Stability Issues and Weirdness

[RenegadesRemors]

my system:

CPU - XP 2600+ Barton

RAM - 1 x 512mb Kingmax Superam PC3200 CL2.5

Motherboard - Abit AN7
==================
Zalman NB47j on the nortbridge with Artic Silver 5,
Thermaltake blue ORB on the southbridge with 3m Frag Tape
Heatsinks on the MOSFETS

Fans running of the motherboard headers :
1 x 80mm (CPU HSF)
1 x 40mm (Blue orb)

Video Card - Noname Geforce 4 ti4200 (not overclocked)
==========================================
Heatsinks on the RAM
Thermaltake Geforce4 cooler on the core
80mm Case fan blowing down on top of it

Harddrive
=======
WD 440BB 7200RPM 37 GB HDD

CDROMS
======
LG CDRW 52x/32x/52x

CASE
====
ANTEC PERFORMANCE PLUSVIEW 1000AMG (chieftec dragon)
2 x rear 80mm, 1 x side 80mm, 1 x front 80mm

PSU
===
LITEON 300W (with a modded/soldered P4 12v rail)

Voltage levels (Full load):
+12V -> 11.8 - 11.87
+5V -> 5.0 - 5.1
+3.3V -> 3.31 - 3.33

System Settings
============
FSB 200x11.5 = 2300
RAM timings : 9/4/4/2.5
VDimm - 2.8v (default 2.6)
VNorthbridge - 1.7v (default 1.6)
Vcore - 1.814v (default 1.6)

*Northbridge and Vdim timings arent really fixed I can probably get them lower - but i have no problems running them this high so why not?

I have a TTR-MR2 HSF my temps are in the 50 - 60 degree mark, round about 55 on full load.

now I'm running perfect at 200 but I want more.

I cna run at 210 x 11.5 = 2404 but i get lockups with some programs. Its mostly stable, I can play ut2k4 and CS for hours no problem but some things cause lockups.

I was running at 205x11.5 = 2346 with the vcore at 1.9 last night, I play sacred for around 3 hours no problem, then before i went to sleep I set MP3gain to work on my mp3 collection (its normalises the volume levels) not CPU intensive at all mostly harddrive intensive.

When i woke up it had locked up, I have the strange feeling it is my hardrive locking my system but that is really unlikely? Could it be heat, i know 50 degrees is high but its well within operating temperatures.

I cant figure out what it is. I'm gonna go home and run memtest86 at high fsbs - ie 205 / 210 and above to see whether my ram is fine at those speed and settings, if it is them its either Heat or something else?

My voltages are fine, but maybe the hard drive draws alot of power? Could it be PSU? What are the symptoms of a bad PSU? I'd really like some help.

[dabaerman]

it sounds like you're doing the trouble shooting as
best you can. psu's are/can be flaky when asked to
deliver more higher than spec volts/watts. I am not
an electrician and get shocking results from some
of my work. I am learning more about psu's every
day. many here will have better answers for you.

Ron

[danrok]

You're doing quite well already with your XP2600 running at 200mhz. It may be that it just won't go much higher.

How old is your hard disk? Some older drives don't like overclocked systems.

Have you tried 12 x 200mhz?

[Gizmo]

Some NF2 mobos just don't do much on the FSB. Then again, maybe your RAM doesn't like higher FSB.

Regardless, I would recommend bumping your Trp from 9 to 11. It will improve your memory performance, and might have an effect on your stability.

[XeroHouR]

this is the same problem I'm having, only I have corsair pc2700, Mobile 2600, 400watt powmax PSU and a DFI lanparty rev a (NFII). I got it up once at 2400(209x11.5 i think), but it crashed when I clocked the CPU on sandra. It's fine at 211x11 now, with 2-3-3-7. I can play cs and other things fine, but benchmarking isn't successful(it crashes out) and sandra sponataniously restarts my system. I dont think its the harddrive because your problem sounds identical to mine, and my HDD is fine. I run my CPU at 1.88 volts, but it MIGHT go lower, I left it up after trying to figure out how to make it boot with higher bus.

I have a wierd problem if i set the multiplier above 12, the computer wont post, so I shut it off, turn it back on and it will show up with 13 or i think 14 might work too. however with 13 I can't get it to go above about 2.1gighz. Do you have this problem too?

[danrok]

The XP2600 is good on voltage, generally they overclock at 1.6v and don't need 1.8v.

