Northwood overclocking problems

[Cooler666]

I overclocked my P4 Northwood 1.8A processor to 2.1Ghz at FSB 117 and when i start the computer the first time I can go into Windows XP and everything is fine, but when I shutdown the computer and open it again it will not boot to Windows XP.
I tried upping the voltage up to 1.625 and it does the same thing.
I tried FSB's from 117 down to 113 and same thing.
At 112 FSB (@2Ghz) that works fine but i get lockups inside Windows XP sometimes.

Could this be because of my power supply?
It is a Aopen 300W which i got with my case.
My load temperatures are around 48Celcius when i overclock, just one or two degrees higher than when its not overclocked. When it's not overclocked there are no lockups.

I have the Zalman Sunflower and two fans blowing in on it (better temps i checked that blowing out).
(Motherboard Abit TH7II-Raid with 512 Samsung RDRAM)
Tell me what you think, thanks.

 

[VaTechHokies]

I think you might have the cold boot problem that many of the asus boards are having. What happens, and correct me if I am wrong, is that your system is not getting enough voltage. When you are raising the voltage is the bios it works the first time using that voltage, but when you restart your computer, when it first powers up it uses the default 1.5v and then it switches to what you have defined in the bios (1.625 I think is what you said). The only problem with this is that your system won't post at 1.5v. The solution to this, as you have figured out is to either lower you FSB or do the northwood pin trick. Here is a link to another forum for ASUS boards with users have the same problem as you.

As far as the pin trick goes, Batboy wrote the BEST writeup I have seen yet describing the proceudures and which pins to tie to get the needed voltage. (Sorry I couldn't post the link but my computer at work has IE 4.0 and can't do the search on this site...but the review is a sticky under overclocking intel chip sets) The pin trick is really simple to perform and will probably solve your problems.

Hope this helps!

p.s. If you search for "cold boot" in either this forum or the Asus forum, you'll get some very good info!

 

[Cooler666]

Actually i have the Abit TH7II-Raid motherboard. Do you think the pin trick will work? or do you think that its better just to get a bigger power supply?
I can also update my 38 BIOS to the 77 version, but don't think it will help with this problem

 

[VaTechHokies]

I know you have the ABIT board, but I am guessing you are having the same problem because it is a bios issue, not an actual MB problem. The pin trick will 'trick' your mother board into thinking the actual voltage is 1.7v instead of 1.5 (if you tie vid4 and vid3...it is possible to make the default 1.7, 1.75, 1.8, and 1.85 using the pin trick). When you go into bios after performing the trick, it'll show the default as whatever you set it to. This has helped a lot of people get their FSB's higher because with a 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2 (all northies) the system is not getting enough voltage to maintain stability. The 1.6a is fine with the default, that's why you only are seeing this problem with the other chips.

 

[VaTechHokies]

A bigger power supply could never hurt, but I am almost positive its not your problem.

 

[Cooler666]

Thanks, i'm gonna try this out

 

[mikeward]

I have a 350W power supply and have a similar problem. I'm running at 133MHz FSB (with the RAM running at 533 too ). Whenever I cold boot up, I don't POST. But, if I reset the PC after trying that, I POST fine and everything's dandy. I bumped my voltage up to get it to a "true" 1.5V. Maybe I need to take it back down to the bios 1.5V...

 

[Cooler666]

ok i did the wire trick - and it worked, i can set it to higher voltages now in the BIOS

whether the cold boot problem is gone is another thing, i'll play with it around later

 

[VaTechHokies]

That's great to hear! What voltage did you finally decide on?

 

[Cooler666]

Well its still doing the same problem, even at FSB 115 with 1.7V (i tried 1.6V before that). First time it boots into Windows XP, then if i restart it says "file corrupt bla bla bla" and i need to restart again so that it does boot to Windows XP.
so this hasn't fixed the problem, what do i do now?

 

[bygde1]

I got the same problem with my p4 1.8nw and the abit th7-II under Win2000. I tryd the volt trik, but i still wont cold boot anything over 2.0ghz. Got a 350 Enermax PS.

