OCing my 3000+ Venice

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beardo526

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I read the stickies, did all the research, and finally did my first overclock last night. Everything went fine as far as I can tell. I ran Prime 95 for 13.5 hours and had 0 errors and 0 warnings, but there's a couple things I could use some clarifying on. I got my 3000+ up to 2.25Ghz. (250Mhz x 9) I let Prime 95 run overnight last night for 8 hours, and when I checked it this morning, my CPU temp was at 40, but after the 13.5 hours, the temp was only 36. My RAM is now also running at 250Mhz (DDR500). The VCore is at ~1.58 volts, and the Vdimm is at ~2.7 volts. The VCore I had to set myself, but the Vdimm is on auto. In my BIOS, I had the RAM timings set to auto, and after the overclock, they went from 2.5-3-3-6 2T, to 3-4-4-7 2T. Is this good or bad? Lower is better, right? And if lower is better like I'm assuming, would there be any bad effects if I just manually lowered the timings myself instead of letting the BIOS automatically configure them, or is my RAM not going to hold up? One of the guys that reviewed the RAM on Newegg said he got his RAM stable at 250Mhz 2-3-3-6 1T.

Motherboard: EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123236

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103537

RAM: OCZ Performance Series
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227031

If you need any more info, let me know.
 
wow your ram is doing DDR500 i mean i thin kyou can tighten the timings and switch to T1 timings would be better.
 
I would get more familiar with RAM timings and set those manually. The 2 numbers that effect bandwidth the most or the 2 middle numbers, '4' in your scenerio. If you could get it to run at 250 at something like 3-3-3-8, that would be cool, but the auto timings it set suck. You can try lowering the timings while it is at 250 and see if it is still stable, or you can also use a RAM divider and run your RAM lower than your HTT.

There is a good chance your venice will go higher than that, and your RAM will soon be a limiting factor, at which time you will probably want to set a memory divider anyways.

I would also say you should be able to go to 2.8vdimm safely as well, so if 3-3-3-8 250 isn't stable at first, try uping vdimm a bit. At some point you might want to get a fan on that RAm though.
 
I just bought the OCZ Performance Series, 1GB, 2x512...it's on it's way now as we speak, but it's for my gaming system, I don't think I am going to clock it.
 
for 250MHz you're going to need approx 2.75-2.85v, personally I'd opt for 2.85 unless you can get it to work at 2.75 then hey that'd be better since it'd keep your RAM from running hot, but considering it's stock timings are 2-3-3-6 that's not exactly the high end RAM that really hits the high overclocks, so you might need 2.9v to achieve 3-3-3-8 timings at 250MHz especially with 1T for the cycle time....at 2.9v and above though I'd have a fan over them blowing on them just to keep them cool and rule out the possibility of generating too much heat.

EDIT: Oh yeah, don't ever trust newegg reviews...half of them are planted and overall they aren't a very trustworthy source IMO...
 
Bumped the voltage up to 2.8 and changed the timings to 3-3-3-7 2T. Ran Prime 95 for 24 minutes with no errors. Is there a better way to check for stability than using Prime 95? I'm too impatient to let the program run for hours at a time. :)

Also, I looked around in my BIOS for a while and couldn't find anything that looked like a memory divider... could it be labeled as something else? If so, what? I don't want to just go around my BIOS and change random settings that I THINK could be the one...
 
Dude....quit just yelling out CHANGE IT TO 1T!!!!

Most of the time motherboards will default it to the correct cycle time...if his is defaulting at 2T then I'd just leave it at that considering it's generally the high performance that defaults to 1T...since newegg doesn't label it, I'd get a spec sheet to see if it does infact run at 1T, but even still since it's obviously not TCCDs or TCC5's then at 250MHz chances are it won't run at 1T in the first place.


Thread starter - memtest86+ is specifically for the RAM, but even that I'd leave running for 2 hours or so and you can call your RAM stable, or let something like 3dmark05 loop a few times, that'll also test your RAM good...or hell just go and play an intensive game for a while.

as for your BIOS and memory divider I don't know, Epox isn't exactly a reknowned OC'ing board or anything. If you see something labeled like 200MHz/166Mhz/133Mhz then that'd be your divider.....putting it at 166MHz doesn't mean it'll run at that unless your HTT is at 200...if your HTT is at 250 then your RAM would be at 208Mhz
 
OK, I found it. It was just called "Memory Frequency." I thought my memory would just run at what I set it to, but as you hinted at, I was mistaken. :) Now that I've got that figured out, I just need to see how far I can take my CPU with the stock HS/F until I order one of those Zalman doo-hickies. :)
 
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