To clock, or not to clock

[sinkoman]

Ok, so I just finished my first from the ground up build a few days ago and was going to try to tighten up my memory timings today. First thing I was going to do was just try to tighten CAS to 2, but then I figured "why not give 2-2-2 a shot?". But then it hit me, if I was to do that, then I would have to do extensive stress testing, try upping the voltages, extensive testing, do an overnight MemTest run, bla bla bla. I don't know if I could handle that.

I also figured I would try clock my graphics card to the same speeds as a 6800u, since the only diff between the U and GT is just clock speeds. But then I figured, up it 5, test, up it 5, test, up it 5, test. Oh, that's as high as it'll go. Play some games for a few hours. Maybe lower. Go to vram timings, rinse, repeat. And yet again, I don't know if I could handle that ;( .

So I was wondering if I could get some oppinions on this. I'll probably end up taking CAS down to 2 later on today, since that seems to be the least painfull of all the things I would end up doing, but I don't know if I should go ahead with the other things. I don't know anything about safe ram voltages on my specific mobo. I'm getting 4811 in 3Dmark05 at stock speeds, and comparing to what I find on the net, that's pretty good.

Specs:
A64 3500+ (Venice) with an XP-90
Gigabyte 6800gt (one of the ones with custom heatsinks. That sorta got me thinking more about OC'ing it)
Gigabyte k8nU-9 (939 NF4U)
2x512 OCZ Value VX (unbinned VX chips) pc3200 2.5-3-3-7 (all stock)

Oh and I was also wondering, what would be the best way for me to accurately adjust my monitor settings? I used the nVidia monitor setup wizard thingy and after going through that, things just seem to dark for it to be right (it got me to set my brightness to 0).

 

[giant384]

turn on digital vibrance to low it looks great

 

[sinkoman]

well, I took my ram timings down to 2-2-2-6, upped the voltage to 2.8 (the highest my mobo will allow), and turned set an option in my bios called "Robust Graphics booster" to "turbo". And got somewhere in the 5000, I believe it was 5223 (don't remember the actual number).

Anyway, anybody know what this odd bios option does? I checked my mobo manual and it said that it can increase video bandwith for enhanced performance. I don't know if it's over heating my card or something.

Also, does tightening ram timings cause the modules to heat up more? I know that increasing the voltages does, but does just tightening the timings? I always thought that tightening timings doesn't have any adverse heat effects, but increasing memory bandwith did.

And i'm still open to suggestions on what to do about my monitor and my vid card.

 

[psyno]

More work, more power, but as far as worrying about heating the RAM up, I'd be a lot more worried about your new voltage settings. 2.8V? You're going to want that voltage as low as it will go for it to test out ok with your new timings. You don't want it bugging out on you because you're frying it, after all..

Just as a guess, if it's talking about increasing video bandwidth, it's probably talking about overclocking the AGP bus. But graphics cards generate their own clocks for their processors and memories. You don't need to worry about your motherboard accidentally OC'ing your graphics card. (In my opinion, btw, it's probably worthless, but you can benchmark it yourself).

 

[sinkoman]

More work, more power, but as far as worrying about heating the RAM up, I'd be a lot more worried about your new voltage settings. 2.8V? You're going to want that voltage as low as it will go for it to test out ok with your new timings. You don't want it bugging out on you because you're frying it, after all..

Just as a guess, if it's talking about increasing video bandwidth, it's probably talking about overclocking the AGP bus. But graphics cards generate their own clocks for their processors and memories. You don't need to worry about your motherboard accidentally OC'ing your graphics card. (In my opinion, btw, it's probably worthless, but you can benchmark it yourself).

Hmm. I was told that tightening timings would require higher voltages to keep the memory stable. I'll try going down and running a memtest. Should I go back down to 2.6 or only to 2.7? On an Anandtech.com look at the ram that i'm using, they ended up using 3V to get it to run at 2-2-2-6, ddr400.

And as for the bios option, I have a PCI-E card. Could it possibly be overclocking the PCI-E bus? And it wasn't worthless. I went from 4811 to 5223. I say that's a mighty fine improvement! :bounce:

Anyway, I probably won't go and overclock my vid card. I'm trying to edit the bios though, so that I can enable the temp sensor without having to use the resource hogging V-Tuner, just to check my temps. Anybody know which hex entries I need to change to get the monitor running?

Oh and BTW, I ran MemTest to 415%, and did 3 3Dmark runs with my memory at this volt, no problems.

 

[Asus]

Just keep in mind. A lot of OCing attempts you see on the web are to get it that high score. They don't run it OCed like that all the time. You can really burn out your memory or other parts with voltage up like that.

I OC with as little voltage increase as possible. Infact I don't have any voltages changed with my current OC. It just isn't worth it. I can get really far without raising voltages and that keeps temps from not going sky high as well.

I mean if you find it not stable at stock voltages you could raise it a little. You raise it as you need it. Don't just put it up without knowing if you could make it without the increase.

