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Can i get more out of my CPU?

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tmaniac

New Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2005
Hey guys, i have a little question (plz don't go telling me i'm a noob :p )

I've recently bought more memory for my set-up so i could OC my CPU a bit more.
I've read some stuff about overclocking itself but i just want to know the opinion of you guys.

I wonder if it's possible and if so...how i can get more out of my CPU without losing a lot of stability.

my specs:
Memory: 1GB (matched pair) Kingston HyperX PC4000 ddr cl3 (@2.7v)
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz @ 3.250Ghz (@1.6v)
Mobo: Asus P4P800
GPU: Albatron Geforce 4 Ti4800 SE
Cooling: Koolance External watercooling (CPU, North, GPU, HDD)

here's some screenies of cpu-z

specs.jpg
 
CareFull! Your pretty close to 1.7 V VCore and that has been known to cause SNDS....and that will abrubtly end your overclocking fun
 
That voltage is pretty high on the vCore. Are you running water? If not, you might actually want to turn it down some. With water it would be OK, and with phase it would definitely be OK, but if you are running air, it's too high.

You may be running into droop issues with the board itself. There are mnay droop mods that can b done to alleviate this issue. It is common, and even more common with the Asus boards.

Also, you might wanna try a 5:4 divider instead of the 3:2 you are using now. I've read that those boards do not like 3:2 dividers.

I would also enable PAT. Right now, CPU-Z is showing it disabled. Run it in Auto in your BIOS. You might also try bumping the ram voltage up to 2.8v and test the results. Different RAM responds differently to voltage. if it doesn't respond well, or you see no increase in performance or OC'ability, turn it back down.

Also, what are your temps and cooling? That is very important in getting stable high OC's. If you are running stock cooling, i highly recommend turn down the voltage. I can gurantee you it's too hot if you are running stock cooling. 1.6v is VERY high for air, and is borderline for water.
 
Ok, my temp:

I'm running watercooling with the following temps:
Idle: 27 degrees (water temp= 30 degrees)
Stress: water temp = 42 degrees.
 
OK, you're good on that then. The only thing I can think of is droop. You should be able to go higher than that on the voltage you're running.

Were those CPU-Z shots under load? If not see what happens when you load the thing with CPU-Z open. If you can check your core voltage with a DMM that's even better.

Another thing that's possible is you PSU could be holding you back.
 
ok, some wierd thing now...when i took another screeshot...but here the vcore is real low (under stress!!)

so i checked my bios...and made sure my setting was on 1.6v.
Also, when i enable performance mode (which is on auto atm) my computer won't let me boot and the safety resets the bios.

(This screendump is after 2 minutes of CPU stress)

stress.jpg


(2x burn-in since 1x only takes CPU to 50%)
 
That is indeed acting like the wall that bchur83 spoke of. I was not aware that those CPU's had a wall issue.

It still might be possible to get more, but I'm gonna have to think on that one. PAT should not have caused a safe BIOS restore. That's a nasty.

Don't get mad at it, it's not over yet, and sorry it did that to you, but that's the only way to tell what they are gonna do is to test them.

I've got a pretty good feel for what the thing is doing now after seeing that. Now I gotta think some about if there is anything more you can do.
 
A slight misstype from my side, the performance booster i was talking about is the Memory Acceleration Mode.

I'm used of the bios resetting :p When i was just beginnen with overclocking i got this alot.
The first times it happend i got this feeling you get when you screw up something expensive and i was really worried. But by now i'm like: Ahh..won't boot...2 minutes poweroff and i'm back in buisiness :)

I tried setting the performance boost (this time the correct 1) to standard, had no effect whatsoever, now i'm gonna try the 2nd option: Turbo.

[edit]
Ok, running in Turbo mode, however, i get the feeling that my pc is slower then before i changed the performance boost, so i think i'm going back to Auto
What does this performance boost do?
(i notice that when i boot up i no longer see the speedsetting of the memory when performance boost is enabled)

ps. what memory timings do you guys recommend?

And, before i forget, thanks for the help guys :)
 
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