P4 2.4 Ghz 478 OC

I have a Biostar P4M80-M4 mobo with an intel P4 2.4 Ghz proc, 2gb PC3200 ram, Geforce 7600 factory OC vid card and soundblaster audigy soundcard.

This particular mobo has a windows overclocking utility to try to make OC easier, so its not the "norm" situation where you change bios settings, although you can change settings there as well.

The OC utility does not allow you to change the FSB or multiplier per se, just the clock speed. When the clock speed is increased it also increases the clock speeds of the ram and vid cards simultaneously so I assume it is actually changing just the FSB, or maybe the FSB/multiplier ratio. It changes in 1mhz and 3mhz increments.

My problem is this...... This is my first OC attempt. By simply increasing the clock speeds I can take this P4 2.4 Ghz to 2.7 Ghz with good stability. From there, I go into bios and increase Vcore and Vdimm in small increments and try to increase the clock speed further. The highest I can get this proc to OC is at 2.8, or roughly a 20% overclock.

When it hangs and reboots, how do I know if its the CPU, memory, or something else that is limiting me? Can I change the event log to see where the problem is? I dont know if I need to increased Vcore, Vdim, or something else to take this further.

My hardware monitor shows a continual 22C CPU temp at any clock speeds and I am using a coolermaster socket 478 heatsink and fan and cant recall the model or part number unfortunately. I can dig through receipts to look for it if its important. I can also take case pics and post here if thats important too

Also, I must be mistaken, but I thought that PC3200 ram runs at 400 Mhz?? Mine runs at 200 Mhz....... Is that correct?

Any advice or input really appreciated. Im VERY "gung-ho" and interested in becoming a PC and OC enthusiast and have learned so much allready.

Thanks

thats the most youll prolly get out of that chip on that board if its a northwood. And i wouldnt use that stupid utility.. do it in bios.. you really wanna lock your pci/agp/sata bus to 33/66/100 and disable spread spectrum, should give you a tad more stability. and ddr means double date so 200 mhz bus = 400mhz ram speed Use Orthos and super pi to verify your oc's. You can run memtest86 to verify your ram at various speeds.. if its value ram youll prolly have to over volt it pretty heavily to get it to run beyond stock. Make sure you have good cooling on them and in your case.

let me clarify the ram thing...

DDR means its double data rate. so, while it only runs at 200mhz, it does 2 instructions per cycle, so they RATE it as ddr-400. it DOES NOT run at 400mhz. the actual clockspeed is 200mhz, and that is the speed of the ram.

same thing goes with ddr2. ddr2-800 RUNS at 400mhz, not 800mhz.

Yes, this proc IS a northwood.

I appreciate the ram advice, and am fine if 2.8 or 2.9 Ghz is the fastest I can get this proc. As I said, this is just me trying to learn the ropes as this is an older rig Im just playing around with at the moment before I build my new system.

But....the original main question was never directly answered.

When, in overclocking (in general and also in specific to this situation) when you reach the OC limit of your current settings and the computer hangs, or reboots how do you know where the problem is?

Do I check the event log? Is there some other place I can check so I can find out if I need to look at the CPU or look at the RAM? I dont understand if I should increase Vcore or Vdimm or what to do from here.

Does anyone have any "standards" with regard to acceptable and max levels of:

1. Vcore
2. Vdimm
3. % overclock
4. CPU temps

Also, when working an OC through BIOS, what is the normal progression of things? From my limited experience and understanding it appears that the sequential series of events should be as follows....Please correct me if I am mistaken.

1. Go to BIOS. Increase FSB, or multiplier, or try to decrease mult and simultaneously increase FSB to also work an OC on ram/vid speeds.

2. Boot to windows. Run stress tests to check stability (memtest 86 and others....) Check CPU Z for current settings.

3. Continue increasing FSB or multiplier or FSB/mult product as stated in #1 above. Each time after a small incremental increase booting to windows and stressing as noted in #2.

4. When max OC is reached. Start increasing Vcore in small increments (0.1 volts if possible or at small allowable increases).

5. After each Vcore increase attempt to raise clock speed in small increments until the computer hangs, each time stressing in windows after each increase.

6. Keep increasing Vcore and FSB until you reach max clock settings that are stable.

7. Here is where I get confused.....at some point, I will need to increase Vdimm to OC the RAM. WHEN do I know when to do this? Do I do it at the same time as Vcore increases? Do it after I have maxed out Vcore?

