm totally new with all these words. What does Bottleneck mean?

think of a bottleneck... no the bottom base of the bottle is really big, but all that fluid has to go thru the bottleneck, which is really small, and thus the fluid won't pass thru efficiently thru a bottleneck as it would if there was no bottleneck... Same goes for ur cpu... Ur x800 pe is blazingly fast, and it needs to be paired with a blazingly fast cpu in order for optimal performance... If you don't do that, ur are creating a bottleneck, an area where information/data/performance is being held back and not being used to its full potential... get it?

Aha yes now I understand what you mean. Ye I have thought about my processor not being as high as it could to run the X800 XT PE. Only thing is I only recently bought my pcs a few months ago and dont fancy forking out more money for a new one. I'll have to see how it runs when it arrives and let you all know. Atleast I know if in the next couple of years I get a bigger processor I should have a decent graphics card to handle it . Any suggestions on my restarting pc? Sometimes i'll be playing a game and the comp will just restart. Also since today I havent been able to play games for longer than 5 minutes. They keep cutting off back to my desktop. If this anything to do with my overclocking or some dodgy pop up I accidently clicked yes to and installed? Going to reformat the pc when the new card arrives anyway, wanna start from scratch and follow Maximus's guide (I think it was his, I got it saved as a favourite anyway) for the way he installed his drivers etc... Let me know what you think I should do. Thanks alot

Forgot to add, i'm using a "Artic Cooling Copper Silent 2". Earlier today my comp cut off completely, turning the power on and off powered up the tower but nothing happened. Is this to do with over heating or over clocking? I turned the comp off, removed everything and plugged all back in and comp it seems fine at the moment. Dont know if I had a lose wire (doubt it) or the the time it was turned off let it cool down. Any suggestions?

Grov said:

Your CPU will bottleneck the XT quite a lot. I know mine does.

Click to expand...

hmm bottle neck with ur 2.2 Ghz Mobile?
try Overclock higher? any better result after hit 2.6 Ghz???
becos i plan to upgrade my rig with barton mobile & X800, so any info will helps

thx

malvindo said:

hmm bottle neck with ur 2.2 Ghz Mobile?
try Overclock higher? any better result after hit 2.6 Ghz???
becos i plan to upgrade my rig with barton mobile & X800, so any info will helps

thx

Click to expand...

No, it's not stable at anything over 2.3ghz.

I just thought **** it, and iam getting a quality chip to make the x800 run as it should. Not worth forking out if you have anything but an Athlon 64, Mobile above 2.5ghz at least or 3.5ghz Intel.

Grov said:

No, it's not stable at anything over 2.3ghz.

I just thought **** it, and iam getting a quality chip to make the x800 run as it should. Not worth forking out if you have anything but an Athlon 64, Mobile above 2.5ghz at least or 3.5ghz Intel.

Click to expand...

ok
thx for advice to get 2.5ghz mobile
i will try my future mobile to that mark