Overclocking Dell 4600 P4 2.8HT

keith12

Anyone got an ideas on overclocking a Dell machine. After reading up, I find it's nealry impossible.
I've checked the bios, and nearly all the options seem to be locked.
FSB, Ram Timings, the lot.
I've read threads saying it's possible to mod the bios, but is very dangerous. I understand the settings themselves but changing parameters in a bios, programming wise, leaves me way out of my depth.
Here's my specs:
Dell 4600
2.8 Ghz HT
512 MB Kingston PC3200 CL2.5
ATA 133 Maxtor Diamond 9 120 GB
ATI 9800 Pro 381/352 Core/Mem
Creative Audigy
I hear these processors overclock extremely well, and it's possible to get to 3.0 ghz and above with stock cooling.
Any help would be great.

Sir Random

EDIT
Find out the Chipset code like "FW82443BX" found on the Northbridge or Southbridge chips.
Do a google for the chipset and "BIOS" like: FW82443BX BIOS
You might find an unlocked BIOS for your mobo that you can download and Flash. I'm sure someone has edited your Dell BIOS somewhere, they can't all still be locked?. Otherwise you'll need a new mobo (P4C800-E).

unkel

Originally posted by Sir Random
Otherwise you'll need a new mobo (P4C800-E).

And since that new mobo doesn't fit in your Dell case, a new case and PSU as well. What CPU is it, a p4b (533) or p4c (800)? If the latter, then your memory is a bit slow to start overclocking unless you want to increase the voltage to it or use a divider

Like Sir Random said, try and look in the Dell forums about BIOS upgrade. You realise you invalidate your Dell warrantee by taking any of the intended actions?

keith12

Thanks for the info. It's a 2.8c HT.
With regard to the ram, I realise the Kingston isn't the most speedy. What would be a good one to get. I see OCZ 3700 level 1 look good. Any idea's?

RicardoSmith

Dells usually have a modified Intel board which can't be overclocked. I've never heard of anyone being able to overclock a Dell or an Intel board..ever. Updates to the bios just allow you to use newer processors or fix any issues with the original bios. For a definitive answare look on the Delltalk forums, but I'm almost certain you can't overclock it.

Theres no point swapping the motherboard, you'd have to swap the case aswell. I don't think their cases have standard mounting points. But again on the Delltalk forums you get the definitive answer. But by the time you replaced the board and the motherboard that would cost you €250 for a decent case and board. Thats all to get 200mhz more. That just doesn't make sense. If you want to go overclocking just sell the Dell and build another machine.

Gerry

The title of the thread is a contradiction in terms. It is rarely possible to overclock a dell board, they make a good effort of choosing clock generators which won't go above the stock frequency. Occasionally you may get lucky if you get a motherboard which is ( for example ) running at 533fsb, but is the exact same one as offered in a dell system running at 800fsb. But it will never be easy, you won't just be able to go into the bios and raise the fsb. Of course, with a modded bios, this may be possible, but you don't have to mod the bios on a clone pc to overclock.
If you wanted to overclock your new pc, you should have thought of it before buying a dell. The overclocking phenomenon did not start with brand name pc's, it is all about custom pc's, where the component manufacturers make an effort to make overclocking easier.
Replacing the ram sounds like a great big waste of money, why didn't you check this out before buying the dell?
As others have said, you could replace the board, and psu, and then overclock the cpu, but it makes little sense from a value for money point of view.

Sir Random

keith12,
Did you ever check out what chipset you have?

SetFSB allows software overclocking of various Via/Intel/SiS/AMD chipsets. If it's on the setFSB list, then you can use setFSB to overclock:

http://www.maximumoc.com/setfsb.html

Gerry

Its not the motherboard chipset which is the limiting factor, its the clock generator. On the list which Sir Random posted, the motherboard chipset is given first, and then the clock gen. Google clock generator a bit, get some pictures of them, try and identify the one on your board, and then check the list.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Gerry
Its not the motherboard chipset which is the limiting factor, its the clock generator. On the list which Sir Random posted, the motherboard chipset is given first, and then the clock gen. Google clock generator a bit, get some pictures of them, try and identify the one on your board, and then check the list.

How can you use setFSB then if the clockgenerator doesn't support other clock speeds. I'm assuming it can't.

