When I say "Drastic leap," I don't mean it in a dangerous way. I just mean it's a far cry for most modules of memory.. You're not in danger of harming anything, the computer just might require a BIOS reset, that's all.
Dividers are one thing I never <i>quite</i> got the hang of; suffice it to say, the numbers in dividers (KT333 6:2:1 for example), lists multipliers of the base board clock of 33.33MHz.
x1 is 33.33MHz, which is PCI frequency.
x2 is 66.66MHz, which is AGP frequency.
x6 is ~200MHz, which is the FSB frequency.
P4s also like an asynchronous bus, which means the memory could be running at 200 and the FSB is at 166.. That's what, 6:5?
I don't know. I hate Pentium 4s.
//EDIT:
I know how to work dividers and make a system run appropriately, but I can't explain them for the life of me.
is it dangerous to OC without an agp/pci lock. I was told something about not wanting to run "out of spec" on everything that gets affected without the lock.
It's not dangerous, per se, it just royally ****s your ability to overclock. When you overclock the FSB without PCI/AGP locks, you overclock PCI and AGP which will **** out on you long before a CPU/MoBo/RAM usually will.
so i should just get an intel chipset mobo, thats a pretty inexpensive solution. That would be the smartest way to go right? anyone have any suggestions, I'd like to keep it around 100...
Canterwood is the name of the best chipset Intel engineered for the Pentium 4. It's faster and more overclockable than the new (And pitiful) 915x and 925x chipsets.
1. i want to know if i should oc at all with no agp pci lock and if so what would be a safe goal?
2. when i oc the cpu freq. (the 200mhz fsb) does that affect the ??mhz ram freq?
3. should i change the mobo to fun the ram as pc2700 instead of pc3200 or would i not need to?
3. Is it smarter to wait and get a pci agp locking mobo?
My memory is :
Manufacturer: Geil
Speed: DDR400(PC3200)
Type: 184 Pin DDR SDRAM
Cas Latency: 2.5 7-4-4
Support Voltage: 2.55V-2.95V
Bandwidth: 3.2GB/s.
I would like to run a 233 fsb, would that be too much for just having the cpu fsb adjustment w/o any locks or dividers? i have brand new memory and don't want to hurt it.
If you want to overclock with a good Intel chipset rather than that Via crap, you can go with either a board based on the i865 (Springdale) or i875 (Canterwood) chipset. Of the 2, the Canterwood is the highest performing chipset, but also the more expensive of the 2. The Springdale chipset probably has around 90-95% of the performance of Canterwood, but most of the socket 478 mobo's using that chipset have problems dealing with a Prescott proc's power requirements if you decide to upgrade to a Presshot later on down the road. The Canterwood boards also are strained a bit by a Presshot, but generally their pwm circuitry is a little more robust than the cheaper boards and can deal with the increased load requirements.
As far as boards go, the Abit IC7 (Canterwood) series and the IS7 (Springdale) series are good boards with plenty of overclocking options and are stable (my own personal experience). The Asus P4P800-E series (Springdale) and the P4C800-E series (Canterwood) are also supposed to be good boards too. I've also heard the DFI boards spoken of in good terms, but I don't know much about them myself.
If you are looking for a bargain on the board, check out Newegg's refurb department. That's where I got my IS7 mobo from and it came with everything, but that's not guarranteed. I've also gotten just a bare mobo too from there. Newegg gives you a 15 day warrantee on their refurbs, which is enough time to check a board out and make sure it's performing properly.
I was checking a few vendors out and Newegg doesn't have any Intel boards in stock right now. ExcaliberPC has some pretty good deals though, with an open box IC7-G board for $108 (new for $139) and a new IC7 (no onboard ethernet like the IC7-G) for $111 and the 2 boards are basically the same except the "G" version has onboard gigabit ethernet and maybe something else (I can't remember, I have the IC7-G). ExcaliberPC is another good vendor to deal with too; that's where I've bought a few procs, my NF7-S 2.0 and my Antec TrueControl 550 from.
EDIT: If you want to try to overclock that Assrock board with the Via chipset, set your memory to 166. That way you can up the fsb speed to around 225-230 or so without getting the memory speed too high on that Geil ram. That Geil ram sounds like the stuff a buddy of mine has and it doesn't have much headroom at all; doesn't like speeds much higher than 200. If you try to get the fsb up much higher than 230 fsb speed with that Via chipset, you will be seriously overclocking the pci bus and may run into data corruption problems and the AGP bus will also be similarly overclocked too, which could also give problems.
I think I'll leave this system alone and build another to oc, maybe amd.. thanks for that mobo info though always good to know. (a little rhyming action there) I need this one up and running for school.
Check out the refurbs at Newegg every now and then though. I got my IS7 for around $50-60 from there and that's worth it for a cheap upgrade path for your present components. Since your system is already working fine at stock speeds, it's not like you have to have a new mobo right now and if you can find a deal like that, it might be worth that much to you. I don't know about that Via chipset's stability but the IS7 and IC7-G are some kick-ass boards for a 2.4C P4.
OK I got my 2.4c running at 2.8 which I'm pretty happy with since when I started this thread I did'nt know what overclocking meant. Now I need to fine tune some things.
