P4P800 Deluex w/ 2.8C...OC = diminishing marginal returns?!

[Picard]

Any suggestions as to why when I OC and go past 210 bus speed that I lose FPS and game performance of time demos in games. Such as Q3 or synthetic benchmarks such as 3dmark? For example, @210 bus, I average 285 FPS in q3 w/ sound enabled (demo 4)...if I OC to 220 I get like 250FPS! My system is stable at 210 and 220 and pc Probe reports my cpu is ~ 37c idle and up to ~45c load. However what is the point of running at ~3.1GHz (14*220) when I am actually losing game performance?

My system: P4P800 Deluex MOBO, 2 160 GIG hdds' raid 0, 2.8C p4 currently @ 2.94, 1024 Corsair XMS platinum heat spreader 3200 mem, enermax 470W power supply, zalman cnps7000-cu, asus 9950 G-Froce Ultra, and sound blaster audigy 2.

I have mem. accel mode enabled, as well as HT and turbo mode. My V-Core is ~1.5V.

Any suggestions or any other info I should provide that may yield clues?

Thanks!

 

[MIAG]

Any suggestions as to why when I OC and go past 210 bus speed that I lose FPS and game performance of time demos in games. Such as Q3 or synthetic benchmarks such as 3dmark? For example, @210 bus, I average 285 FPS in q3 w/ sound enabled (demo 4)...if I OC to 220 I get like 250FPS! My system is stable at 210 and 220 and pc Probe reports my cpu is ~ 37c idle and up to ~45c load. However what is the point of running at ~3.1GHz (14*220) when I am actually losing game performance?

My system: P4P800 Deluex MOBO, 2 160 GIG hdds' raid 0, 2.8C p4 currently @ 2.94, 1024 Corsair XMS platinum heat spreader 3200 mem, enermax 470W power supply, zalman cnps7000-cu, asus 9950 G-Froce Ultra, and sound blaster audigy 2.

I have mem. accel mode enabled, as well as HT and turbo mode. My V-Core is ~1.5V.

Any suggestions or any other info I should provide that may yield clues?

Thanks!

The only thing I can think of is clock throttling, but that shouldn't be happening with Zalman 7000. You didn't toy with anything else that might slow down the system?

 

[Picard]

I had changed some of the v-core voltages but noththing exceeding 1.6volts...when I noticed that it didn't change anything I returned it to normal. Since I don't have much OC experience I was hesitent to do anything else. One note though...when ever I OC either manually or by the set percentages, when I reclock my CPU to "normal" or "standard", I forgot the what the proper term in the bios setting is, back to 2.8 and save and exit, It says something like OC not sucessful and then I have to reload my bios from the Asus disk. That is the only other strange thing that I remember.

 

[Picard]

More info

Tonight I did more experimenting...again...

When I change from using "smart overclocking"...5%, 10%...and if change it from 5% back to standard then reboot, I have to re-setup my bios or load defaults. When I then go to manual and not change the FSB and leave it at 200, when I re-boot I recieve... "bad bios checksum" and have to load my bios from my cd-rom. I upgraded them back to 1016 and finally could start playing again. Mem. Accel Mode and HT are enabled...turbo is on auto.

FSB@205 = 2870MHz I get~273FPS in q3 w/ sound and 42FPS in halo patched
FSB@210 = 2940MHz I get~280FPS in q3 w/ sound and 42FPS in halo patched
FSB@215 = 3012MHz I get~256FPS in q3 w/ sound and 41FPS in halo patched

I did not use 3dmark this time but the performance decreases past 210. My rev. of mobo is 1.02. Any clues or hints? My CPU temp maxes at ~45c under load. I can even run at 220FSB w/ CPU temp not changing but my gamming performance still falls.

 

[Private Joker]

Could be your Memory. Try setting it from Auto to 400MHz. Otherwise it chages the multiplier from 1:1 to 5:4. So your memory would accualy run slower at 210 5:4, than at 200 1:1.

 

[Polargoat]

up the vdimm to 2.85, vcore to 1.6, dram timings 2-3-3-6 burst 8, divider 320/5:4, then up your fsb

 

[ciku]

or if ur getting errors / unstaiblity... u might wanna try lowering dram timings... like 2.5-3-3-6 or 2.5-3-3-7

 

[StarBuck]

I agree with Private Joker.

It is your memory settings.
When I started using the Auto OC , it always seems to want to set my memory speed back to DDR266 (it should be DDR400). Took me awhile to figure out why my performance dropped.


Watch the boot screen and I'll bet you see DDR266 flash by when you try to auto OC.

Cheers

Star Buck

 

[Picard]

Yes...I did notice that. However, even after forcing the mem. to be 400 my performance still was lower at 215 bus than at 210 bus. I finally have some time tonight to tinker more...I will share my results asap!

