So, now I have finished it up. The 10GB overclock.
It's not that strange as it may look.
I work as a reseller of computerparts at this place (in swedish *lol*) and I have access to a lot of boring PC-parts but now and then it's christmas when unpacking.
I collected ten different mem stcks to test at home.
1 kit of Crucial Ballistix Z503 (DDR500)
1 kit of Crucial Ballistix Z503 (DDR500)
4 sticks of ADATA with Samsung UCCC (DDR400)
2 sticks of regular Samsung (DDR400)
That sums up to 10GB of memory
The system:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe with 1016 BIOS
AMD 64 3500+ Venice (on of the first on the market)
Antec NeoPower 480W
ATI X1800 XT 512
Everything cooled with water and a fan blowing on the mems to avoid overheating.
How I did it:
I was ONLY interested in how high I could OC them all. So I keep the CPU around 2.2GHz (it can go up to 2.85) so I would be sure a crash was not due to CPU.
I used SuperPi Mod and Prime95 to test stability.
So to get started I tested the Samsung in pair's (2x1GB)
I had no real expectation on those, I mean Samsung is just regular doll sticks
but they surprised me a lot. I wanted to test them at 1T since that is the aim on all tests.
I got the samsung as far up as 460MHz at 2.6 volt and running 3-3-3-8 1T
When trying 470MHz I could run SuperPi for about a few rounds below 1M but when trying 1M or 2M or Prime it would result in a crash and reboot.
So samsung is stable at 460MHz @ 1T and that is pretty awesome.
Higher voltage did no difference.
Second was the ADATA with Samsung UCCC and I had four of them so I set them up in two pairs and started with the first one.
Setting 1T to start with and started easy since I have no idea on how far these reach.
430, CHECK!
440, CHECK!
450, CHECK!
460, CHECK!
Now it's getting boring so I cracked it all upp to 500MHz as if that would have worked, but it did - for a second or two! CRASH!
Reboot and more voltage (2.8v) so see if 500 was possible. It was not so I went back to 490MHz and that worked fine with Pi and Prime.
Got curious and wanted to get magic 500 again but realized after an hour of tweaking that 498MHz was max.
The second set of ADATA performed the EXACT same way. 498MHz at 2.8v and 3-3-3-8 1T
That ain't bird**** huh? ADATA is cheaper then the Samsung but performs better by far.
Now over to the beast's - Crucial Ballistix Z503 2x1GB Kit.
The same thing is done here but I go for 500MHz at the start since that is rated STANDARD speed of these sticks
(rated 500-3-4-4-10 1T) but I instantly get a crash - WHAT THE H**L !?!?!?!
Not even 500MHz from memorys that people are running at 614MHz @ 3-3-3-8 1T
I got so disapointed that I ripped them out instantly figuring they were broken right from start. I inserted the other pair I got (not often you have two kits of those in your hand).
I thought no less of these so I set 500MHz right away with 2.85v and 1T and the most loosen timings there is (3-4-4-10) but I got the exact same behavior of these - CRASH ALL THE WAY TO HELL IN A SECOND.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? ADATA runs 98MHz over specs, Samsung runs 60MHz over specs and Crucial can't even idle at rated specs even when overvolted!
Hours and hours have now been spent testing EVERY possible setting. Everything from 2.5v to 3.0v. All timings from 2-2-2-5 1T to 3-4-4-10 1T
Every combination I can come up with have been tested with BOTH kits and there is NO CHANCE to get on, or over 500MHz at 1T.
Yeah, you see it now? I say 1T all the time but I expect no less. Running them on 2T gets me to 280FSB (560MHz) but thats unstable.
If you take a look at THIS LIST you see people running them at 1T.
I haven't figured this one out yet, Is it my CPU (bad memorycontroller) or is it my motherboard that is not compatible
(I have even replaced it during testing to make sure it was not just broken, but all is still the same).
So after testing it all I would like to hear suggestions from you what this could come from.
Maybe, maybe the ADATA got the same crashes as Crucial got because when you think of it NOT ONE SINGLE test got me over 500MHz.
4 stcks of ADATA and 4 sticks of Crucial all crashed at 500MHz regardless of voltage or settings. Oh one more thing, when the crashes came it all looked the same.
I got a Bluescreen telling me that a certain file crashed. The file was not the same twice, but it was ALWAYS a file you could trace to the core of windows itself. It could be like, ntfs.sys, usb.sys, kernel.sys, win32.sys or other similar.
That may mean nothing but it seems it was clean system hangs all the times and not just the strange crashes you get when playing a game or OC'ing the VGA or CPU.
