some oc'ing questions

Dman_15

Right, I have a few questions to put to the wise minds of boards. (i have an xp2700+)

What is considered to be the max safe core voltage for an athlon xp? (not just for that extra high clock for bragging rights, but for prolonged use)

Temperatures in aida.
Aida gives two temps: a cpu diode and cpu. which is the one to go by and not let get over 55ish under load? (i'm idling at 34/35 atm stock, sometimes the diode temp isnt even there)

Which is better: High FSB, low multi or Low FSB, high multi?

Finally, how long would Prime95, in torture test, need to run to consider the oc to be stable?

Col_Loki

What is considered to be the max safe core voltage for an athlon xp?

Depends on your cooling TBH. With high end air id say 1.9-1.95v , water cooling ~2.05v , lower end air 1.8v (mabye 1.85v).
Main thing to watch is the temps also....... and also weigh up how much extra performance you actually get from the increased voltage.

Temperatures

All motherboards read differently, some even after a BIOS update . Generally under 60 laod temp is ok but the lower the better. Its a combination of Voltage and heat that wears out a CPU.......... but even with higher temps and higher voltage the lifespan should be 5 years +.

Which is better: High FSB, low multi or Low FSB, high multi?

Higher FSB = Higher memory performance so thats always better. Run the memory 1:1 with FSB on AMD systems otherwise it actually will perform worse........

Finally, how long would Prime95, in torture test, need to run to consider the oc to be stable?

For general stability testing mabye 1 hour. For your final overclock , ie the one you use / keep then 6-8 hours means its pretty much rock solid. Some people run it for 24 hours, main reason is to take into account change in Ambient temp (ie if your heat comes on at 8am, or difference between night and day etc) but once it lasts 6-8hours its extremely unlightly to EVER let you down.

Dman_15

is it worth trading off some of the fsb to get a higher clock rate?
Eg: 5mhz off the bus to get another .5 on the multi? (12*200 v 12.5*195)

SantaHoe

Actually I'd do the exact opposite... bus speed is goooood.

Col_Loki

Im taking it you have an unlocked chip then yea? What motherboard and what memory? Will be better able to help knowing this

Dman_15

i have a xp2700 and an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe V2 with a gig (2x512 dual channel) of twinmos PC3200. (it runs at 13.5 multi and anything below, stock is 166*13. I presume this means its unlocked?)

Thanks for the help again

Col_Loki

Yea its unlocked alrite. You should be looking for 200mhz FSB +. It will prob depend more on what your ram is willing to do than your motherboard. Try with a lower multiplier and see what FSB you can reach ~210mhz mabye. You could try upping the Vdimm (ram voltage) a little.

Dman_15

right. It wont take 200 fsb, well it will but its unstable as hell. currently i'm at 12*194 with vcore @1.85. i'm qiute pleased with tis and my idle temp is 44 with load temp 48/9. any more suggestions?

Col_Loki

Well thats pretty good as it is. If its your chip thats restricting your FSB then theres not much you can do im afraid (you can do wire trick to increase the stock FSB of the chip - works sometimes) , if its your Ram you could increase the voltage a little mabye? Or loosen timings (prob decrease performance).

Dman_15

timings are loose enough (2.5,3,3,7) and the ram doesnt seem to respond well to increased voltage or go any higher with looser timings.
Ive been reading up an it seems the 2700 isnt an overly good chip for overclocking anyway. guess it will have to do

vibe666

OK, rather than starting a new 'what can i do with this?' thread i thought i'd tack my OC'ing question onto the end of this thread, given that the clever people seemt o be here already.

OK so, what can I do with this? Upgrade Kit AMD XP3000+2.167Ghz Barton Asus A7V8X-X, PC3200 DDR 512MB, Fan

SKU 116242 AMD Athlon XP3000+ 2.167 GHz Socket A 333MHz, 512KB Barton, OEM
SKU 117359 Asus A7V8X-X mainboard Socket A DDR LAN VIAKT400, ATA/133, ATX, USB2.0, 8X AGP
113518 TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB CL2.5 Memory 184-P (for DDR-PC400MHz)
SKU 119402 Spire CPU-Fan WhisperRock IV Socket A SPA04B4 For AMD up to XP 3200 Mhz

looks like an OK deal to me. I just want to know how much extra juice I can squeeze out of it.