Any crashing when using benchmarking software indicates that you system is unstable.

I doubt that CS is all that demanding on your CPU. It's an old game engine which was originally coded to run on slower machines. This would explain why the game doesn't crash.

[XeroHouR]

yea, HL engine is old, but other games that I've tried have run fine, RA2, Fallout Tactics, the Painkiller demo. It seems that all diagnostic tools cause it to crash. I looked in my event viewer for my system and it says

Silent Running: rising temperature caused level transition: L2 -> L1
as an error its source was "NV" I have qutie a few of these dotting my event viewer. also while i was typing my first response my computer crashed and then wouldn't boot! it gave a variety of errors including couldn't load os, couldn't find disk, etc. maybe my HDD is dying! good thing maxtor offered 3 year warnetees when I got it. Get my new one and sell it, use this as an excuse to get Sata :P

HDD error:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 during a paging operation.

came up 4 times in a row and 2x before the line of them

[Gizmo]

XeroHour - have you tried dropping your system back to defaults and see if it is stable there?

[XeroHouR]

yea its stable up to 2.2. At one point I was able to benchmark at 2.3 or so. maybe Ill find some time and see if i can make it boot some other way.

[Gizmo]

Then I rather expect that the only way you are going to take the CPU speed any higher is to bump the voltage a bit more. Just be sure to keep an eye on your temps.

[dabaerman]

I have had many problems oc'ing. the majority of
those involved my lack of knowledge. I still practice
plug and play overclocking while learning how to
get more out of my systems.
before NForce all my major trouble was due to the
pci devices not liking the buss speed. second was
memory, timeings/power, issues.
it sometimes seems to take way too much time
and effort to reach an overclocked and stable sys.
by reading about your experiences, I learn some
more about what it takes. the number 1 answer, as
I read it, is to TRY something different. #2 is to go
back and TRY it AGAIN. have to say it works for
me.

8RDA+, 2500 Barton 210X11 @ 1.85v
2X256 XMS3200 @ 2.77v
Samsung CD-RW & DVDROM
GF3, SB 5.1, Cambridge SW
Enermax Noisetaker 370W psu
Koolance PC601B full tower

It just took me longer to get there.


Ron

[XeroHouR]

oh i've been trying :P thats most of the fun! I was just asking here if someone might have an idea why this is happening, so between efforts I drop by to see if anyone knows. I know it can't be the PCI, because I dont have any PCI devices! I think now that I have to play with my memory timings more. I actually got into windows at 2.4gighz and it stayed running while idle. Then I ran cpuz to check if it actually did boot at 2.4, and sure it did, then it locked up . I think my timings were 3-3-3-11, maybe even more relaxed would cause it to be stable, maybe more voltage(i think i was already at 1.85!). Its all trial and error but posting steps here helps anyone who is just starting by giving them another avenue. I know I've saved lots of time figuring stuff out here.

[danrok]

Have you tried overclocking on the fly with ClockGen?

[XeroHouR]

nope, but it sounds great! got a link?


speaking of doing it on the fly, I'm having trouble using riva tuner to make my video card's core mhz rise. It ignors what I set it to, and now its capping out at 375. I've had it up to 520 mhz before, but then it stopped working. I've tried degrading my drives, updating my chipset drivers and everything. Why does riva tuner do this? Actually, coolbits and everything else does it too. It appears the core locks itself or something. Anyone know why?

[danrok]

ClockGen:
http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

Be sure to use the right one for your board.

[SteveI]

XeroHouR,
the fact that your PC2700 is doing 200mhz is a pretty amazing accomplishment... I strongly suggest that you run memtest to verify that it is stable. Most PC2700 is crap today, simply because if it could do 200, they'd charge more and label it PC3200.

EDIT: last time I checked, the highest JEDEC standard was PC3200... But is hasn't stopped anyone (except crucial) from marketing higher than 'reality'. ... 3500, 37, 40,42, even 4500.

