Overclocking advices needed

[Ti133700N]

I need some advices from expert overclockers.

I just bought the following system:

Asus A8N-SLI
Asus Geforce6600GT 128MB
Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
Corsair TwinX(2x512) PC3200XL 2-2-2-5
76 Gb Western Digital Raptor 10000 RPM SATA
Antec SX1040BII Performance Series II Case With 400Watts PSU

I bought that system because I read alot of reviews and it is supposed to overeclock easily. I won't post all the tests I have done but the overall result is this:

If i set the RAM to those tight timmings, I can't go over 208FSB, wich is really low. When I losen them to 2.5-3-3-7 and up the voltage to 2.80 instead of 2.75 I can go up to 236. I can do all the benchmarks. Example of 3dMark2003 :
Stock : 8176
Overclock : 9368 (I also overclocked the vid card of course)

I know these are good results but in the reviews I read that alot of people can do 250FSB easilly, and reach the 300FSB with watercooling. I still have stock cooling but the temperatures are low, like 42/40. Also, if I run Prime, it fails the torture test, even if I set it as low as 229. My games run fine though, CS Source etc...

So my question is this: What settings can I change to up the FSB more than 236 and increase the stability?!

Thanks

 

[Asus]

Make sure you locked the AGP/PCI bus to 66 or 67. By the way, I wouldn't increase your voltage any more. Don't want your CPU or memory to go dead. =p

OCs are random. You don't know how far you can OC til you try. Granted the Winchester core is more prone to good OCs than other cores, that doesn't mean they all will.

Just wondering but what is the power on the +3.3V, +5V and +12V rails on your Powersupply (Will be listed as Amps such as 20A) and what all do you have in your system hooked up to it? How many harddrives, CD drives, Lights? Also does your Powersupply have a 20pin and what does your board take? I assume 24pin.

 

[WaryWolf]

make sure you're lowering the HT multiplier to 3x.

 

[Ti133700N]

Everything I have listed is plugged in, nothing else. What do you mean by locking the PCI bus to 66? It's currently at default 100 (if we're talking about the same thing), should I put it lower? I tried to set the HT multiplier to 1x and it didn't work so I asume 3x won't be better...? As for the PSU specifications I don't know exactly what you mean, this is the case with the PSU: http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81046.

 

[Ti133700N]

Ok i managed to get pass the 2450Ghz with my Athlon 64 3200+ (2000 Ghz).
What I did:
1. Updated the BIOS (Clear and update cmos checksum)
2. Raise the FSB by 1 (so 201 FSB in BIOS)
3. 4x HTT
4. Used clockgen to increase the vcore to 1.475 and then starting to increase by increment of 5 FSB then test it in the first test of 3dmark05.

The problem with clockgen is that it doesn't keep the settings when I reboot wich is, well, really annoying. And if I change the settings directly in the BIOS, it doesn't boot. So I wanted to know if there is a way to keep the clockgen settings even after a reboot.

 

[WaryWolf]

you can set up clockgen to execute a config file containing bus speeds/voltages when it runs, it's all in the readme. then you can make a shortcut on your desktop (or even shortcuts, for different speeds).

and if you're having problems with not being able to boot with certain speeds, then sorry, but your pc isn't stable at that speed. you should run a benchmark/torture test like prime95 or toast to test if your pc is ok. if you get an error or the pc crashes/locks up then you know you have to either get better cooling, increase voltage, or turn speeds back down.

 

[Ti133700N]

Yea but something is strange with Prime (I use Prime 2004). I can run 3dMark03 and it gives me the score at the end, I can play CS Source for more than 30 minutes (I haven't tested more than that yet) but everything is fine. The only thing that doesn't work is Prime 2004 blend test. I assume it's safe to let it as it is as it doesn't crash or lock...

Thanks for the infos about the config file for startup, I'll try that.