What is the O/C potential of my new setup?

[jetbluejake]

Just bought some new hardware & I think I could do some overclocking but i've never OC anything before. I haven't even got it yet, should recieve it by monday. here's what I bought:-

INTEL P4 2.8Ghz 800 FSB PROCESSOR WITH HyperThreading TECHNOLOGY
MSI 865PE NEO2 LS i865 P4 S478 MOTHERBOARD
ZALMAN COPPER FLOWER COOLER
2x 256MB Kingston PC3200 DDR400 RAM

gfx card that i already have: Winfast A250TD GeForce4 Ti4400 128MB DDR

So what are my options & can you point me in the direction of some good programs that i could use.

 

[Karbon]

Well, i had a 2.6c with the neo2-LS that you're getting, along with 2x256 corsair XMS pc4000.
using stock cooling i was stable at 3.4 (272 fsb if i remember correctly?) with 1.55 vcore, idle temps 42, load 48.
read the stickies for more info, but this is what i do

make sure agp/pci are locked at 66/33mhz
bump up fsb 5 at a time then restart
up until 250 bump up the fsb 5
after 250ish, bump it up 2-3 at a time
when it starts but displays no video, either
1) reset CMOS
2) give it a fwe minutes and it should revert to bios deafults
set the fsb to however high you could get it
raise the vcore a little
go into windows, run prime95 for 24+ hours, if its stable your all good
if you get errors, increase vcore as long as your temps stay good

this is a great board, after mine died i got an abit ai7 and im very unhappy with it. in fact, i just ordered another one today

i forgot to mention that the neo2 has no fsb:ram divider, so if your getting stuck at low fsb you might need to set your ram to run at 400mhz or even lower, my ddr500 could handle the 272fsb at 1:1

 

[mtb856]

Great Job Karbon,

I think that you got most of the main points. A few things that I could think of...

1) Download Motherboard Monitor 5 (MBM5) to monitor your temps.

2) Before you start oc'ing... use the Live Monitor to get the newest Bios and flash yours to it. Note: After you flash your Bios, it may read "CMOS settings wrong" on startup... in that case, just go to setup and then push the "save settings" button and restart... it should boot up fine, that's just a thing with the MSI Bios. The reason that I say to flash it first is MSI bios has a tendency to read temps wrong, which they fixed in the newest Bios' revisions.

3) On Prime 95, if you don't want to wait for 24hrs just run for 6hrs if you haven't reached your max yet. Running it for 6hrs will find any major stability issues and allows you to finesse your oc without having to wait for 1 day. After you've found a good high oc, then use the 24hr Prime to test how much you can lower your vcore and still maintain stability.

Good Luck oc'ing and Welcome to the Forums (MSI forum too! )

 

[Dcasole]

jetbluejake,

I agree with karbon and mtb856, 3.4 should be no problem with the setup you have. I have the same board with a 2.8 Prescott that will run prime stable at 3.61 with my memory set at 5:4 ( but I chose not to because of the heat issues)

Just remember take it up slow, lock the agp/PCi bus and raise the memmory voltage to 2.7 or 2.8 (use the lowest that will run stable)

One of the great features of the this MSI board (and some others) is if it does not boot, just restart it and it will revert back to the stock CMOS settings.

If you want to learn more about this board use this link to the MSI forums

http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?sid=

Good Luck
Dave