It's not that strange as it may look.
I work as a reseller of computerparts at this place (in swedish *lol*) and I have access to a lot of boring PC-parts but now and then it's christmas when unpacking.
I collected ten different mem stcks to test at home.
1 kit of Crucial Ballistix Z503 (DDR500)
1 kit of Crucial Ballistix Z503 (DDR500)
4 sticks of ADATA with Samsung UCCC (DDR400)
2 sticks of regular Samsung (DDR400)
That sums up to 10GB of memory
The system:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe with 1016 BIOS
AMD 64 3500+ Venice (on of the first on the market)
Antec NeoPower 480W
ATI X1800 XT 512
Everything cooled with water and a fan blowing on the mems to avoid overheating.
How I did it:
I was ONLY interested in how high I could OC them all. So I keep the CPU around 2.2GHz (it can go up to 2.85) so I would be sure a crash was not due to CPU.
I used SuperPi Mod and Prime95 to test stability.
So to get started I tested the Samsung in pair's (2x1GB)
I had no real expectation on those, I mean Samsung is just regular doll sticks
but they surprised me a lot. I wanted to test them at 1T since that is the aim on all tests.I got the samsung as far up as 460MHz at 2.6 volt and running 3-3-3-8 1T
When trying 470MHz I could run SuperPi for about a few rounds below 1M but when trying 1M or 2M or Prime it would result in a crash and reboot.
So samsung is stable at 460MHz @ 1T and that is pretty awesome.
Higher voltage did no difference.
Second was the ADATA with Samsung UCCC and I had four of them so I set them up in two pairs and started with the first one.
Setting 1T to start with and started easy since I have no idea on how far these reach.
430, CHECK!
440, CHECK!
450, CHECK!
460, CHECK!
Now it's getting boring so I cracked it all upp to 500MHz as if that would have worked, but it did - for a second or two! CRASH!
Reboot and more voltage (2.8v) so see if 500 was possible. It was not so I went back to 490MHz and that worked fine with Pi and Prime.
Got curious and wanted to get magic 500 again but realized after an hour of tweaking that 498MHz was max.
The second set of ADATA performed the EXACT same way. 498MHz at 2.8v and 3-3-3-8 1T
That ain't bird**** huh? ADATA is cheaper then the Samsung but performs better by far.
Now over to the beast's - Crucial Ballistix Z503 2x1GB Kit.
The same thing is done here but I go for 500MHz at the start since that is rated STANDARD speed of these sticks
(rated 500-3-4-4-10 1T) but I instantly get a crash - WHAT THE H**L !?!?!?!
Not even 500MHz from memorys that people are running at 614MHz @ 3-3-3-8 1T
I got so disapointed that I ripped them out instantly figuring they were broken right from start. I inserted the other pair I got (not often you have two kits of those in your hand).
I thought no less of these so I set 500MHz right away with 2.85v and 1T and the most loosen timings there is (3-4-4-10) but I got the exact same behavior of these - CRASH ALL THE WAY TO HELL IN A SECOND.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? ADATA runs 98MHz over specs, Samsung runs 60MHz over specs and Crucial can't even idle at rated specs even when overvolted!
Hours and hours have now been spent testing EVERY possible setting. Everything from 2.5v to 3.0v. All timings from 2-2-2-5 1T to 3-4-4-10 1T
Every combination I can come up with have been tested with BOTH kits and there is NO CHANCE to get on, or over 500MHz at 1T.
Yeah, you see it now? I say 1T all the time but I expect no less. Running them on 2T gets me to 280FSB (560MHz) but thats unstable.
If you take a look at THIS LIST you see people running them at 1T.
I haven't figured this one out yet, Is it my CPU (bad memorycontroller) or is it my motherboard that is not compatible
(I have even replaced it during testing to make sure it was not just broken, but all is still the same).
So after testing it all I would like to hear suggestions from you what this could come from.
Maybe, maybe the ADATA got the same crashes as Crucial got because when you think of it NOT ONE SINGLE test got me over 500MHz.
4 stcks of ADATA and 4 sticks of Crucial all crashed at 500MHz regardless of voltage or settings. Oh one more thing, when the crashes came it all looked the same.
I got a Bluescreen telling me that a certain file crashed. The file was not the same twice, but it was ALWAYS a file you could trace to the core of windows itself. It could be like, ntfs.sys, usb.sys, kernel.sys, win32.sys or other similar.
That may mean nothing but it seems it was clean system hangs all the times and not just the strange crashes you get when playing a game or OC'ing the VGA or CPU.
