Looking for advice on overclocking opty 170

[Laztlain]

Hi All,

I have come accross a bit of a strange situation (to me at least!) while overclocking my rig. First, let me give quick system specs:

CPU: Opteron 170 (Sorry, I never wrote down the stepping and I can't take off my HSF to look at stepping cause I'm outta thermal paste!)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooler Pro
Mobo: Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
Ram: 2GB Kingston HyperX PC3200 (DDR400) 4x512MB sticks

I use the BIOS to overclock, and only use 3rd party programs for monitoring. Anyway, here are my current settings in the BIOS:

FSB - 265
Multiplier - 10x
CPU Voltage - 1.45V
RAM Voltage - 2.80V
RAM Divider - 166/200 [CPU/12] (DDR440)
RAM Timings - 3-4-4-8 2T
HT Link Speed 4x (1060)

Now if I bump the FSB at all, the system will not POST. So I reduced the RAM divider even more to 133/200 [CPU/15] (DDR353) - this is below the normal RAM frequency.. still no post. Now here is the strange part... just to see what would happen I reduced the divider even further to a ridiculous 100/200 [CPU/20] (DDR265)... and the system POSTS! At the previous 2 divider settings BOTH were below the normal operating frequency of the RAM.... any idea why one would post and one would not? Any advice on getting a higher overclock - I wanted to get to the 2.8 range. I am starting to suspect it has something to do with using 4 sticks of RAM, although they are all matched sticks.

Thanks!!!

 

[3line]

Have you tried overclocking through Windows via Clockgen?

 

[malvindo]

Hi All,

I have come accross a bit of a strange situation (to me at least!) while overclocking my rig. First, let me give quick system specs:

CPU: Opteron 170 (Sorry, I never wrote down the stepping and I can't take off my HSF to look at stepping cause I'm outta thermal paste!)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooler Pro
Mobo: Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
Ram: 2GB Kingston HyperX PC3200 (DDR400) 4x512MB sticks

I use the BIOS to overclock, and only use 3rd party programs for monitoring. Anyway, here are my current settings in the BIOS:

FSB - 265
Multiplier - 10x
CPU Voltage - 1.45V
RAM Voltage - 2.80V
RAM Divider - 166/200 [CPU/12] (DDR440)
RAM Timings - 3-4-4-8 2T
HT Link Speed 4x (1060)

Now if I bump the FSB at all, the system will not POST. So I reduced the RAM divider even more to 133/200 [CPU/15] (DDR353) - this is below the normal RAM frequency.. still no post. Now here is the strange part... just to see what would happen I reduced the divider even further to a ridiculous 100/200 [CPU/20] (DDR265)... and the system POSTS! At the previous 2 divider settings BOTH were below the normal operating frequency of the RAM.... any idea why one would post and one would not? Any advice on getting a higher overclock - I wanted to get to the 2.8 range. I am starting to suspect it has something to do with using 4 sticks of RAM, although they are all matched sticks.

Thanks!!!

sorry bit confuse,
i used Opty too
u mean now u run DDR265 = 133 Mhz x2 (DDR)???
or 265 x 2 = 530Mhz (DDR)??
care to email me @ [email protected] or post here screen shot or CPU-Z?

tried memtest?

 

[evilrad]

Try running just two sticks of RAM. Also lower your HT speed if you go higher since it's already over 1000. I will also share my problem I had that is similar to yours (although I have a different motherboard). When ever I went over a FSB of 245, my system would not post. Like your system, certain RAM dividers would not work correctly when the FSB went over 245. To make a long story short, it turned out that one of the RAM settings (I can't remember which one because it has been almost 2 years) was causing the system to behave this way. It was set to "Auto", and even though it was outputting the correct value (when at the lower FSB speeds), it caused the system to not post when going over the magic FSB number. To solve the problem, all I had to do was manually set the value instead of the "Auto" setting. Since I don't remember which setting was causing this, I recommend setting every RAM setting manual.

 

[Laztlain]

All good info; thanks guys. Here is a screenie as requested...

Thats pretty interesting about settings in Auto causing problems even though they were the correct values.... I will give that a try becuase I know I have some RAM values set to auto...

 

[KillrBuckeye]

Laztlain, unfortunately it sounds like your Opty 170 and Asus board is acting just as flaky as mine did when I tried to upgrade to 2GB. Everything worked perfectly with 2x512MB kits--all dividers worked and I could get up to ~3 GHz on the CPU. I tried both 4x512MB and 2x1GB, and I could never get the system stable using anything but a 1:1 (DDR400) RAM divider, which limited my overclock to a pathetic 2.2 GHz. That was the main reason I recently upgraded to my C2Q system. Here are the details of my experience, copied from a thread I started a few months ago:

I've had this A8N-SLI Premium mobo and Opteron 170 CPU for about a year now, and I have used 3 different memory kits, including 2x512MB Crucial Ballistix PC3200, 2x512MB Corsair VS PC3200, and 2x1GB Corsair VS PC3200. The behavior of the memory divider and overall board stability is completely different depending on which kit is installed, and it's driving me nuts!!!