 

[Ti133700N]

Obviously, overclocking your vid card would give you a bigger boost in 3dMark. (if you could raise it more than 15Mhz).

Also, have your tried overclocking the CPU? Venice coupled with the XP-90 should be very easy to overclock. You'll probably have to lose the timings to get better results though.

 

[sinkoman]

Obviously, overclocking your vid card would give you a bigger boost in 3dMark. (if you could raise it more than 15Mhz).

Also, have your tried overclocking the CPU? Venice coupled with the XP-90 should be very easy to overclock. You'll probably have to lose the timings to get better results though.

Hmm. I made a nice lenghty post and it's gone. Strange.

Anyway, I know that a venice with an xp-90 is almost a given overclocker, but I don't feel to comfortable overclocking a perfectly good cpu. I bought the xp-90 because here in Hawaii, it can get fairly hot during the summer (I can idle anywhere from 35-38 with the AC off. Although i'll idle around 30 at night) and to give me more OC headroom when my processor starts to get old.

Maybe i'll give it a shot though. Any tips for OC'ing a CPU?

As for the volts, I was getting some odd and sometimes annoying frequent crashes out of Thief: deadly shadows the other night. I brought the volts back down to 2.6 and got one crash today, but otherwise it's running just fine. I also ran another 3Dmark05 test and scored 5226 with the new volts :E.

I think i'll leave my vid card at stock for now. What I found odd though was that when I went into the bios to change the mem volts, I noticed that the TURBO option had been set back to AUTOMATIC. Hmm.

I can't decide now whether or not I should oc my cpu, as Ti133700N mentioned. It gets fairly warm here, and my average idle temps during the day are around 35 or so. Is that too hot to oc my cpu? Or will the xp-90 keep it there?

EDIT: I went back into the bios to check on my settings, and my timings had been set back to SPD! This is seeming really odd. Perhaps I accidentaly hit "Reload Optimized Defaults" when I was trying to hit "Save and Exit".

EDIT EDIT: I was wondering, would upping the FSB actually increase temps, or is it just the increase in volts that causes overclockers to get higher temps? If it's just the volts that increases tempurature, then i'll give cpu overclocking a shot!

EDIT EDIT EDIT: I keep getting crashes out of Thief 3. I don't know if it's because of my timings or what. I took my timings from 2-2-2-6 to 2-3-3-7 to see if there was any improvement, nope. Would it be safe to take the voltage up to 2.7 for stability reasons?

 

[Ti133700N]

You have a pretty good system for overclocking. I would personally try to. As long as your don't go crazy on the voltage, there should be no problems. If your system can't take it, it will freeze or reboot, so you just have to go in the BIOS and change the values back to what they were before. When you increase the voltages, the temps will go up and you shorten the life of the components, however you might not have any choice to up the voltage if you want stability.

I'm not sure but I thought the Advanced Chipset Features were hidden on that board unless you press CTRL+F1, anyway.

To test the new settings, I use the first test in 3dmark05. If I can get a score, then I increase the fsb again till I get errors or reboots or hangs. Then you can start playing with the timings of the ram, the frequency and the voltage. When it cannot go higher, I do a full 3dMark05 test to see if it's not overheating. If you can get a final results, you can test the stability with prime95 and memory with memtest86. Then play HL2 for about 2 hours and if it still works fine, it will be safe to keep those values.

This is what I got with:
Asus A8N-SLI
1024MB Corsair PC3200XL
Antec PSU 400W that comes with SX1040BII
Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
Asus Geforce 6600GT

Stock
3dmark03 : 8176
3dmark05 : 3561 - First test (Return To Proxycon) 15.8 FPS

Overclocked

FSB : 236
DDR : 2.80v
Timings : 2.5 3 3 7

3dmark03 : 8421
3dmark05 : First test (Return To Proxycon) 16.4 FPS

With Vid Card overclock :

3dmark03 : 9368

Then later, I updated the BIOS and I managed to up the FSB to 245.
So 2.0Ghz to 2.45Ghz is a good overclock for no additionnal cooling.

 

[sinkoman]

You have a pretty good system for overclocking. I would personally try to. As long as your don't go crazy on the voltage, there should be no problems. If your system can't take it, it will freeze or reboot, so you just have to go in the BIOS and change the values back to what they were before. When you increase the voltages, the temps will go up and you shorten the life of the components, however you might not have any choice to up the voltage if you want stability.

I'm not sure but I thought the Advanced Chipset Features were hidden on that board unless you press CTRL+F1, anyway.

To test the new settings, I use the first test in 3dmark05. If I can get a score, then I increase the fsb again till I get errors or reboots or hangs. Then you can start playing with the timings of the ram, the frequency and the voltage. When it cannot go higher, I do a full 3dMark05 test to see if it's not overheating. If you can get a final results, you can test the stability with prime95 and memory with memtest86. Then play HL2 for about 2 hours and if it still works fine, it will be safe to keep those values.