 

[Cooler666]

I don't get a cold boot, i get a sucker message saying that a file is corrupt and Windows XP can't be loaded (is that the same as a cold boot?), but when i restart again it works, its wierd because its stable in Windows XP, tried to decrease/increase voltage same problem.
50% of the time i open my computer i have to restart to get into Windows XP
I'm using a Scsi hard disk as Windows partition, connected to a Adaptec 29160 scsi controller card, could this be causing the problem at higher FSB's? its wierd because when i restart everything is ok and i get into Windows.
My 5v and 12V lines in the PSU look alright.

 

[gone_fishin]

I get the same thing. I got XP on an Ultra 100 IDE card. That message happens if I overclock the cpu too high. If I overclock the mem too high I get a "can't load hive file" message. The really strange thing is I can overclock higher on Linux Mandrake which is on IDE 1, so maybe it is the PCI bus?

 

[Cooler666]

Maybe, although Mandrake may put less stress on the system when loading. In the Bios i put "fixed" so i don't understand why overclocking still affects the PCI, maybe its not really fixed.
I can only overclock up to 110 FSB without it showing that message some of the time.
Don't know if it's worth putting Windows XP on a 120GXP, as it will be slower than the SCSI but maybe it will allow me to overclock more than just 250mhz on a processor which can usually achieve much more than that.

 

[VaTechHokies]

Cooler--
I didn't realize before that you were using scsi. I have read in a couple of places that scsi is just plain hard to overclock very much because it doesn't respond well to being out of spec. This could be what is causing your problem. I am not sure what to say on this one. I am not familiar w/ the abit MB, but if it is anything like the asus p4t-e (im not sure if the abit has dip switches on it) the board has to be overclocked using the dip switches in order to get the 1/4 and 1/2 multipliers so that the pci and agp bus will be in range.

 

[Cooler666]

ok there are 8 Dip Switches:

1) CPU Frequency Auto Setting, Default: ON
2) Select CPU Frequency (100mhz or 133mhz), Default: 133Mhz
3) 100Mhz(Default), Default: ON
4) 100.4Mhz Turbo, Default: OFF
5) Reboot on Second Watchdog Timeout, Default: OFF
6) Force CPU frequency strap to safe mode (1111), Default: ON
7) Use CNR LAN, Default: ON
8) Enable Softmenu, Default: ON

don't know if any of these would help
I think i can set it to 1/4 in BIOS though, won't it make the whole PCI/AGP work slower?

 

[VaTechHokies]

If you can get the pci 1/4 divider and the agp to 1/2 through the bios...You might try setting the FSB to 133 and then put the agp to 1/2 and pci to 1/4 because this makes all the bus's run in spec. Normally, the dividers are 100/3 for the pic (33.3 mhz) and 100/1.5 or 66 for the agp. This does slow down the speed of the bus, but it brings them back closer to spec, as at 117FSB, the pci is running at 117/3 (like your pic is probably right now) which is 39 and your agp is probably currently around 77 mhz. At 133 and pci divider of 1/4, you get pretty darn close to 33, alont w/ the 1/2 divider for the pci you get close to 66.

Hopefully you can understand what I am trying to say (got the country music up too loud to think ). I know its not the clearest. If you do set the dividers, it just might solve your problem. Let me know how it turns out.

p.s. I would also leave your voltage up to 1.7 like you set it earlier cause the northwood is going to need more voltage at 133 FSB

 

[Cooler666]

Ok i played with the BIOS
There is no place where i can actually fix the PCI. But i can fix the AGP which i fixed to 2/4, and it still didn't work, so its not a problem with the graphics card. Also I tried to lower the Memory frequency to 300Mhz, still doesn't work, so its not the RDRAM.

so it looks like its the SCSI controller card doing the problem, but i have no way to lower its fsb.

so what can i do with this?

i'm gonna try flashing the scsi controller to a new version of its BIOS

 

[Cooler666]

ok i updated the SCSI bios, still same problem

anyone got any suggestions before i give up?