Athlon XP 2500+ Barton

[urville]

I'm new to the actual act of oc'ing in newer boards but not the idea. i used to oc my p3 but those were the sdram days. i've researched extensively and thats the reason for the post. too much conflicitng info and varying opinions for me.

specs first: msi k7n2-delta2-lsr motherboard
amd athlon xp 2500+ barton week 55 i think
dual channel kit pqi turbo memory 2 modules of 256 pc3200
antec fan/heatsink combo rated to 3200+ Xp
antec slk1650 solution series with smart power supply
ati radeon 9600xt 128mb agp 8x
windows xp pro

first i noticed if i install and try to overclock using the corecenter application it will turn my processor fan off completely. anyone else have this problem its aggravating and if i uninstall no problems.. scary really...
also, my ram never runs at the stock 2.5 cas it automatically sits at 2.0 of course i should factor in the fact that the ram states it's good for overclocking and at stock i'm running it low at the stock 333 or pc2700 specs. it's just weird.

secondly i know the chip is locked, and during inital and early research i uppd the fsb to 200 and got a blue screen of death before getting anywhere near into windows. i usually run about 33 to 35 degrees celcius when at stock everything.
i see alot of ppl say dont let it over 50 celcius or even 60 celcius. amd states 85 celcius although i am aware that should be A> under full load and b> the highest maximum and anything near it will surely halflife the cpu lifespan.

after alot more research i went ahead an uppd the fsb to 200 and the vcore to 1.6 in the bios and i came into windows fine at 2.2ghz... to slightly test these settings i ran sandra and did a multimedia benchmark and simultaneously checked temps they went to 49 celcius at highest during this benchmark. i also realize this benchmark is probably not stressing the system that hard but i experienced no real problems as far as that goes. i used the sandra because i dont trust the msi software or the pchealth bios readouts.

so what i'm worried about is temp and monitoring during a game or say a prime95 test. i dont want to waste the money i spent obviously but i still want what i know i can squeeze out of it. it's my understanding wrong or right that the 2500+ barton is no, or barely different than the 3200+, that the 3200 just has different locked multiplier and fsb as well as vcore much like the pentium 90s of days past they were really 133's running at lower clocks. am i wrong? it seems not even by amd's own words. but amd doesnt exactly suport oc'ing hehehe.

so i ask the gurus here, whats at stake? what are the real word numbers on temps with this chip? i need a final answer, cause the variances of opinions is vast and not exacty confidence inspiring. i see alotof people get away with this on one hand, on the second i would rather seem dense and be overly cautious and paranoid than simply run out and blindly jack everything up like alot of other people i've seen. i've read about every faq and guide i can and still have a few unanswered questions and whatnot. i know alot of it will be minutely changing this and that until i can get as stable as possible. but it's the hardware limits, and real world experience i cant seem to get solid info on.

urville

 

[Neo_peter]

The conflicting opinions are normal. There's no 1 right way of OCing so some may prefer to do things one way to another.

The corecenter application you're talking about doesn't seem to be a popular program that most people use, so you might not get any help in that category. Why not just use bios settings and OC that way?

I don't know if this is something that you know already or are doing, but personally as a preference, i'd like to push the fsb up slowly, 5-10mhz at a time just to see exactly where I'm stuck. Being stuck at certain threshold will help debug the problem. Personally I'm not too familiar with your mobo, but what you can do is hop on over the MSI mobo section and check if it's a common threshold that the board might be stuck at.

I'd also like to ask what power supply you have? Sometimes that's an issue if you don't have enough power. Also you should lock the AGP/PCI at 66/33 respectively if you haven't done so already.

If you're running dual channel, that could be a problem, if one of your chips get stuck at a particular threshold, then you're basically done. With PC3200 you're only guaranteed up to 200mhz anyways... That maybe a problem, so maybe you need to up the Vdimm a little.

If you use MBM5 in the background during your tests and games, taht should record the temps while ur playing and you can set the alarm so that at a certain temperature it will sound the alarm, and at another temperature it will shut down your machine.

Personally I wouldn't call the 2500+ mobiles 3200+s simply because they are different, mobile and desktop chips do have their differences, but in many cases 2500+ mobiles can clock as fast as a 3200+ speed in mhz, if that's what you mean.

In terms of temperatures you'll get a whole range of numbers anywhere from -20C (phase change cooling) to 65C, this is all dependant on what cooling you have. I've never heard of an antec hsf for cpus, it's not one of the common ones that people use for mobile bartons so can't really make any comparisons there.

That's about it, other than that good luck.

 

[urville]

at the risk of sounding like a fool i had no idea it was mobile. nothing i had made reference to that, and even the amd site didnt list it as mobile wheni was checking on the temp guidelines i found it under desktop processors. so that changes things a bit. the reason i made that assumption was the chart amd had for the comparison of the xp chips everything was the same in their info with the exception of the fsb freq. between the 2500+ and the 3200+

i did revert to just using the bios but it wont let me take the fsb at increments, only to standard settings 133, 166, 200, etc
and i'm flashed up to the current bios.

as to the antec hsf, i got it a circuit city as i bought the cpu bulk. it has a copper shim built into it with a pad of thermal goop as most hsf's do. it generally keeps the chip at 33 to 35 at idle. thats with the case cover off, if i'm not tooling around in it and put the case back together it goes down a bit more. the antec case has an antec 350 smartpower power supply i bought antec cause i didnt want to go cheap you know for lack of stability

 

[Neo_peter]

Sorry about that, usually when people use 2500+ nowadays, it's 2500+ mobile.

But, going back to ur chip, I still wouldn't call it a 3200+, i think AMD does do speed binning, and they will remark faster chips as lower PR values if the demand is there, but logically speaking, if you were AMD, would u mark ur 3200+ as 2500+ first? I'd start marking the 2600+ and 2800+ before I start marking the 3200+ first. Unless there was an extreme excess stock in 3200+ and very limited stock for all the other PR rated CPUs. Cause I'd rather sell a 300$ chip for $250, rather then a $400 chip for $250. If you know what I mean.

Seeing as you got ur HSF new, I really feel bad asking you to get another one, because that HSF really isn't the HSF of choice when you OC. Most people use something like a Thermalright SLK947U, or maybe something from swifttech. I mean since you have one, you might as well try to see if it's any good first before getting another one. If you plan to OC everything out of that chip then another heatsink will be necessary. I don't know if you have applied artic silver 5 on the heatsink after scraping the thermal goop stuff off the heat sink cause that stuff just isn't very good. I am also skeptical about shims in general, I've seen too many crack their cores using that stuff. But maybe ur HSF requies a shim, i don't know. So ask around and make sure you can use the HSF without it before you take it off. Cause if you haven't got the artic silver on, you might want to do it.

I pesonally don't trust software ocing software, I've seen way too many problems with it, and only particular motherboards in particular system configs can use it. To me that doesn't give me too much confidence.

Maybe try, locking agp/pci first if you haven't done so already. Set the latency to something no so aggressive just to test out where the cpu will go 3-4-4-7 to start, and then you can try tighter settings after u get high enough fsb. make sure the cpu:ram ratio is low to start, just so that u can guarantee that the RAM is not the limiting factor. If you're satisfied with the OC you have already, try using prime95 to test stability, and just go in tiny steps. I would watch voltage, cause once you start upping voltage, u can start damaging u cpu significantly, you're still in the safe zone though. Just keep an eye on the temp with MBM5 running in the background, set the alarms up to warn you if temp goes above 50C. And go on from there.