This is what I got with:
Asus A8N-SLI
1024MB Corsair PC3200XL
Antec PSU 400W that comes with SX1040BII
Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
Asus Geforce 6600GT

Stock
3dmark03 : 8176
3dmark05 : 3561 - First test (Return To Proxycon) 15.8 FPS

Overclocked

FSB : 236
DDR : 2.80v
Timings : 2.5 3 3 7

3dmark03 : 8421
3dmark05 : First test (Return To Proxycon) 16.4 FPS

With Vid Card overclock :

3dmark03 : 9368

Then later, I updated the BIOS and I managed to up the FSB to 245.
So 2.0Ghz to 2.45Ghz is a good overclock for no additionnal cooling.

Haha. The advanced chipset features are hidden unless you hit CNTRL-F1. I

So how exactly do you run ONLY the first 3DMark05 test? I only have the free version so I can only do all the test's at once. If I go into the test option to try to change what test's it runs, i'm told I need to purchase either the PRO or BUSSINESS version to access the feature. Corporate jackasses

Do you have any additional cooling on your sticks [ram]? I'm running my DIMMS with no additional cooling. After looking around the net, i've come to the conclusion that 2.8 is perfectly fine for this ram, 24/7 use. I have some space under my cd drives, and I could fit a fan under there, but then i'd have to drill holes in my beautifull Lian Li to get proper air flow. Also, my blowhole is right above my slots, so that should help too (all the air being pulled over it as it's accelerated out of the case). If push come to shove though, I could just buy some ram sinks (or modify some cheapo generic heatsink) and mount those on the chips.

I'm gonna try see if I can get my vid card up to Ultra speeds. What the hell do I have to lose, besides a 400 dollar bookmark.

EDIT: BAH. I got it up to Ultra speeds, and rescored 5443. Not enought of an increase IMO to make overclocking worth it. Perhaps i'll invest in an arctic cooler. Wish water cooling kits were a tad bit cheaper.

 

[Ti133700N]

I have no additionnal cooling on the RAM cuz they already come with heatspreaders. http://www.insanetek.com/index.php?page=corsairtwinxpc3200xl_2

Heatspreaders do not worth the money imo, you'd better add an additionnal fan and make it blow on the RAM instead. If you can get cheap ramsink you could try them but don't expect much.

 

[sinkoman]

Bah. Today I continuosly got more crashes out of Thief, and finally, after my pc BSODed, claiming the an Nvidia driver file was to blame, I just snapped. Reflashed my bios and reinstalled ALL my drivers. Mobo, chipset, sata controllers, graphics card drivers, ethernet drivers, sound drivers. I made sure that this time, I downloaded EVERY SINGLE FILE individually (except for the stock nf4 driver package). I ran into two erros while installing my chipset drivers. Installer claimed that it couldn't find one of its OWN files. Didn't bother doing it again, the files didn't seem necessary at the moment (I think they were for the nvidia raid controller, which i'm not using, i'm in JBOD, and the nvidia SATA IIcontroller, which again i'm not using. I'm using the SiS SATA controller).

Then, while booting my system back up, I noticed the my pc wasn't recognizing that my ram was dual channel and was rolling it back to single channel, thus effectively loosening my timings (which explains allot). So I keep rebooting my system, over and over again, trying to see what might be the problem. Hell, I even reflashed my bios AGAIN to see if it would help. Sometimes it wouldn't even tell me how much ram I had in! It would just say SINGLE CH4NN3L PLZ!

Furiously flipping through my mobo manual, I found out what went wrong. When I put my pc together, I checked to manual to see what slots I needed to use for dual channel. I flipped to the page, scanned over it and the first word I saw was "Slots 1 and 3, slots 2 and 4". Not realizing that it was supposed to be slots 1 and 2. Oopsy daisy! Ima run 3Dmark again to see what I come out with.

And as for the ram cooling, what should I use fanwise? I have some 80's lying around, but I figure I could snag a cheap, blue led 60 and slam that in. Do you guys think that a 60 would be adequate or should I use an 80? I'd like to keep it cool enough to run it at 3.0 or maybe 3.2, even though neither dimms will probably see volts that high. I just want to over protect.

But I don't know where i'd put it [ram cooler]. If I put a picture of my pc up, think you guys could help? I've got lots of free space over my mobo (thanks to my 1337 cable folding 5|<i11z :dork: ) I could make a custom plexi glass fan stand and prop it up in this space to the right of my mobo, directly above the 24 pin ATX connection. But then it'd only hit my right most dimm, and the left one would'nt get much air. Or would the left get enough air?

I was also wondering, do I need to reflash my bios again? When I was downloading the bios file, there were two file sets I could've downloaded. One named F3 (which I took) and F2. Both had different update info sets next to them. I was wondering, would F3, what I flashed to, have all the updates F2 had, and then some, or would I need to get F2 also to get ALL the updates?

God, thanks for all the help you guys have given so far!