[XeroHouR]

k ill get mem test and let you know. I've gotten it to 211 with the FSB 1:1 and it doesn't appear to be unstable. I finally got my clock speeds moving agian, for a while, no my video card. I used clockgen to mess with the AGP bus, and put it up to around 65 and it started moving again...crazyness... I kept pushing it and making better aquamark scores and it stopped moving again when i got to 80mhz agp bus. Everything was good and stable at 2.3gighz 211.72fsb, 525core and 1053mhz mem on the video card up until i crossed into 80mhz. Now I'm wagering I have to restart to get it free agian :-/. the temp that it slows the GPU down is 140, im pushing on only 50 now(thermaltake giant III ) I'm over volting it to the max in my bios now too, and I'm gettin more outta it than i did before.

its fun when stuff just works :P

[JMa2969]

Originally Posted by XeroHouR

k ill get mem test and let you know. I've gotten it to 211 with the FSB 1:1 and it doesn't appear to be unstable. I finally got my clock speeds moving agian, for a while, no my video card. I used clockgen to mess with the AGP bus, and put it up to around 65 and it started moving again...crazyness... I kept pushing it and making better aquamark scores and it stopped moving again when i got to 80mhz agp bus. Everything was good and stable at 2.3gighz 211.72fsb, 525core and 1053mhz mem on the video card up until i crossed into 80mhz. Now I'm wagering I have to restart to get it free agian :-/. the temp that it slows the GPU down is 140, im pushing on only 50 now(thermaltake giant III ) I'm over volting it to the max in my bios now too, and I'm gettin more outta it than i did before.

its fun when stuff just works :P

You have a mobile, why aren't you trying to change the mutliplier to overclock? I se you dropped it but no raising of it. You have to remember that you are running a 266 FSB chipset at 211. I have a locked "Barton" AthlonXP 2600+ and I am lucky to get that high on a good day stable. The fact that you are maxing out on voltage and not able to get any higher with the FSB is not surprising (look at my sig. AN7). They do not overclock well at all. I can't even get the CPU Interface to work properly and I bought Corsair TwinX512 PC-3200 memory. If I wre you, I would drop the FSB a little, raise the multi, then see what you processor will do (and FYI, the problems you are having are symptomatic of an unstable overclock on the AN7, not a bad drive. Trust me, as I have gone through the exact same thing over and over and over, and I was using the max voltage on my board at the same FSB. Be happy you reached where you did with the memory, try the multipliers, or forget the overclock [before you burn something for good and REALLY have problems]). You do have a great FSB for that board, personally I would drop back to around 206 (412) and play the muiltiplier game. I just bought a refurbished NF7-S the other day and will get it tomorrow, if it works any better I will post and that may give you an indication of what you are looking at. But your drive is probably fine (BTW, my SATA's run 86-90 Mb/s on Sandra SP1, so go for it if you want them, as my WDC only posted at 20 Mb/s [these numbers are sequential and buffered, not burst speed, which is what all HDD's are rated at]).
Good luck;
Tim

[XeroHouR]

yea for some reason above 12.5 multiplier wont boot with anything near 2.3ghz...i can try again i've been havin a bit more luck recently, I think i didn't try it with laxed memory timings when i did. I thought it was sorta funny how I had to turn the thing off when I went from the low range (up to 12.5) to the high range (13+) for it to even turn on! I'm a big fan of FSB and what it offers as far as video performance, so I'd like it to be high and still clock faster. I'm thinking about gettin PMI dual channel 512 maybe 1 gig. I hear only good things, esp from gruntville. Hopefully this will help me push it more. if not then ill look into gettin a 2400 mobile or whatever is the determined best overclocker and try that.

[RenegadesRemors]

hm...

well my barton is locked and since i have a NF2 there is no way to unlock it, I ran a memtest86 at 220, 2.5/4/4/9, after 7 hours and 27 passes, not one error.

So that eliminates memory as the cause, in my experience any CPU limitations would manifest themselves as soft reboots rather than a lockup, like i mentioned i can run ut2k4 for hours ( on the highest everything ) and not lock up but then i jsut tried to modify the volumes on a couple of mp3's and boom lock up.

I hate this ****ty wd hdd, I had an amazing IBM desktar 75GXP but sold it off with my old machine cause the wd benched better (bad mistake), its a pretty old drive, a wd440bb is a 2mb cache 7200rpm 37.6 gb hdd.

Also there was incompatibility with my motherbaord and the WD 440 JB drives so that could maybe be an issue.

Maybe I should try borrow another harddrive install XP on it and bench with it and see if thats a problem (ugh what a schlep), maybe its times to save up and get dual 40gb and raid them (cept I have heard problems with people installing XP on a raid array)

neways, I want to at least get stable at 2404mhz, my chip can go much further i'm sure.