Odd overclock

[ohwell78]

My San diego behaves very oddly and i am wondering if i am missing something. I have never had it beyond 57c and have had it as high as 2.8 ghz. However voltage is another thing. I run several benchmark programs to determine if it is stable because for some reason prime 95 doesnt work even when its not overclocked. The tests i use are 3dmark 03, 05, and pcmark 04, and superpi 32 million. If it gets through all these its stable enough for me.

Well the max stable under my standard is 2.6 260 x 10. but tha requires 1.57 volts. the 2.8 (11 x 250) required 1.65 volts. But im running it at 11 x 230 for 2.530 and it only needs 1.47 volts.

again I cant boot to windows and run some tests at 2.8 ghz and it gest load of 57c at that setting but doesnt make it through all. I really do not want higher voltage than that.

The really odd thing is ive seen some reviews that 240-245 at stock 1.4 volts is common. If i had a bad oc'er then why can I even get to 2.8 at all at that cool a temp. I am using stock cooling.

 

[ohwell78]

I am running it on a msi k8n neo 4 platinum. 1 gig xms corsair pc 3200 which is fine up to 225 mhz 2.8 voltage . 2336 1t. nforce 4 voltage (im not sure what this does) but ive played with it from 1.5 - 1.75 to see various effects on stability.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Temps are important but definately not the only factor in how far a chip will overclock.
And it is normal to have a large gap between 100% stable and bootable/benchable.

In my case with the 3700+ my %100 stable point is right at 2800-2805mhz, but I can get bench runs at 2830-2870 and have even booted and run a SPI 1m at 2916mhz.

 

[Pabster]

Yeah you can boot in to Winbloze at insane clocks but fire up Prime 95...

My advice is to go as high as you can with a specific voltage ceiling. Anotherwards, if you can get 2.5 at 1.45v but you need nearly 1.55 or 1.6 to squeeze out another 50-100MHz, I'd stick with the former. YMMV.

 

[ohwell78]

How do you decide 100% stable, and what is your motherboard.

 

[ohwell78]

I cant get through prime 95 at stock. So if it gets through those 2 game tests and those 2 cpu tests withoute errors its good enough for me.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

If it can't Prime at stock somethings wrong, I would check your memory with memtest and go from there

 

[monster64]

If you put the memory divider at 100 (or 200, or 1/2 or w/e,) your HTT multi to x2, you have a decent PS, and your cpu cant do prime 95 at stock then you have a bad chip and you should rma it.

 

[asicman]

sounds like something is strange with the mobo and/or BIOS. although, i too have a 3700+ that isn't the greatest OC'er out there. I can get up to 2.75 or so, but that's with a high VCore that I don't want to sustain.

 

[ohwell78]

4ht setting. Memory is 2335 1t at 2.75 volts. Divider is 180 / .9 Ive ran it from 1:1 to 166 / .83.

Does anyone have the same chip and board i do?

 

[Chaotic42]

I have a 3700+ SD on a Neo 4 SLI and I decided on a whim to try overclocking (for the first time since 1999).

I'm at 11x230 (2530MHz or 4195+) with everything else left at default and it's running Prime95 just fine. I might leave it on all night just to see though.

Edit: Running well at 2640 now.

 

[ohwell78]

2640 at default voltage? what about the HT and did you adjust the multi on the ram?

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: ohwell78
2640 at default voltage? what about the HT and did you adjust the multi on the ram?

Yep, default voltage, no other changes.

Edit: 2640 was at a 240MHz bus. 250MHz bus doesn't work, even with a 3.3% overvolt. I got an IRQ_L error when Windows booted. I'm at 243MHz now (2673MHz or 4409+) and it seems okay.