OC'ing

[Jokerswild]

Ok I overclocked it but how do I change the HT it's too high. I went to 205 for the FSB I guess. Here's a CPUZ shot.

[yurimxpxman]

I can't read the screen lol.

(BTW, I think we need an overclocking forum.)

[Lead Head]

Dont worry, Your HT should be golden upto around 1100-1200, possibly higher. :)

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Lead Head

Dont worry, Your HT should be golden upto around 1100-1200, possibly higher. :)

I disagree. It might be able to run that high and seem stable, but the fact of the matter is it is out of spec and can still cause instability somewhere. And you won't get any performance increase by having a super high HT bus speed.

Just lower your LDT multiplier from the default 5x to 4x or 3x and that will give you a lot of headroom.

The 4x LDT multi will give you up to about 250mhz HTT (because 250*4 = 1000) and 3x will let you hit 333mhz HTT (333*4 = 999).

The LDT multi can be listed under different things in the BIOS. Usually it is found under "Advanced Chipset Features" and often labeled HT link or something. It should give options like 1000, 800, 600, 400 or 5x, 4x, 3, 2x. 1000 would be 5x, 800 would be 4x, and so on...

[Jokerswild]

Thanks

[Jokerswild]

Ok here's the latest. Now what do I do to check stability and how much and often should I increase the OC. What about the voltage?

[Lead Head]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Ok here's the latest. Now what do I do to check stability and how much and often should I increase the OC. What about the voltage?
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...eenShot006.jpg

Go on google and search for Prime95, download it, start it up and hit "Just Stress Testing" and run a burn. I say if prime doesnt not stop within 10-24 hours, it safe to start bumping the speed up some more. When prime does eventually fail after say 10sec-9Hours:59 minutes, you have to go into the BIOS and raise the voltage in small incriments, 0.025mv at a time. Then go back and stress test again..Yes it is a very very slow process. :(

BTW, your HTT is kind of low...a 4x LDT would be fine, i mean you dont want to hinder your system performence now :P

[Jokerswild]

Thanks, it is set at 4x right now. It was set at auto to start with.

[Lead Head]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Thanks, it is set at 4x right now. It was set at auto to start with.

Ah..I personally wouldn't let the HTT go below 800Mhz....

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Thanks, it is set at 4x right now. It was set at auto to start with.

Yep, that's what it does. Now that you have some headroom, you can start increasing the HTT frequency until you hit instability. Like Lead Head said, download and install Prime95 or StressPrime2004. I kindof like StressPrime better than Prime95, but whatever floats your boat since they both do the same thing (only the interface is different). I like SP because it tells you how long it has been running. I like to get at least 12 hours of priming in and I feel pretty confident. The Small FFT's seem to stress the CPU much better. So I like to do Small FFT's on prime and then run Memtest86+ or MemTest to test the memory. Memtest86+ requires you to burn a bootable CD with the files on it and you boot from the CD to run the test. That is nice because it has access to virtually all of your memory. MemTest is a windows app that just tests your memory within windows. The problem with this is that it (obviously) can't test all of the memory because some of it is in use by the application and by the operating system its self. So if you choose to use MemTest, let it go at least "200% coverage" just to make sure it is getting the majority of your memory. I've used both, but kindof prefer Memtest86+. If you use Memtest86+, then let it at least run through all 8 tests. However, if you just want to quickly see if it is gonna have a chance to be stable or not, you can just run test 5 and that is usually the one that catches errors. So if you run test 5, and it bonks, then you know you need to go back and change something. But if it completes fine, then you can start the testing over from test 1 and test all the way through all the tests once or twice and know for sure that the memory is stable. This is probably way more than you ever wanted to know, so I'll let you get started and ask questions as you run into problems before I write a whole book on stability testing. As you can see, there are many ways to go about this and these are just my thoughts and methodologies.

Once you have Primed the CPU and tested the memory, then you can run games and system benchmarks and just use your computer like you normally would to see if there are any lingering problems. 3DMark01 has the ability to be looped as many times as you want, and I've found that is a good way to test for complete system performance/stability for a few hours. You can also run full system benchmarking utilities like Futuremark's PCMark05, Lavalys' Everest, or Aquamark3.

Every time I change something, I will run at least one basic stability test (usually Memtest86+ or MemTest) to make sure the change is good. This also gives me a baseline to go off of for when more/different changes are made down the road (so you know what settings worked and what didn't). For this reason, I've found it is also good to keep a little "journal" or list of settings you've tried and a note on whether or not it was stable and what your benchmark results were.

It is usually common practice to start overclocking the memory first and find the maximum potential of that, then put the memory on a divider and start overclocking the CPU to find the maximum speed there. Then, once you know your boundaries, you can better overclock the two together (at least as much as the motherboard will let you) and increase the total system overclock for maximum performance. I've already typed way too much and you probably didn't even read all that, so I'm gonna stop here and let you start asking some questions before I continue to ramble on about nothing... :flute: