Opinions for OCing an older system

[Solidliquid00]

Ok. Tried 192 FSB at 11.0x with 1.850 voltage (thats as high as my BIOS would let me) and with 2.8V for my RAM (again, I only had 3 options for my RAM, 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8) assuming I'm even in right area. It's entitled "DDR Reference Voltage" Does that sound right?
Anyway, did those settings, which ended up resulting in an instant crash once I got past the login screen, which perturbs me, because when I overclocked before, 190-196 FSB speed OCed fine (except with Firefox crashing and Civ 4, not Windows.
Suggestions?

 

[c627627]

For an old motherboard like yours, try Motherboard Monitor 5.3.7.0 http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=311


Adjust things to see what works and what doesn't, if you have a locked desktop Barton at 11, then FSB is your only option.

These are major voltage increases that will hit your system temperature-wise, you need to know how hot it's getting.

You may be surprised that you're only *fully* stable at a much lower overclock than you initially thought.

 

[Solidliquid00]

Is there any way to unlock that multiplier on my Barton?

Also, MBM 5 isn't picking up any of my temps.

 

[c627627]

1. No. It's superlocked.

2. You'd have to set it up if it is compatible. Or try SpeedFan or CoreTemp or whatever utility came with your motherboard. It's probably available on Asus web site.

 

[Solidliquid00]

So I just realized I didn't have the newest version of my BIOS.
So I flashed my BIOS and updated it from 1006 to 1011.
Do you think that might help with my OCing?

 

[KillrBuckeye]

Barton 2500 was a decnt chip I had that same chip running on my A8N SLI-Deluxe b4 I swapped it out for an FX-60.

You ran a socket A chip in a socket 939 board?

To the OP: You didn't mention anything about your PCI/AGP bus speed. I believe your board has PCI/AGP bus lock, but I'm not sure if it's enabled by default. Make sure any settings for AGP or PCI bus speed (not sure what they'll be called) are set to 33/66 instead of AUTO. Otherwise, your AGP/PCI bus frequency might be increasing as you raise the FSB, which can lead to instability.

 

[c627627]

That's for VIA socket A chipsets, his board is nForce2 chipset so he doesn't have to worry about that

 

[KillrBuckeye]

That's for VIA socket A chipsets, his board is nForce2 chipset so he doesn't have to worry about that

I realize it has an AGP bus lock, but I'm not sure that it's enabled by default. It's certainly capable of running way out of spec according to the mobo manual:

AGP Frequency [Auto]
This field sets the frequency of the AGP controller. The default, [Auto], permits automatic selection of optimal AGP frequencies. Configuration options: [50, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 93, 95, 97, 100MHz]

Source: A7N8X-X Manual

So, if left on [Auto], who knows what it will do. I'm merely suggesting to set it at [66] to rule it out as a source of instability.