vCore and WinXP

[David Shh!]

I'm upping the FSB on my locked palamino 2000+ (133 * 12.5 = 1667Mhz) and can only get as far as a measly 139.

I tried 142 FSB, got past the POST, but windows wouldn't play.

With vCore up to 1.775, Windows BSoD'd with "nonpaged area"

@ 1.8v, XP just complained about "a problem".

At 1.825 volts, XP rebooted my rig without BSoD, so I chickened out of going any higher!

CPU temperatures were in the high 50s throughout.

What gives?

[mookydooky]

High 50s is fine for that board. Up the VCore to 1.85V. Don't worry, it'll survive. I've had mine at that for over a year now and it's still tickin'.

[David Shh!]

OK, 1.850 it is.

I'm hoping this will let me up FSB to 142+. POST is fine, but WinXP reboots immediately. Will higher vCore resolve this?

[mookydooky]

Originally posted by David Shh!
OK, 1.850 it is.

I'm hoping this will let me up FSB to 142+. POST is fine, but WinXP reboots immediately. Will higher vCore resolve this?

Sometimes it's your memory. In which case you would up the VDimm too.

[David Shh!]

@ 1.85 vCore, 142 * 12.5 [auto], and add a little to vDIMM. Will do.

I have no temp monitoring for RAM - any tips?

Should I go forth & spend hard earned before tweaking, or will a modest .25 volts here or there be OK?

I'm thinking of shopping at an online store - unless anyone can point me somewhere cheaper...:nervous:

[mookydooky]

Tweak first and spend later. 2.8V and under for DDR seems to be ok. Corsair will honor their warranty unless you go over 2.8V which leads me to think that 2.8V would be fine.

[David Shh!]

Thanks MookyDooky.

I tried 1.85 vCore and, before I read your reply, added 0.25 to vDDimm = immediate reboot. I had to go with the jumper to recover life.

I'll try upping the vDIMM further - just as soon as I've solved my other issues (IDE cables, boot Serious Error...)

:beer:

[David Shh!]

Update:

vCore = 1.85
vDimm = 1.80
FSB = 140
multiplier = 12.5 auto - still locked

Results?
Success!

[David Shh!]

and as for temperatures...

[SteveI]

Running PC2700 memory and fsb under 166, means you are running asynch... 133fsb/166mem, or in your case 140fsb/175mem. If you are running anything less than fastest timings on your memory, you might get faster performance running synch with your fsb.... 140/140, with the most aggressive memory timings. Doing this should also let you run your memory at lower voltage. All you have to do is set your memory to 133, and it will go up as you up the FSB.

If you decided to try this, you could also isolate your CPU overclock a bit better, and see if your CPU is holding you back from going higher... or the memory @ 175.

What brand/model ram are you using?

[David Shh!]

Thanks SteveI, but I'm confused

My memory is set at "Fast"; will test "Fastest". I suspect "Turbo" will fail miserably.

What do I need to change to synch DIMM and FSB? The memory timings are "auto", choices include 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 ns. I also have some 6T / 5T, 3T / 2T etc. settings that I'm unclear about, as well as Continuous DRAM request and Fast R/W Turnaround... whatever they are :nervous:

First things first, though. How do I synch RAM to FSB? Do I want to do this will "normal", "fast", or "fastest" pre-sets? [I'm sure you said, but I didn't understand ]

Edit: Set DIMM to 133 manually, rather than 166 or "By SPD" - whatever that is / was...:-D

[muzz]

It looks to me like Steve thought you had an NF2 board.... could be wrong though......if so that's ok, as I am used to it........

[SteveI]

Originally posted by David Shh!
....Edit: Set DIMM to 133 manually, rather than 166 or "By SPD" - whatever that is / was...:-D

Bingo, you found it... Running it that way will not cost you much in performance... if you up the FSB more, you'll know for a fact that the memory isn't holding you back... Also, you should be able to run turbo now, and even drop your vdimm a bit.

Originally posted by muzz
It looks to me like Steve thought you had an NF2 board.... could be wrong though......if so that's ok, as I am used to it........

No, he's got it,

[David Shh!]

OK, did that: -

FSB @ 140, vDIMM @ 2.70v, vCore @ 1.85, "fastest" DIMM settings.

Seemed stable enough, but isn't the slower RAM clock (140 * 2) an awful lot slower than default 166 * 2 = 333? Actually, it's showing 350 with FSB @ 140 - as I'd hoped / expected.

I upped the FSB to a measly 141, and Windows wouldn't have it - BSoD.

For now, I'm back to asynchronous RAM, and calculating Pi to 1m places. More precision than that and it gets unstable "non convergent at SQR05" but since I want to play rather than draw very precise circles...

*#@%, Hang on... :nervous:

...does the FPU / CPU get this much hammering when polygoning? [a new verb] ?

Either way, is "Turbo" or "Fastest" synch @ 280 gonna beat "Fastest" asynch @ 350 ?