I have a stock P4 1.5Ghz (bog standard out of a slightly damaged office machine which was being thrown out) which ever since a power cut last week has been on the fritz and is getting mroe than a little unreliable. it won't boot unless the bios is at all the defaults which means performance sucks (even more than usual) and one of my HD's keeps randomly disappearing and reappearing at random too so I'm taking it as a sign that it's time to upgrade (that and that I should get a UPS ).

Right, back to the question at hand (sorry, but i do tend to go off on the odd tangent occasionally) how much extra am I likely to get out of this bundle with regard to OC'ing it?

lack of serial ATA doesn't bother me, as I have a rake of 40gig parallal ata drives in use at the moment (enough that i needed to get an extra ata card anyway to make the most out of them (who's the skinflint then:D)) which will be transplanted to the new rig, so it's just the CPU/Mem/Mobo that I have to worry about.

Will I need to get this CPU unlocked or does it look to be that way already?

is the memory up to scratch? loooks pretty decent to me, but most of my PC experience is in office PC's and I never needed (read: wanted) to overclock anything before now.

So that's t really. any help would be appreciated. even if it's to tell me that it's a bad deal and i could get xxxx for the same money or yyyy for a little bit extra and get x% more out of it with only a little extra outlay.

btw, my primary uses for the machine will be video capture, video editing, seti@home, audio creation/editing and the odd game, but nothing spectacular, i don't need 100fps in any games, as long as I can see what's going on I'm happy.

thanks again, and sorry for rambling.

do you think i should have put this in a seperate thread?

Col_Loki

TBH the Xp3000+ or Xp3200+ are generally bad buys and dont overclock much at all. The Xp2500+ and a slightly better cooler should get to Xp3200+ or mabye more. All the XP chips are locked and have been from Xmas.

Id seriously be looking at intel or mabye AMD64. The 2.8ghz P4 (northwood) would be a very good option as it overclocks very well. Look mabye at the Abit IS7 motherboard (IS7-E i think is only €80 on komplett), and Pc3700 / Pc4000 Ram.

Will post more info after work

vibe666

kula bula.

thnx.

basically I'm looking for the most bang for my bucks, the same as everyone else, and I'm not adverse to a little bit of jiggery pokery in the OC'ing dept. to get it.

unfortunately what I'm running doesn't have any potential for OC'ing as it doesn't even have an option for changing the CPU speed at all, the best thing it has is for enabling DMA on the IDE channels and a 'fast' POST, but that's about it.

kinda glad it's on it's way out though tbh, gives me a good excuse to upgrade.

Col_Loki

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Would prob advise a slightly better motherboard as this one only has 2 DDR Slots. If you dont plan on going over 1gb of memory then your fine (2 x 512mb).
The AI7 for €20 more is a nice board.

http://www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk/memory/ddr-ram-pc4000.asp has the PC4000 Ram , ADATA is decent Ram and overclocks pretty well. Ram choice depends on the motherboard. Ideally you want to be running Dual DDR as it makes a huge difference on an Intel board (and you dont want 2 x 256mb unless you have extra slots).

With a decent air cooler like a Zalman7000Alcu or Thermalright you should get 3.3-3.6ghz , and run your memory close to 250mhz FSB..........which is a very nice perforing PC.

It depends on your budget, the intel is prob the best for encoding etc.

If you want to go a little more advanterous and would think of a Dual AMD setup that can be done very reasonably also (round the same as a P4) and its excellent for rendering, crunching / seti, multitasking and ohh bragging rights!!


[edit] Tell us what the budget is, and what your thinkin of going for at the min......... and if you would agree or change anything.

Ohh and most important what is your Power Supply and Case like? Or will you have to upgrade that aswell?

Dman_15

http://www.tiny.com/packages_new.php?prodid=10258

Crap thats a lot of pc for the money.

vibe666

i'd like to spend around the €300 mark and just get something half decent, but the geek in me says I could stretch to €500-€600 and get something a little more special.

