Issues with OC'ing an Intel P4 2.4B

[Caddy]

Hello all!


I've been lurking on these forums for the last month or so soaking up all the information i can about OC'ing and in particular OC'ing a P4. I have used the search thread and yes there is a wealth of information about the P4 but i havent seen anyone raise a question about a problem that seems to plague me.

I recently upgraded my friends videocard to a GTX 260 so he gave me the one below, I also installed 6 GB ram (Vista) and a new blu-ray/DVD/CD etc.... player in his compy so he gave me his old parts. I had the p4 in an old compaq that used to be the family computer until we all got laptops. All in all I only had to purchase a new mobo (old one didnt have pci-e) and a hard-drive. This new setup absolutely leaves my laptop and of course old Compaq in the dust however i feel its now limited by the P4.... hence the O.C.

My progress with this is as follows. This is my STOCK CPU-ID configuration and info:

Intel P4 Northwood 2.4B
P4M900-M4 Biostar socket 478 MOBO
2 x 2GB DDR2 PC6400 Crucial Ballistix
PCIe Nvidia GeForce 9500GS
Western Digital 320 GB Hard Drive
And 1 CD/CD-rw and DVD optical drives..... salvaged from my buddies compy so i dont know exact specs/speeds only that they both work and were free














Those are my stats. When i first began to OC i went up in 3 mhz increments. Starting at 133 to 136.....139.....142.....145.....148.
All was well until i hit 148 i was running prime95 and i went to click on the cpuz icon on my desktop when the system froze.

Prime95 hadnt detected any errors and had been running for about 6 mins when it froze. I let the computer sit but it never recovered so i pressed the reset button. Upon doing so when the computer finished posting it told me that a file got corrupted in windows/system32/config/.....(i have the exact text copied somewhere) Anyways i want able to boot into xp.

So i got out the installation CD and tried reparing but that was to no avail. Finally i gave up and tried to completely re-install xp. I didnt get very far as setup kept telling me that my disk was damaged..... So i returned all my Bios settings back to default and i was able to re-install xp.

I tried to OC to 148 again this time setting the VDimm to +.3v for a total of 2.19 on the ram but the same complete crash requiring me to re-install xp.... so my question is............... Is this normal, to have to re-install xp after a failed OC?

Also i have the ram set to auto SPD and im almost positive that i cant adjust my Vcore as ive been unable to find it in my bios.

Another interesting thing i noticed in my STOCK bios config i see : Async PCIE CLK is set at 100mhz... i have the option of going up to 150 but no lower than 100, i keep reading however that this clk should be at 33mhz?

Any other help or suggestions would be gladly welcome!

 

[Technophobe]

If your MB doesn't have any Vcore adjustments, my guess is that it is a bit light on for memory multi / timings as well.

In a normal OC setup, no, you shouldn''t have to reinstall the operating system every time it crashes. Usually, if you leave the testing programs (prime, occt, orthos etc.) running for long enough after each step in FSB, it will error out in the program rather than the OS.

OCing a normal P4 in a motherboard with limited options is like hitting your head against a brick wall. Get to the point just before you have it crash all the time and be thankful you got that far. When you have enough money buy a decent CPU and MB with more capabilities.

 

[Caddy]

If your MB doesn't have any Vcore adjustments, my guess is that it is a bit light on for memory multi / timings as well.

In a normal OC setup, no, you shouldn''t have to reinstall the operating system every time it crashes. Usually, if you leave the testing programs (prime, occt, orthos etc.) running for long enough after each step in FSB, it will error out in the program rather than the OS.

OCing a normal P4 in a motherboard with limited options is like hitting your head against a brick wall. Get to the point just before you have it crash all the time and be thankful you got that far. When you have enough money buy a decent CPU and MB with more capabilities.

When I bought my motherboard my biggest concern was that it had a ethernet port and a PCIe slot.


I ran prime95 for 11hours and it completed 220 tests with 0 errors and 0 warnings. I think i will leave it at 2.76Ghz... beats the stock 2.53Ghz, shameful compared to what some other guys have achieved though.

While doing the prime95 i had my ram voltage bumped up to 2.19v (+.3 increase. ) If my ram took an 11 hour prime95 beating at that voltage would you say its safe to keep it there?



-Thanks for the advice Technophobe.

 

[Evilsizer]

via chipsets are not good for ocing, its even worse when they are hybrids. by that i mean that they support both DDR and DDR2 ram... cause you threw me for a loop with a 478 cpu using DDR2 ram. my last 478 rig used DDR and that was a 3.0c on a Abit AI7 motherboard.