Gerry

Occasionally the clock generator will be a programmable one, so it is still worth a shot. An example would be any dell machine using the intel AL440LX board ( ancient, but its an example ). You could overclock this board using softfsb, up to 83mhz fsb. Sorry, I should have made this more clear, its not always impossible to overclock a dell, but its fairly unlikely. I don't know what the situation is with current boards, it would be interesting to see if any of them have suitable clock generators.

RicardoSmith

I would have thought that to make any significant spped improvements you'd need to up the FSB, and lock the PCI/AGP ratio at the same time. If you can't I doubt you'd be able to get a stable system just by upping the FSB by any significant amount. But I'm only surmising since I don't know much about clock generators.

Gerry

Well, locked agp and pci is only a recent thing really It also depends on what you'd call a significant increase. 15-20% would be fine. You'd be surprised how tolerant most pci and agp cards are. On this machine, I'm running the pci at 44mhz, everything runs fine.
Also, with some clock generators, you can change the pci and agp divisors using programs like cpufsb or softfsb.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Gerry
Well, locked agp and pci is only a recent thing really It also depends on what you'd call a significant increase. 15-20% would be fine. You'd be surprised how tolerant most pci and agp cards are. On this machine, I'm running the pci at 44mhz, everything runs fine.
Also, with some clock generators, you can change the pci and agp divisors using programs like cpufsb or softfsb.

Never really heard it done that much before. Surprised that if its that successful that its not done more often. I've never really heard of anyone having much success with it

Sir Random

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Never really heard it done that much before. Surprised that if its that successful that its not done more often. I've never really heard of anyone having much success with it

I always use Clockgen for stressing cpus, then I set the FSB through the BIOS for a permanent o/clock. It's much more sensible than actually rebooting every time you want to raise the fsb. Most o/cer's I know of do this too.

Now if only there was a soft vcore/vdimm app

Clockgen got me up to 4Ghz on air (unstable, of course)

RicardoSmith

But since you'll need to up the vcore/vdimm to find you max overclock anyway you'll have to reboot anyway. How does it save time?

Sir Random

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
But since you'll need to up the vcore/vdimm to find you max overclock anyway you'll have to reboot anyway. How does it save time?

That's why I added this "Now if only there was a soft vcore/vdimm app "

"How does it save time?"
I set my vdimm to max (2.85v) straight off and left vcore at stock.
I got to 220fsb, upped vcore to 1.6v and got to 230fsb, upped to 1.65v and got to 236fsb. Just 2 reboots
It would have taken about 15+ boots without clockgen, so there's no comparison.

EDIT:
Try it out for yourself:
http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

RicardoSmith

Do you run Prime each time?

Sir Random

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Do you run Prime each time?

No, I've learned that stability with P4's is usually around 150Mhz below the highest windows boot. When I maxed out, I went back to 228fsb and ran prime for 1 hour, then I tried 230 and it failed after 20 mins but I got it stable at 1.65v (12 hours prime). That's the highest I've tested it, but I doubt I'd get 231 stable without 1.7v

RicardoSmith

Do you ever do anything other than benchmark or overclock on your PC? I'd never have time for all that stuff any more.

Sir Random

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Do you ever do anything other than benchmark or overclock on your PC? I'd never have time for all that stuff any more.

You can only really do it once, when you first install the cpu.
I found my max at 1.65v, then settled for 230fsb (3.9Ghz), ran some benches and left it there. I won't be clocking/benching again until I get a new gfx card or other hardware, what's the point if nothing's changed?

I have wasted hours clocking P3s til they burn though, but that's research

Gerry

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Never really heard it done that much before. Surprised that if its that successful that its not done more often. I've never really heard of anyone having much success with it

Yes, it is a last resort. But if your bios has no facility to change it, you may as well give software like cpufsb a go. Hence my whole point about overclocking of dells being unlikely, and difficult.

In general, I've found that these software overclocking programs can cause instability on some boards, compared to setting the speed in the bios. So they are only good as a last resort.

Sir Random, it does sound like you spend a lot of time running benchmarks, do you play real games / use cpu intensive applications much?

Sir Random

"Sir Random, it does sound like you spend a lot of time running benchmarks, do you play real games / use cpu intensive applications much?"

Lol, just because I know what's involved, doesn't mean I'm always benching. I'm inquisitive by nature, so I like to know how things work I also build/upgrade PCs so I'm forever accumulating old cpu/mobos which I stress/overvolt to see how they behave.

"In general, I've found that these software overclocking programs can cause instability on some boards, compared to setting the speed in the bios. So they are only good as a last resort."
Sounds like you've been doing a lot of benching/clocking yourself
Then again, Clockgen has a different version for each chipset it supports, which mobos did you find unstable?

"do you play real games?"
I've been gaming since games were invented and I've even written a few games for different platforms. I've also done mods for some games going back to Duke3D. I spend far more time gaming than worrying about my rig's performance .
Coincidentally, map & source compiling is probably the most cpu intensive stuff I do (I'm not sure how it compares to encoding) but I don't get much chance to mod these days. I used to wait around 10 minutes on a P3 450 for what takes ~20 secs now .

RicardoSmith

I was actually wondering more about the time you need to test the PC using prime. But as someone said you don't have to do it that often.

Gerry

Sorry, no offence meant Sir Random. Its just that some people I've seen on various forums spend all their time overclocking and running 3dmark, and aren't even familiar with games. Its good to know you aren't one of them

I've done an awful lot of clocking/benching in my time ok, I used to sell a lot of overclocked machines. I always found it very important to stress test such machines, I used to run quake3 in a botmatch with no time or frag limit ( spec a bot obviously ). Also run prime95 in the background, to hoover up any spare cpu cycles.

I've not done any on my own machines in a while, my current setup cannot be overclocked, as the motherboard can't go any higher than the chips default fsb ( 133 ). Its still faster than my old p3 600@900 though. For some wierd reason, I can't boot the new chip ( p3-s 1400 ) on my be6-2, but it works on an ancient board I got for free. Its quite annoying...

The last time I used softfsb, it was on my be6-2 ( clock generator is a realtek 520-D, used on many boards. ) On some machines, it was stable, on others you would get a freeze after a while, even with an fsb that was not near the limit of stability. I've used it successfully, along with wpcredit, on a permanent basis on some via 133a based boards, and an old intel al440lx.

Sir Random

No worries Gerry,
On new builds, I usually run prime for a bit to melt in the thermal pad faster, but that's all. Once the temps have stabilised, I'm happy.

"I can't boot the new chip ( p3-s 1400 ) on my be6-2, but it works on an ancient board I got for free. Its quite annoying..."
Dumb question, but have you tried a different BIOS? even an older one?

Gerry

I've tried all the official ones, still trying to dig up some modded ones. I'm at a complete loss, its listed on the compatibility list for the slotket I'm using ( upgradeware, remaps some pins to allow tualatin to work on bx, drops gtl+ bus voltage to 1.25 ). And it just worked first time on me ancient board, plus on a bx6 which I tried it on. If you know of anyone with a good bx board with bus speeds above 133 that I could swap the be6-2 with ( plus some cash ), let me know
The be6-2 1.1 has a highpoint 370, so its not bad really.

unkel

Originally posted by Gerry
Well, locked agp and pci is only a recent thing really It also depends on what you'd call a significant increase. 15-20% would be fine.

Many years ago I got a brand new PII450 in work and the first thing I tried was to up the FSB to 120% (max). Machine didn't post anymore but it did on 115%

I realised I was overclocking the machine but hadn't a clue at the time what it all meant and the risks I was taking, but the machine has been running ever since PII450@520, not a bother, PCI and AGP unlocked @15% overclock

RicardoSmith

Personally I've had data errors running the PCI and AGP put of spec so I don't do it anymore. But these days I need stabilty an data security more than extra ooommph.

Gerry

I'd agree with you, I've had problems in the past with data integrity running even slight overclocks. It mainly depends on the hard drives, most modern drives are ok, but old quantums were very fussy. But, in my experience you test these things out for a while, keep the data somewhere safe, errors like this will show themselves pretty quickly. I have plenty of important data on my machine, but I'm not worried as I backup to 2 other machines.

unkel

Yeah I never overclock PCI/AGP anymore, way to risky for the HDD, especially the RAID0 I have now. Also the overclock on a P4c is way too high

I always make sure before buying a mobo that it can lock PCI/AGP

Dr Bolouswki

Jaysus, but this geek stuff is the new rock'n'roll!

Nice thread folks!