I like the idea of a dual AMD setup, which I did look into about a year ago before the bottom fell ot of my job prospects (they've improved considerably since then tho, my only obstacle now is the g/f:rolleyes:) but won't that restrict me to the AthlonMP? I thought they were only available with the thoroughbred core, and at fairly low clock speeds, or am I wrong (again)? Braging rights for a 2CPU setup would be significant, but it would only be worth it if I'd be seeing a performance increase.

My PSU will need replacing as it's only the stock one that was with my P4 1.5, although it's running that with an SB Live, a WinTV PCI, a DVD Burner and 5x 40gb 7200rpm HD's, so it's doing well. (although I'm starting to think I know why it only works at the default bios settings;)).

I'm fine for a case, I got a nice big Antec jobbie off someone here at boards which has enough space inside for me to rent it out to a family of 5!

So case is OK, but need a (preferably quiet) PSU, and hopefully a rig that isn't too noisy overall, as it's going in my bedroom.

My main (CPU Hungry) apps will be as follows:

VirtualDub
DVDx
DVD Shrink
(you can see where I'm going with this can't you)
Seti@Home
Cool Edit Pro
Maybe a bit of Premiere when I get going

Running XP Pro, but thinking of moving to 2003 as I've heard some good things about it, but not just yet I don't think.

Col_Loki

but won't that restrict me to the AthlonMP

Normally yea it would........but you can easily mod the XP's to run as MP's and get them much cheaper and with 512kb cache .


For all the applications you listed the Dual CPU would be sweet as you can be doing something else aswell, ie using virtual Dub on one CPU and playing a game etc on the other........... its the most annoying thing not to be able to use your PC when ripping a dvd etc . For sheer start to finish time with encoding the P4 would be the best option, but you cant really do other things with your machine!!


Ok so how about this........................ Dual CPU (will include a fantastic link for explaining the XP -> MP mod, different details etc ).

Motherboard : MSI MS-6501-030, 2x Sockel A, ATX (K7D-L) - €189 - www.computeruniverse.net

CPU : 2 x Xp2500-M Mobile Barton (multiplier unlocked and easier to mod to mp) - €86 each - http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?products_id=3660 (order 1 at a time due to stupid shipping rule - still v.cheap)

Ram : 2 x 512mb Pc2700 @ €94 each - €188 - www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk

PSU : Fortron 400w - www.pc-look.com (could prob get away with the 350w version if money tight?)

Coolers : Forgot those for a min - will do that after work.

That would put you to just over the €600 mark. You could always get 512mb Ram and upgrade to 1gb at a later date?

Theres loads of info about K7D motherboard but dont have time to list....... will give more info if you think this mite be an option.

You could cut costs by getting mabye Xp2200's or Xp2400's and going with 512mb Ram ......... Or if you dont want to overclock getting a slightly cheaper motherboard?

Let me know...........

vibe666

sounds great so far. cost is a little higher than I had wanted to go, but I seem to remember you (or someone else) stating that the XP2500 Barton M can make it to XP3200+ speeds with the right cooling, so 2x 3200+ sounds very sweet to me. would I get them running that high on air, or would I need to start messing with water or liquid nitrogen?:ninja: (not that I'd be totally adverse to it, but it seems a bit extreme for my needs, and since it's going to be at the end of my bed, I don't want to wake up frozen to my duvet after it explodes in the night:D)

so would this little wonder rig outperform anything else i could get for the same money?

I'm leaning towards it anyways, even if i go with the coolers you're recommending for now, get it OC'd to whatever it will take and then move to something a little more heavy duty later on, that would be grand.

I'll definately go for 512mb of RAM now, and add another stick in the next few months when cash allows too, to trim a bit off the overall cost.

thanks again for the help, I'm getting all excited now.

Col_Loki

but I seem to remember you (or someone else) stating that the XP2500 Barton M can make it to XP3200+ speeds with the right cooling, so 2x 3200+ sounds very sweet to me

Yea mobiles should do this pretty easily with decent air cooling. Xp3200+ runs at 2.2ghz with an FSB of 400 (200mhz x 2). The Max FSB of the Dual AMD MP's is roughly 300mhz (150mhz) so to get a rating of Xp3200 you would prob have to get to 2.25~2.3ghz which shouldnt be that hard. The main thing is you have almost double the heat in the case ,a good case fan or two will sort you out along with 2 x decent heatsinks.

