IC7/Northwood Overclocking Continues

LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
edited August 2005 in Hardware
Took a long hiatus from overclocking system 1 (in signature) due to changing careers, moving, fishing...what have you. Got the itch today, and thought I'd continue where I left off two years ago when I built this rig. Seems as though better DRAM and an upgraded PSU have paid off. The below OC is with two instances of Folding@Home running as well as a bunch of background stuff - Dimes, Electron Microscope, et cetera. DRAM timings at CAS 2, 7/3/3. Ran 3DMark03 just as a test. Completed without a hickup.

Comments

  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Looks good! :thumbsup:
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited July 2005
    That's a fine Northie you got there, Leo. I wish my 2.4 would overclock that well.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Earlier today I booted into Windows at 3.64, but it crashed as soon as I tried to access the Internet.

    Front side bus is at 257 (1028 quad), but I've left the RAM at only 400MHz, CAS 2, 7/3/3. At 3.5 GHz, I always ran the RAM at 400, CAS 2, 6/2/2. Tomorrow (oops, gues that's today, I'm up late again) I'll try again for 6/2/2.

    Yeah, I got the luck of the draw with this CPU.
  • heisestheisest
    edited August 2005
    I am new to overclocking. I have a Northwood 3.0 and was trying to overclock it but so far when I changed the processor speed to either 3.4 or 3.6 when I reboot instead of seeing three hard drives (one of which is my system SATA drive) all I see is one drive and it won't boot. Is there other setting that I should be looking at to make this work?? Thanks in advance.
  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited August 2005
    do not necessarily expect results like Leo's
    my 2.8 northwood will only do 3.0, and just barely that (this is watercooled, i've switched PSUs, mobos, it is DEFINITELY the chip)

    if your system is only seeing one drive, i would guess either you don't have your PCI/AGP frequency set to locked, or something else has gone awry
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited August 2005
    Heh Im so glad my old 2.4C would do 3.6GHZ prime 95 stable.
  • rykoryko new york
    edited August 2005
    nice job leo! my 2.8c limit is 3.5 (250fsb), i had it a 3.6ghz stable in BIOS before, but it BSOD's upon entering windows.

    maybe i need a RAM and psu upgrade too and i could be stable at 3.6!!!
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    The P4 Northwood champs tend to be the 2.8s. I haven't seen in remarkable OCs touted for users with 3.0 and above. That 2.4 OC above is outstanding.

    I haven't had the 3.6 OC for a couple weeks now. We had a heat wave (laugh if you wish) of about 80*F. My home office is on the third floor - gets pretty warm from the household heat rising. The 3.6 OC just wasn't stable with indicated CPU core temp running at 55 and 56. I've locked the PCI/AGP ratio at stock. FSB is set at 250. DRAM running at 6/2/2.
  • heisestheisest
    edited August 2005
    And here I thought a 3.0 might get to 4.0 :confused:
    I've seen another site that is suppose to talk all about Northwood overclocking but I can't seem to get to it.
    www.vr-zone.com/guides/Intel/Northwood

    Edit: Now I can...
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited August 2005
    Leonardo wrote:
    The P4 Northwood champs tend to be the 2.8s. I haven't seen in remarkable OCs touted for users with 3.0 and above. That 2.4 OC above is outstanding.

    I haven't had the 3.6 OC for a couple weeks now. We had a heat wave (laugh if you wish) of about 80*F. My home office is on the third floor - gets pretty warm from the household heat rising. The 3.6 OC just wasn't stable with indicated CPU core temp running at 55 and 56. I've locked the PCI/AGP ratio at stock. FSB is set at 250. DRAM running at 6/2/2.

    It involved 1.8V on the core.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    And here I thought a 3.0 might get to 4.0
    Usually, the top of line CPUs that are sold by either Intel or AMD are that - the cores off the wafer that had the fewest defects and were indeed the top performers. Other chips off the wafer will be badged/limited according to their tested ability. Others will be badged to fill speed specifications for marketing. It is possible to have, say a wafer with all cores on it tested good for 3.4GHz. They would probably select a handful to be sold for top dollar at 3.4, a few more for 3.2, 3.0 and so forth. Some of the 3.4 capable cores will be badged at 2.8 and 2.4 to round out lower cost niches - marketing. The good overclocking chips are the top grade chips that have badged at a lower rating. When there are series of consistent, uniform high quality finished wafers at the fabrication facility, the better the odds the lower badged chips will be good overclockers, because in reality, those chips are high performers that have been speed limited at the factory. Generally, the higher badged series chips are not good overclockers, because they'be been badged accurately.
    It involved 1.8V on the core.
    With mine, at either 3.5GHz or 3.6, I run the CPU at 1.575V. Higher voltage than that makes no difference at all except for waste heat.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited August 2005
    I keep failing prime after 2hours with less then 1.8V.
  • rykoryko new york
    edited August 2005
    mine does 3.5 with 1.6v---prime95 stable for 10+hours. any less and i can't get there. any more and it fails prime95...

    wierd thing is that at 3.5 (250fsb) it is stable in prime95, bf2, 3dmark, sisoft sandra, etc... gta:sa however keeps crashing to the desktop at 250fsb. drop it down to 245fsb and it's stable. that's were i'm at right now...
  • heisestheisest
    edited August 2005
    Leonardo wrote:
    Some of the 3.4 capable cores will be badged at 2.8 and 2.4 to round out lower cost niches - marketing.
    Wow! And I could have saved some $$ if I had known this little jewel. :rolleyes:
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    That's always the way it works. Both AMD and Intel will only run one series at a time through the fabs (fabrication plants). If it's Socket 939, they don't run 3400+ and lower-rated CPU architecture, they only run the 3400. What isn't up to standard is simply badged at a speed rating that it will reliably operate at. When the next engineering configuration for a higher speed is finalized and proofed, then that's all they make. Don't confuse this with different types, though. There will be different production lines for A64 X2 versus Opteron versus Sempron, or P4 versus P4M versus P4 Celeron. These are different designs. But I was still very fortunate with my P4C 2.8. When I bought it (private trade) there was only one speed bump higher, the 3.0. Wow, that was over two years ago.
  • heisestheisest
    edited August 2005
    Leonardo,
    Saw you sig and checked it out and now I'm running Folding@Home. :)
    How did you get that sig to work??

    Here is a question not related to Overclocking:
    I'm a BF1942 gamer. When I load the game about every 20/25 seconds there is a serious lag for about half a second and then it goes away. This happens all the time. I've totally reloaded my OS and left off all popup blocking and trojan hunting software (except Symantic Antivirus) and I still get it. Seems like it might be hardware related. Is there any programs that might show where this is coming from?? (I'm asking as you seem to be knowledgeable about hardware/CPU functioning issues)
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited August 2005
    That sounds like there is a good chunk of data movement in your system causing it to pause every so often like that. If the pause is on a timed interval like you mentioned then I would guess its some program doing something every 20-25 seconds. It could very well be Symantec. Norton takes a nice chunk of resources when it runs. It coulc be trying to scan a file every 20-25 seconds causing your system to lag.
  • heisestheisest
    edited August 2005
    Tried it without Nortan and that might have taken care of it...

    EDIT: I've let my guys know about Folding@Home:
    http://forums.gametrack.org/viewtopic.php?p=64001#64001
    http://www.hpsf.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=61205#61205
    http://www.clanbr1.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1585
    http://www.teamwarfare.com/forums/showthread.asp?threadid=255320&forumid=9
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited August 2005
    Thanks for pugging FAH. If they have any questions, feel free to send em here or ask one of us.
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