Hi, My current system is below with the info from cpu-Z AMD 3200+ 64 Newcastle (754pin) 2202.8mhz ,multiplier x11, HTT 200.3MHZ Asus K8V-X bios version 1012.003 2 x Corsair VS512MB400C3 Frequency (MHz)200 CAS# 3.0 RAS# to CAS# delay3 RAS# Precharge 3 TRAS# 8 Graphics card is a AGP 6600GT PSU is 650watt In a couple of months I'm hoping to upgrade all my pc to something better but I wondered if this one is worth overclocking, its all as standard as far as I know, the current temp of the cpu is 29C and mobo is 28C according to Asus probe I've never overclocked before, no idea if I'd get any gains Any advice much appreciated Cheers Leo
There is alot to gain,if done right but it also shortens the life span of your rig.The up side here is your going to be upgrading so you can learn from this one and apply it to your next computer, if you want. I also have a 754 cpu (look at specs),to save my fingers the pain of typing everthing about overclocking you should know, take a look at the overclocking guide sticky first, then post back here and I can help you with narrowing it down to your specs (cpu,memory,gpu). It's alot of fun once you get the hang of it. Please post back and I'll be glad to help you as much as I can.
Cheers Mate I've started reading through but I'm afraid a lot of it goes over my head thats the main reason why I've left it alone, one thing I did notice is that since going to the newer bios my pc seems to be a fair bit slower than it used to be with the older bios,I changed a few things with the new bios like the memory setting because it said 133 instead of 200, turned off fastwrites and went to 128mb from 64mb in AGP settings I didn't touch FSB etc
I have a asus k8v se deluxe and had a the same problem.For some reason it changed every thing around,and not for the better.I've tride every bios for my board but keep going back to the original 1001.This might not be the same for you though. First thing I see is your memory is value ram and might not like to go that much faster, but don't fret we can start with your cpu first. To find the max of your cpu you will need to lower the speed of everything else,because when you turn up the fsb speed your ram,cpu,ht(hyper transport) speed and the pci and agp clocks turn up with it.So start by finding the ht speed in your bios and drop it to 3x or I think asus is the same as 600.Then put your memory on a 4/3 133 (266mhz) divider just to be safe and I don't think that 754 has a agp/pci lock so if you have a sound card installed it might cause instability, but you can lower your agp to 4x,this really doesn't cause any performance loss that I've seen.Your cpu mulitplier is 11x so what ever your fsb speed is your cpu will run 11x fsb or in your case 11x 200=2.2ghz. I don't know what kind of cooling you have so don't worry about raising your cpu voltage,just do those things and start raising your fsb in 5-10mhz steps until it won't boot up or restarts,but a better thing to find out exactly if it's stable at a certain speed down load prime 95 here under the step 1 on the page http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm and run the torcher test for a 15min and see if you get any errors when you do,and you will at some point,lower the fsb 10-15 mhz to be safe and moniter your temps the whole time I can explain all this further if you need it. After this we will start on your memory. Edit s. how many amps are on the 12vrail on your 650w psu? this is important before you do anything!