The 2x512MB of Ballistix caused flaky behavior in that some of the memory dividers simply refused to work properly (DDR266 and DDR333), and I ended up having to severely underclock the memory using the DDR200 (1/2) divider in order to get most out of the CPU. However, the system was perfectly stable at those settings and I could always POST without a problem.

The 2x512MB of Corsair VS PC3200 has worked the best. It allowed me to use any memory divider while cranking up the CPU to 295x10, and it was rock-solid stable. This is what I had been using up until a few days ago when I decided that I needed 2 GB of memory. First I tried adding another 2x512MB of the same stuff for a total of 4x512MB, but the system was extremely unstable with the 4 modules, regardless of how much I lowered the memory speed and reduced latencies (including 2T). I returned the extra 2x512MB kit and instead got a 2x1GB kit of the Corsair VS.

To my dismay, the behavior of the system with only the 2x1GB kit installed is very erratic, and I have been unable to correct the problem by increasing voltages, lowering speeds, relaxing latencies, etc. The main symptom is a refusal to POST/boot properly while the CPU is heavily overclocked (even when memory is UNDERclocked). The strange thing is that *sometimes* it will POST and boot into Windows just fine, and Orthos seems to indicate that the system is stable. I can also play games without a problem. However, when I reboot there is a very good chance that it will hang at the POST screen. In this situation I usually have to lower my CPU speed to make it past the POST screen. I'm down to 260x10 right now, and I just don't understand why it's having trouble. As I stated before, I know this CPU is capable of close to 3 GHz, so there's obviously something about the memory that's giving it trouble. The memory divider is set to DDR200 (1/2) at 2T with its rated latencies, and I have bumped up the chipset and HTT voltages, CPU voltage, and VDimm. Nothing seems to help.

Can anyone give me some suggestions, or at least offer me an explanation as to why my system is acting so strange? Again, I am UNDERclocking the memory and running the CPU at speeds lower than what I know it can do.

 

[Laztlain]

Thanks KillrBuckeye. Man THAT sounds familiar! Out of curiosity... did anyone offer any advice in your thread that helped? (I'm assuming there was no solution since you upgraded to a C2Q)

 

[KillrBuckeye]

Thanks KillrBuckeye. Man THAT sounds familiar! Out of curiosity... did anyone offer any advice in your thread that helped? (I'm assuming there was no solution since you upgraded to a C2Q)

Actually, karl pell offered some very good advice, which was along the same lines as what evilrad suggested in his post. He suggested that I use a utility like A64 Tweaker to examine all of the memory timings at default clocks, and then compare those to the timings when I enabled a divider. Interestingly enough, A64 Tweaker did report 2 obscure timings that were not adjustable in the BIOS (can't remember which ones offhand) that were changing when I used a non-1:1 divider. So what I tried to do was boot into Windows at stock CPU speed with a memory divider enabled (such as 1:2), and then use A64 Tweaker to manually adjust those obscure timings to match their values at the 1:1 setting. I then tried to use ClockGen to apply a software-based overclock. While I initially thought that this technique was working (I seemed to be able to go up to about ~2.6 GHz and remain Orthos stable), I found that my games were crashing randomly. When I returned everything to stock, the crashes stopped. So obviously the software-based overclocking workaround was not working. I couldn't handle the crashing, so I gave up and returned the memory divider to 1:1 and just ran at 2.2 GHz (as high as my memory would allow ). I think I tried everything possible with that Opty 170 and Asus board, but it just hated the 2 GB of RAM.

 

[Laztlain]

ok thanks again. I will try these suggestions over the weekend. With any luck I will be posting some good news!

 

[Laztlain]

Hey KillrBuckeye - I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to give me that detailed info (and you 2 evilrad!). Doing exactly what you said, I was able to get my Opty 170 to 2.8 GHz with a FSB of 280 and a lowered RAM divider. I will be taking my time with voltages to see if I can get it even higher, but I am extremely pleased with the results so far. Thanks again!!

 

[evilrad]

Good to hear that you got it working. Let us know what you manage to get it up to.

 

[KillrBuckeye]

Hey KillrBuckeye - I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to give me that detailed info (and you 2 evilrad!). Doing exactly what you said, I was able to get my Opty 170 to 2.8 GHz with a FSB of 280 and a lowered RAM divider. I will be taking my time with voltages to see if I can get it even higher, but I am extremely pleased with the results so far. Thanks again!!

Glad to hear it's working. I hope this works for you in the long term.