 

[Picard]

Ok...well, I can finally say the wall I was hitting is b/c of my memory. First I increased VCore to 1.538, but in probe 2.22.02 it says its 1.584, and bus to 210, nothing changed. Then I put bus to 215 w/ VDimm on auto, recieved multiple errors, from registry to memory errors. Upped dimm voltage to 2.65 w/ bus at 214 still errors. I then had timming set as...2.5,3,3,6,burst 8 w/ bus at 214 and vdim at 2.65, again mem error. I but vdimm to auto and I had tearing on my q3 menu screen. Finally I put vdimm to 2.75 and I reached stability!! Now my FPS in q3 ~285 (not that big of a gain) but in halo I went from 41.14 to 53.52!! Idle temp ~ 36c and load ~44c. Going to do many more tests and leave it here to test system stability further. Thanks for getting me past tha wall!! I will keep updating on my progress

 

[Myhre]

Ok...well, I can finally say the wall I was hitting is b/c of my memory. First I increased VCore to 1.538, but in probe 2.22.02 it says its 1.584, and bus to 210, nothing changed. Then I put bus to 215 w/ VDimm on auto, recieved multiple errors, from registry to memory errors. Upped dimm voltage to 2.65 w/ bus at 214 still errors. I then had timming set as...2.5,3,3,6,burst 8 w/ bus at 214 and vdim at 2.65, again mem error. I but vdimm to auto and I had tearing on my q3 menu screen. Finally I put vdimm to 2.75 and I reached stability!! Now my FPS in q3 ~285 (not that big of a gain) but in halo I went from 41.14 to 53.52!! Idle temp ~ 36c and load ~44c. Going to do many more tests and leave it here to test system stability further. Thanks for getting me past tha wall!! I will keep updating on my progress

This is just a thought. Does your 5950 have a Fastwrites option or is that just ATI? I noticed that I was getting a diminished performance at higher fsb speeds on my other setup, and I disabled Fastwrites on my 9800XT and everything seemed to fall into place. It's been a long time since I had a 5950U and I wasn't overclocking much at the time anyway, so I didn't go into settings that much back then. Just a thought though.

 

[recoil69]

i have the p4c800 e deluxe board iam getting same issues when i try to oc i lose fps igo from 5% everything fine see a gain then goto 10% and my fps falls ...

 

[Picard]

recoil69....try what ciku and polargoat recommend. After much tweaking I was able to gain performance!! I went from 210 to 214 and my fps increased as they should!

 

[Polargoat]

like I said before you have to up the vdimm as high as it will go.

YOU HAVE TO!!!!!!!!!!!! 2.85..HIGHER IF ITLL GO HIGHER!!!!! 3.3 MAX

 

[WheaT]

Ok, i have one for you gurus who helped picard....

This is my situation. I have p4p800 dlx witha 2.8c. Currently I have the proc oced with the ai overclocker function on my pc to 10% and in a sec you will know why.

For whatever reason when i get my pc overclocked to where I can take it with a 1:1 mem ratio (which is 3.5 w/ 250 fsb) I start getting hardcore tears in my graphics when I am playing any kind of game or running 3dmark. I will post a link at the bottom. They are like flashes of lightening occuring hundreds of times a min. This only occurs when I have the computer manually overclocked, and the more the overclock, the worse it is. I have no idea what this could be. These are my bios settings. Btw, ive run two instances of prime95 for 24 hours so I know that my oc is stable.

vcore 1.55
vdimm 1.85
ram timings 3.4.4.8 8
mode is standard
fsb 250
agp is locked to 33.66
mem 1:1

I know this isnt the card because it works fine when there isnt an overclock.

One thing I am about to do is update my bios to vs 16, currently its at 14. Just waiting on my buddies floppy drive. The next thing I was going to do was flash my vid cards bios to an XT.

I have been fighting with this for almost 2 weeks now and i just dont know what to do. Tonight I am going to try my mem at a 5:4 ratio and see if that changes anything, however im almost positive it isnt that considering its stock speed is 250 mhz.
http://www.digitalwheat.com/12032/index.html

Plz gimme some ideas to try!

 

[Polargoat]

what are your rigs specs. especially ram. Ram is very important in overclocking

 

[WheaT]

You shoulda read my sig I have kingston hyperX pc4000. So default speed should be 250 mhz

 

[Polargoat]

doh...how did i miss it lol...aight well I would prolly up the vcore to 1.6 for voltage stability. the vdimm obviously need to be at 2.85. now the tricky part is finding the best way to resolve the tearing/instability. try looser timings first, if that doesnt fix it then put the timings back and try lowering the fsb a couple freq. at a time and see if that fixes it. Its kind of a weird issue though because if its a instability issue your pc shouldnt be posting or it will shut down while your playing a game. Also just for troubleshooting try lowering your video O/C. You can also try upping the agp voltage to 1.6 and that might resolve this

 

[WheaT]

The computer is completely stable at 1.55 as mentioned above. Ive run two instances of prime95 for 24 hours, actually 24.5 hours . The timings on my ram are as loose as they will go. I am going to try the agp voltage and see if that helps anything.

 

[neoraistlin]

Question about the max. overclocking ability of the Asus P4P800 mobo

I was browsing the forums and this looked like a good place to post my question. I am in the market for a major computer upgrade. I want a gaming rig that can handle 250 FSB with 1:1 2.5-3-3-6 timings.

Right now I have my eye on an Asus P4P800-SE mobo, PC4000 Ram dual kit from corsair: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=85017-14, and a P4 3.0 C.

I had a couple of questions:
1. I see most OCers going for 2.4 C and 2.8 C and I have read the articles associated with both...but since the 3.0 C is still the same core shouldn't it OC the same? To sum it up is the 3.0 C a good choice for my desired outcome?
2. Does this setup have a high probability of working at my desired speeds (I know OCing has a lot to do with the luck of the draw on the processor)
3. Does this mobo have locked AGP/PCI?

Thanks for the help guys and Clock On!