Thank you for your time Smapty Ok, I've lowered the HT speed to 600,changed memory to 4/3 133, lowered AGP to 4 x I then started to raise fsb in 5-10 steps running prime 95 on torcher test, it worked fine until I got up to 225 fsb, at 225 torcher test would report a lot of errors so I stopped it, restarted the pc and went back into bios to turn it down to 220 which worked ok Now XP will not boot, it keeps saying \windows\system32\config\system is corrupt, press r to repair with recovery console:frown: Its never done this before, I had to do a fresh install of XP on my spare drive which seems to be ok but I'm hoping I can fix the problem, the one that will not boot is on a seagate 200gb SATA drive Temps went no higher than 42C according to ASus probe Oh well! I guess I couldn't expect my first overclocking to go well first time BTW the current of my psu's 12v is rated at 20A's ATB! Leo
I had the same problem on my seagate and switched to my Western Digital and did'nt have any problems after that.Like I said above the fsb speeds up everything so either your sata controller or just seagate's don't like it. Before we start on any thing else,there are some other bios settings we can adress.I belive your card has a 128mb memory so I would keep the agp arperature at 64 or even 32.I did the same thing when I first bought my computer thinking more is better! and putting it all the way up to 256mb.After playing around with a lot of other things I found a lot less stutter in games like Fear and Bf2 with it set lower to 32,but I have a 256mb card so thats why I said 32 or 64. Fast writes should be enabled unless you get stability problems and 20a on the 12v rail is pretty good,but this is a learning experience for your next computer so if you plan on sticking with nvidia,they recommend a 22a min for anything above there 6800 and up,and thats not including over clocking or the next g71, so you would want to have a little head room on your 12v rail. You also said your computer seems slower after you updated bios,check command rate in your memory settings, with 1gb it should be T1.And it might have set ecc and cool-n-quiet to enabled, these you don't need unless you have a server or you don't play games and don't overclock. With your memory 210-220 is usually the limit anyway you have two choices,you can keep the timings loose ex:3-3-3-8 and run them faster or,try to tighten them up ex:2-3-3-6 and keep them at stock speeds or maybe a little faster.This will also envolve some time to play around with them to see what gets you the most performance between the high clock speeds and cpu, or just better timings on your ram. Either way, they will need a little more vdimm voltage to do this and I wound'nt go more than 2.8v with your ram. Athlon 64 respond better to tighter timings, once again for your next rig look for some 2-2-2-5 pc3200 or some pc3500-4000 if your going to be overclocking. Try to see what your ram will do,tighter timings @200-205 or loose timings up to 220 that being your hardrives limit until it makes you reinstall windows.:bonk: that sucks. @220 fsb your cpu will be at 2420mhz,hyper transport @ 880 with the 4x or 800 setting, the limit I have found is 1000 ht speed so you can raise that back up.42c is good, anythng over 50c-52c max load for athlon 64's is a little high.When you do get your next computer or you can even do this now, buy some arctic silver 5 thermal paste for your chipset,gpu and cpu. Just to make sure you should only change the CAS (cl),TRCD,TRP and Tras timings there's a lot of others in the bios.The CAS will bring you the most gain but see what you can do.:thumbup:
Btw with lowering ur agp speed to 4x ur cutting hte abndwith to that card in half, altho no games really takes up the 8x bandwith it does slow ur card dwon considerbly. with that error, insert os disk and go to repir console (boot up into disk) and type in fixboot after login to the c drive and it should boot up
That is correct,but the only time you would see a real world difference is at very high resolutions with high aa and af settings.I have run my 6800gt at both 4x and 8x agp and have yet to see a difference,even in aqua mark an 3dmark 05 and 06. I only said to lower it because he was trying to find the max cpu speed and I was trying to eliminate the variables in doing that,plus with out a agp/pci lock it is not healthy for a gpu to have to high of agp clocks. thanx for the disk error help.
Thanks again mate Well I reckon my SATA drive is going to need a fresh install I got by the other problem but now it gets to just after the windows XP screen with the little blue bar at the bottom and it says winlogon.exe-unable to locate components, msgina.dll missing, I've searched on the net and tried various things like trying to install another msgina.dll but no luck so I'm going to give that a rest , my heads hurting I've installed XP on my little 20GB for now so if anything else goes wrong I shouldn't lose much I'll try what you suggest and let you know how I get on, things seem slower on this Maxtor drive for some reason but at the minute 215 fsb seems most stable I'm not 100% certain what the next pc will be but I was thinking of Athlon x2 4400, either ECS KN1 Extreme or Saphire A9RD480 with ATI X1800XL, I'd like the XT but its a bit too expensive Cheers! Leo
Thank you, all the advice is much appreciated I tried that and now it keeps saying msgina.dll missing, damn thing! Cheers! Leo
PC is now running ok, I've had a few more goes at overclocking, the speed has increased and so far no problems so thank you guys for all the advice I've also managed to put some more cash towards the new rig so now I have more of a choice The X2 4400 seems definate Not 100% regarding the mobo, I was looking at the Sapphire Pure Crossfire Skt939, I could possibly add another GC at a later date to run crossfire For the Graphics Card I can pay up to a Sapphire Radeon X1900XT if its worth it, these are £350 on Ebuyer with the VAT etc No idea which ram to get Again, any advice is much appreciated, I'd like to get the best pc I can afford and would hope to not feel the need to upgrade again for a while
