Overclocking... need help!

[earwicker7]

Slaymate--I took your advice and purchased a data drive to use for the page file. Now that I have a data disk, it probably makes sense to move things like my downloads and libraries over there. Is just changing the target (from C: to F good enough, or are there other steps to make sure everything goes to the proper area in the future?

 

[95BlackGA]

Windows 7 - Moving My Documents

That will move pretty much everything that needs to be moved. It will allow programs to still be installed on the C drive, to keep speeds up.

 

[earwicker7]

Windows 7 - Moving My Documents

That will move pretty much everything that needs to be moved. It will allow programs to still be installed on the C drive, to keep speeds up.

Thanks, I'll check that out.

On another subject, I was able to run LinX for 20 minutes with no crashes at BCLK 160 with a multiplier of 25 (4GHz). I had to jack the VTT to 1.215 and the VCore to 1.35625. I tried to run 7-7-7-21-54-1 latencies, but it wouldn't post even with VCore at 1.45, so I gave up on that and went with 7-7-7-21-74-2, and it seems to be fine. With the fans cranked, I was able to finish the 20 minutes at 65 degrees, but it was WAY too loud; with comfortable fan levels, it didn't get any higher that 68 degrees. So, I think this is probably good enough for me... I could probably manage to get it a little higher, but I broke 4GHz, which was my goal. So I decided to run Prime95 with a blended test. The temperatures stayed around 65 degrees, but one of the workers died at the two hour mark, with the following error: "FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.486328125, expected less than 0.4. Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file." Could someone tell me how to interpret this?

 

[Slaymate]

I would bump the CPU VCore up one more notch.

 

[earwicker7]

Thanks! I'll try that. One other thing... while at work today, I did a bit of research on that error, and some of the info made it sound like this was typically more of a memory error than a CPU error; I believe you told me that the VCore is going to effect the memory in some way, but I'm pretty vague on the specifics. Something was mentioned about it possibly involving the CPU memory interface, or the northbridge, and that different Prime95 tests and also MemTest could help me narrow things down. On your i7 overclocking page, you had mentioned some different voltages to adjust for things like this; is there a point where I should start going into the details, or should the VCore solve most of my problems?

 

[Slaymate]

After 2 hours of Prime95 it's really hard to say what caused the error. You could of had a minor power fluctuation or it could be from a number of different things. More than likely a bump of the CPU VCore will fix it, if not I would try bumping the CPU VTT voltage up another notch. It could be that your CPU just doesn't like running at that speed for that long.

Are you planning on running Folding@Home or some other programs that needs you to run at 100% load for hours at a time? Most games and programs will never stress your cpu that hard for that long.

 

[earwicker7]

After 2 hours of Prime95 it's really hard to say what caused the error. You could of had a minor power fluctuation or it could be from a number of different things. More than likely a bump of the CPU VCore will fix it, if not I would try bumping the CPU VTT voltage up another notch. It could be that your CPU just doesn't like running at that speed for that long.

Are you planning on running Folding@Home or some other programs that needs you to run at 100% load for hours at a time? Most games and programs will never stress your cpu that hard for that long.

No, I'll never be running stuff like that, but I'm a big believer in the computer being rock solid... if it's just a matter of a little tweaking here and there, I'd rather play it safe. My understanding is that if you can run that program for 24 hours, you're unlikely to have any issues with stability.

 

[patonb]

My folding ran for usually 30ish hours than borked......

 

[earwicker7]

For purposes of online manhood, do people usually post their overclock as the speed in the BIOS, or the speed under Turbo conditions? In other words, I could say that my computer runs at 4GHz (160 X 25), which is what is in the BIOS, but technically, when I run stuff like Prime95, it is in Turbo mode and running at 4.160GHz. I don't want to be dishonest

 

[Slaymate]

What does CPU-Z report? That's what I go by.