How do I know when its the ram or the cpu limiting the stability OC-ability of the system?

Also, why do i want to lock my pci/agp/sata bus? Dont I want to OC the vid as well? This is an older AGP mobo BTW.....and the vid card is factory OC...but for other systems dont I want to OC the vid so that it can keep up with the enhanced CPU/Ram and take advantage of the increased FSB (or HTT if speaking of AMD)?

Thanks again!

i'll try my best to get through all of your questions. bare with me

as for the standards:

1. on a northwood, NEVER let you vcore go over or close to 1.7v. northwoods die at these voltages, it is called S.N.D.S., or sudden northwood death syndrome. do a search here for s.n.d.s. and you will find a huge thread detailing this phenomenon.

2. vdimm, depends. if you have great case airflow and some heatspreaders on your ram, up to 3.2v should be OK. i would save those voltages tho, a more advanced user should play there. you should be able to get the results you want with 2.8-2.9v at most.

3. % overclock, again it depends. i have a 2.4c here that will do 3.6ghz. some 2.4's will only do 3ghz. can you tell us what type of northwood it is? it should say in cpuz.

4. cpu temps, its subjective. with my northwood, i tried to keep them under 55c as read by MBM5.

now onto your OC process questions:

1. you won't have any options to change the multi, so don't worry about that.

2. yes, you are correct here. i would say the best test of stability is Prime95, or if your northwood is a 2.4c model, it will have HyperThreading tech, so you should run Orthos: http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm

3. yep, keep inching up, say 5fsb at a time.

4. correct again here

5. yup

6. yup

7. well, this can be confusing. basically, when you raise your fsb, it also overclocks all the other buses in your system. the memory, the agp bus, the pci bus, everything. say you run 250fsb, your ram will also be running at 250mhz, or ddr-500 speeds. BUT you can use a ratio on the memory, so it runs at a fraction of the speed the fsb is running. with this method, you really don't ever have to raise the vdimm, as you can keep the memory at stock speeds if you like. you can choose 1:1, 5:4, 3:2 on most motherboards. example, if you run 250fsb with the 5:4 ratio, 250*4=1000, 1000/5 = 200, so your ram is running at 200mhz, or ddr-400 speeds. with the 3:2 ratio, say you run 300fsb, 300*2=600, 600/3=200, so you are still at stock speeds with the memory.

what most people do, is test the limits of the cpu using the 3:2 ratio. that way you know the ram isn't going to hold you back. once you've found out what your cpu can do, go back to the 1:1 ratio, and test the limits of your ram. this will answer your question "how do i know when its the ram or the cpu limiting the stability?"

and your last question kinda ties into #7 there. when you overclock your fsb, it raises all of the other buses in your system. your pci speed by default is 33.3mhz. if this goes too far out of synch, you can have corruption problems with your HD, or you can have problems with your soundcard, and basically anything that is tied to the pci bus. same thing with the AGP bus speed. we are only concerned with locking the BUS speed. this will have no impact on the overclockability of the video card itself (its GPU speed and its memory speed). if you lock the AGP bus to 66mhz, you are isolating it from the rest of the system, and it won't get raised along with all the other buses. some AGP cards work OK with an overclocked bus, some don't. i had a 9700pro that worked fine even with the AGP bus at around 72mhz, but it got flaky after that. lock the buses to ensure you have no problems with them.

then, once you have everything OC'd the way you like, you can use a prog like ATITool to overclock your video cards gpu and memory clocks.

sorry if that is longwinded or confusing, let me know if you need any clarification.

1. I ran my "C"-type Northwood (hyperthreading model- D1 stepping) at 1.72V for a long time without any problems, but I had a B model nuke itself at 1.65V. But yeah, 1.6-1.7 volts is about as high as you want to go with these chips.
3. Your board is probably the biggest factor holding you back, but some of the earlier 2.4 ghz chips couldn't hit more than 2.9. My first 2.4 Northwood chip (either an A or B I can't remember) wouldn't run any higher than 3.1 regardless of how many volts I forced into it. The one I still have will happily hit 3.4 but I haven't been able to run that board above 292 FSB stably so the %&#$&@^* might actually have some more headroom.
4. Like hUMANbEATbOX said, anything above 55-60 degrees C is getting a little warm for those chips.