First off is latency speed related? what is faster 2.0 at 166mhz or 2.5 at 200mhz?
I get some memory errors in memtest about seven but no failures, this goes away when I clock back to the standard. It does'nt bother me at all but should it?
Also I have the choice of running ram voltage high or normal and agp voltage at high or normal. what should I do with those?
I have an AGP setting for normal or strong? whats up with that, i think strong looked good to me...
My system info is in previous posts if your wondering and my memory is running at
2.5,2,2,6 right now? what would be optimal?
If I run my memory as auto select it runs at 166mhz and I get the same mbs per second, is that the way to go or should I manualyy put it up to 200mhz, it's geil pc3200, not great but decent.
2.5 at 200 is faster.
Errors mean your games will crash when the memory is overclocked. This should bother you.
AGP Voltage should be normal.
RAM voltage should be high when OCing.
Set AGP to normal; strong could make the computer unstable.
Optimal depends on your PC.
PC3200 should definitely be run at 3200; but geil blows and probably won't be good at anything but 2.5/3/3 or 2.5/4/4.
Comments
Dividers are one thing I never <i>quite</i> got the hang of; suffice it to say, the numbers in dividers (KT333 6:2:1 for example), lists multipliers of the base board clock of 33.33MHz.
x1 is 33.33MHz, which is PCI frequency.
x2 is 66.66MHz, which is AGP frequency.
x6 is ~200MHz, which is the FSB frequency.
P4s also like an asynchronous bus, which means the memory could be running at 200 and the FSB is at 166.. That's what, 6:5?
I don't know. I hate Pentium 4s.
//EDIT:
I know how to work dividers and make a system run appropriately, but I can't explain them for the life of me.
2. when i oc the cpu freq. (the 200mhz fsb) does that affect the ??mhz ram freq?
3. should i change the mobo to fun the ram as pc2700 instead of pc3200 or would i not need to?
3. Is it smarter to wait and get a pci agp locking mobo?
My memory is :
Manufacturer: Geil
Speed: DDR400(PC3200)
Type: 184 Pin DDR SDRAM
Cas Latency: 2.5 7-4-4
Support Voltage: 2.55V-2.95V
Bandwidth: 3.2GB/s.
I would like to run a 233 fsb, would that be too much for just having the cpu fsb adjustment w/o any locks or dividers? i have brand new memory and don't want to hurt it.
As far as boards go, the Abit IC7 (Canterwood) series and the IS7 (Springdale) series are good boards with plenty of overclocking options and are stable (my own personal experience). The Asus P4P800-E series (Springdale) and the P4C800-E series (Canterwood) are also supposed to be good boards too. I've also heard the DFI boards spoken of in good terms, but I don't know much about them myself.
If you are looking for a bargain on the board, check out Newegg's refurb department. That's where I got my IS7 mobo from and it came with everything, but that's not guarranteed. I've also gotten just a bare mobo too from there. Newegg gives you a 15 day warrantee on their refurbs, which is enough time to check a board out and make sure it's performing properly.
I was checking a few vendors out and Newegg doesn't have any Intel boards in stock right now. ExcaliberPC has some pretty good deals though, with an open box IC7-G board for $108 (new for $139) and a new IC7 (no onboard ethernet like the IC7-G) for $111 and the 2 boards are basically the same except the "G" version has onboard gigabit ethernet and maybe something else (I can't remember, I have the IC7-G). ExcaliberPC is another good vendor to deal with too; that's where I've bought a few procs, my NF7-S 2.0 and my Antec TrueControl 550 from.
Here's a link to ExcaliberPC's Abit mobo page.
EDIT: If you want to try to overclock that Assrock board with the Via chipset, set your memory to 166. That way you can up the fsb speed to around 225-230 or so without getting the memory speed too high on that Geil ram. That Geil ram sounds like the stuff a buddy of mine has and it doesn't have much headroom at all; doesn't like speeds much higher than 200. If you try to get the fsb up much higher than 230 fsb speed with that Via chipset, you will be seriously overclocking the pci bus and may run into data corruption problems and the AGP bus will also be similarly overclocked too, which could also give problems.
First off is latency speed related? what is faster 2.0 at 166mhz or 2.5 at 200mhz?
I get some memory errors in memtest about seven but no failures, this goes away when I clock back to the standard. It does'nt bother me at all but should it?
Also I have the choice of running ram voltage high or normal and agp voltage at high or normal. what should I do with those?
I have an AGP setting for normal or strong? whats up with that, i think strong looked good to me...
My system info is in previous posts if your wondering and my memory is running at
2.5,2,2,6 right now? what would be optimal?
If I run my memory as auto select it runs at 166mhz and I get the same mbs per second, is that the way to go or should I manualyy put it up to 200mhz, it's geil pc3200, not great but decent.
Thanks everybody
Errors mean your games will crash when the memory is overclocked. This should bother you.
AGP Voltage should be normal.
RAM voltage should be high when OCing.
Set AGP to normal; strong could make the computer unstable.
Optimal depends on your PC.
PC3200 should definitely be run at 3200; but geil blows and probably won't be good at anything but 2.5/3/3 or 2.5/4/4.