Overclocking problem

[FogEater 0]

Hi,

 

I have a little overclocking problem. My system is as follows: KT7A-Raid, Geforce3, 392mb ram, Athlon 1.33ghz.

 

Before installing XP I used to run Millenium. In the motherboard Bios I had setup the CPU as 1.4ghz in the Softmenu. Nothing else, I didn't modify the vcore etc...

Everything was just fine: my cpu run at 1.4ghz, no crash, no blue screen.

 

Now I have installed XP and am very satisfied with it. The only problem is that the small overclock from 1.33 to 1.4 doesn't work anymore. As soon as the boot process is about to finish, I get a blue screen of death. Anf, if the boot process ends without problems, I get the same error message when launching Quake III.

 

Now, is there any slution to this? Can I overclock my CPU under XP exactly as I did under Millenium?

 

Thanks

[Brian Frank 0]

The NT-based OS's (NT/2k/XP) are a bit more sensitive to hardware than Win9x. You didn't mention raising the Vcore any under XP--you might wanna give that a shot. Along those same lines, not every CPU overclocks the same.

[Palos 0]

Realistically speaking, how much improvement do you expect from a 1.33@1.4 GHz???

[FogEater 0]

Quote:

Realistically speaking, how much improvement do you expect from a 1.33@1.4 GHz???

Realistically speaking, I know it's enough

[spacey 0]

lol, right. its all in your head. how can u notice 70mhz when your running like over a 1ghz. up the voltage, if that doesn't work, its not like you've lost anything.

[FogEater 0]

Well I get a 11 fps improvement when running Quake III timedemo, that's the difference between 1.33 and 1.4ghz

 

However, I've tried to set the vcore at 1.80 but the PC hangs and I don't feel like raising it even more. Perhaps I'd better foget about this overclock

[maledict 0]

Hi guys,

 

Don't have a solution to the above problem but would like to ask a question along the same lines.

 

I'm also having problems overclocking on XP. I'm fairly new to this so I began by attempting a fairly small overclock (P4 2GHz to 2.3GHz) because I wasn't confident about messing around with the voltage settings.

 

However, even this small increase makes XP have a big strop at me. At 2.3 it booted to a certain extend but then decided it wouldn't go any further because some random file was missing. Clocking back to 2.0 made it decide it could find it after all.

 

I then decided to scale it down to a 2.2GHz overclock which lead to it booting fully but that lasted about 5 minutes when Norton gave me a virus detection error followed by XP throwing up the blue screen of death. Once again clocking back to 2.0 lead to Norton sheepishly declaring that there were no viruses after all and XP behaving quite normally.

 

WHAT'S GOING ON???

 

Cheers anyone who can help with this

 

Mal

[Sampson 0]

Overclocking is dependent on a lot of things - one of which is the operating system, but it is not the most important.

You didn't mention the motherboard you are using. Before attempting to overclock any board, read the review on that board. Abit and Asus are spe[censored]ts at overclocking because they can isolate the raising of the front side bus from affecting the AGP and the memory. If the reviewer says your board is a poor overclocker, don't bother.

The next thing is the processor. Your 2.0 P4 is not a good overclocker. The ones you read about the most are the 2.4 and the 2.8's - and then, those that came from a particular manufacturing site. Why? Sometimes, I believe Intel plays with reviewers by classifying chips as possessing lower speeds than what they actually are capable of. When chips are produced they don't have one belt putting out 2.4's and another 3.2's - these things are all produced at once and a chip (or a batch of chips) are tested and given an initial minimum speed. So, even if you have a board that is rated high in its ability to overclock, it will make no difference if your chip is a "bad" overclocker. Then, in relation to the processor is HEAT. You want to overclock, don't do it with stock fans. Even if you succeed with your boosting the speed even a little, heat will catch up with you with that chip.

The main drawbacks to posting into the system are the memory and the video. You are changing the timing and timing is everything in terms of memory. You really do have to have good memory and don't be surprised at the heat that comes off of them. Again, if you haven't thought out how you are going to get the heat off the memory, you won't succeed. Worse, you may be taking a perfectly good unit and turning it into a boat anchor.

Unless you want to play with this and the unit you are working with is good for experimenting, overclocking is interesting. If you are doing this so that you can play a game faster, think about buying a faster system altogether.

[maledict 0]

Sampson,

 

Thanks for your quick reply.

 

My motherboard is a Gigabyte 8IRXP ... it is 'meant' to be an overclock friendly board but it has problems with POST unless you flash the bios to the f9 release (which I've done).

 

My interest in overclocking is purely curiosity. I don't have a particular result in terms of gaming/application performance that I'm desperate to achieve. At the end of the day if I can't make it work for me then I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

 

In terms of cooling I'm using a thermalright XP120 on my CPU and an NB1 on my northbridge. 2.2GHz gives me an idle temp of about 41 degrees - not antartic but enough so I'm thinking heat isn't my problem (unless you mean that the RAM chips themselves become too hot, in which case can you suggest a way for me to bring the temperature down?)

 

From what you've said so far I'm guessing my memory is the cause of the instability. I'm not sure what manufacturer it is but I'm fairly certain it's pretty much bog standard DDR. What threw me really was the result - i.e. the random virus message and the subsequent blue screen. I was expecting it to either work or not work but obviously it's not quite as simple as that.

 

What's the situation with modifying voltages? Is this likely to solve my problem or not do you think?

 

Thanks,

 

Mal

[Sampson 0]

Have you tried the "Overclocking utility" provided by Gigabyte?

 

As to increasing the voltage, you can, but do so at small increments. This will not cure the memory problem however.

[ScinteX 0]

You know one day it will be the 50Hz of the electricity that will be the bottleneck

 

Seriously though, my interest was curiosity too and in the end I came up the worst problem....the hardware was the bottlenck. My old (note that I say old ;( ) CPU was screaming away whilst my (good at the time) 20Gb WD drive chugged along!

 

As for my rig now, well that just got stoooopid since now it sounds like a fighter plane ready for take off. Yes it goes fast and yes i love it but the whooshing sound does my head in.

 

Anyhow post back when you need to know if UV liquid is worth it in your new cooler