For that money you could get a single CPU rig and it would perform better in single applications than a Dual would. Ie games. There not that much of a difference but the single rig would be faster for it. The main advantage is when you are doing lets say some encoding and want to play a game while you wait, most single CPU's wont handle it where the Dually will. Also if programs are designed for dual CPU application then they tend to really shine. Some encoding prog's are and it increases speed by ~40% but uses 2 CPU's.

In gaming put a decent graphics card in and you will prob only notice the difference in benchmarks as apposed to actaul play.

I the dual CPU's are great at rendering , very fast multitaskers, tend to be more reliable and dont lock up , etc......

To get it up and running sweetly you will need to do a little work overclocking and altering a little bridge on the CPU (not that scary really)........ Im pissed off i didnt go with a dual CPU myself (prob will at a later date).

One thing about the K7D is it only takes un-registered memory in 2 of the slots so if you plan on putting ordinary memory get 512mb chips. If 1gb max isint a problem then stick with the ordinary memory. If not then you could go with registered Pc2100/Pc2700 (latter recomended for overclocking)


Motherboard : MSI MS-6501-030, 2x Sockel A, ATX (K7D-L) - €189 - www.computeruniverse.net

CPU : 2 x Xp2500-M Mobile Barton (multiplier unlocked and easier to mod to mp) - €86 each - http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_...roducts_id=3660 (order 1 at a time due to stupid shipping rule - still v.cheap)

Ram : 512mb Pc2700 @ €94 each - www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk

PSU : Fortron 400w - €67 - www.pc-look.com (could prob get away with the 350w version if money tight?)

Coolers : 2 X ThermalRight ALX800's (light and fantastic cooling) - €27 - €54 - http://www.pc-look.com/boutik/Prod_Thermalright_CPU_Heatsink_Kit_-_ALX800_-_AMD_Socket_A_(462)__1045_en.html

ADD 2 x Fans €24 ....... mabye these (variable) ...http://www.pc-look.com/boutik/Prod_Noise_Blocker_Case_Fan_-_080_mm_-_Variable_Speed_-_(S3_-_BOX)__929_en.html


Will come to €620~640 including shipping. That should push you to 2.2~2.5ghz+ per CPU which is god damm fast. Its also not going to be too loud.



Cheaper coolers for ~ €10-15 would prob push the CPU's to 2ghz-2.3ghz and might be an option. The ones above like i said are fantastic and high overclock is easy.
-Would save €50

Cheaper PSU would save €20 but its risky as you have alot of hard drives and are overclocking so id stick with the 400w

Also you could get Xp2400+'s (2ghz Chips) for €118 (incl delivery) saving you €55 . They will be multiplier locked so the highest possible speed to run them at is 2.16ghz no matter what cooling you have but its a very very simple overclock .



Fantastic thread on it (highly recomended) ...... http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=221503



Other than that mabye the basic Xp2500+ , Abit NF7 (mabye NF7-S for better sound, SATA, Firewire), and Some Pc3200 Ram , with a Zalman7000Alcu cooler for ~€300-350

Or a P4 System , 2.8ghz Northwood, IS7/IC7/AI7 , Some Pc4000 Ram (dual pack is best 2x256mb mabye), and a Zalman7000alcu ....... ~€400-500

vibe666

i reckon I'll be going for the duallie and do it properly with the 2500+'s and see what I can get out of them.

I have a habit of running several encoding sessions at once and just leaving it to crunch so I think they would be my best bet for overall performance.

my PC gaming is very limited anyway (mostly just use the PS2 for that) unless they bring out Civ4, it'll stay that way. But then that's not likely to be too hungry for spped compared to FPS games anyway.

thanks again. now I just have to convince the g/f to let me spend the money on it!

Col_Loki

Theres some great reading about dual systems on that forum i linked to, the system should be sweet.

Anyway, good luck with which ever option you go for !!