Athlon XP-M OCing

[JDCentral]

Hey-

I'm starting out with my 'first' overclock with an athlon xp-m system that I built as a media-pc (EXTRA cheapo... and quiet).

Anyways, here are the specs:

Athlon XP-M 2600+ @ 215x11.0, 1.625 V
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe v2.0
512 MB OCZ Performance DDR400 @ 2.5-3-3-6 (stock is 2-3-3-6), 2.6 V

Sparkle 350W PSU (I'll give you a link, if requested).

Anyway - I'm currently tweaking the FSB to see how high I can get that.

I ran prime95 successfully for 8 hrs at 215x11.0, and I can boot into Windows at 220x11.0, but the comp locks up as soon as I start prime95. I lowered to 218x11.0 to see if that would help, but now it just locks up after about 4 hrs of prime95 (I'm running the full torture test). I've upped the vcore to 1.725, now, with the same results - what's the next step? I figured I would up the RAM voltage to 2.7, see how that ran, and then loosen some timings. I just wanted to double-check, because I'm not getting blue-screens, or prime95 errors - the comp just freezes up and doesn't respond to input.

(Temps are around 42C load, 30C idle)

EDIT: Currently torture-testing 200x12.5 @ 1.750 V IDLE: 30C, LOAD: 41C

 

[Lonyo]

Well I found I couldn't go too much above 215 on the FSB with my NF7, I think it might partly be an nForce 2 chipset thing, not liking too high FSB, but I could be mistaken. Anyone managed to get 220+ FSB with nForce 2 Ultra's?
(That was with a mem divider, loose timings, max voltages etc etc)
It wouldn't suprise me too much if you can't get much of a high FSB, but then Athlon XP's don't care too much about FSB, and since the stock is 133MHz, even a boost to 215MHz or so is quite big.

 

[JDCentral]

Mmkay.. not a big deal.

I was planning on going at 215, anyways... but I wanted to fool around a little bit, first .

Since I can run 215 at reasonably low voltages, I'll stick with that.

Thanks for the input.

 

[imported_Soldier]

I could hit 2.6 Ghz @ 1.7v on my Mobile 2600 with no problems. I'd suggest better cooling and a much better power supply if you are serious about working the chip. If you just want to give it a little boost and stay with the quiet setup your probably about done. Most likely the biggest factor limiting you is the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 board, it was never known as a good overclocker, even with a hacked BIOS I think 215-220 FSB was a problem.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Well I found I couldn't go too much above 215 on the FSB with my NF7, I think it might partly be an nForce 2 chipset thing, not liking too high FSB, but I could be mistaken. Anyone managed to get 220+ FSB with nForce 2 Ultra's?
(That was with a mem divider, loose timings, max voltages etc etc)
It wouldn't suprise me too much if you can't get much of a high FSB, but then Athlon XP's don't care too much about FSB, and since the stock is 133MHz, even a boost to 215MHz or so is quite big.

In my experience, AXPs get a big boost from higher FSB since they can quite easily become bandwidth limited.(assuming clock speed is high enough)

BTW, my AN35N Ultra mobo hits about 230fsb. One of the reasons I got it was because the reviews of it showed it regularly hitting 250fsb, and able to do high synchronous speeds.(probably relaxed timings though, cpu voltages are great, memory voltages max at 2.7V)

 

[AthlonPowers]

These boards can give some good fsb, I had my Corsair value running at 225 on my Asus/XP-M with a little persuasion. The higher fsb really helps, depending on what you're doing of course.

 

[Ka12na]

I think it's mainly ram, when I had 1x512mb of some crucial value stuff I couldn't raise fsb that high (I think I hit 2.4GHz at highest with 200 x 12). I had to replace that anyways because it was being a bottleneck so I got a 2x512mb pack of good OCZ, and that DEFINITELY helped my oc to become much higher.

 

[JDCentral]

Although there's more headroom for OCing, I'll probably just stick around 2.5.

I really don't want to crank my voltages any higher than Vcore ~ 1.8, and vdimm ~ 2.7

I'll probably stick with 200x12.5, or maybe 210x12, or try for 220x11.5.

Actually.. maybe I'll just set my voltages at those settings, and up the FSB and/or multiplier until I get a stable prime.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: JDCentral
Although there's more headroom for OCing, I'll probably just stick around 2.5.

I really don't want to crank my voltages any higher than Vcore ~ 1.8, and vdimm ~ 2.7

I'll probably stick with 200x12.5, or maybe 210x12, or try for 220x11.5.

Actually.. maybe I'll just set my voltages at those settings, and up the FSB and/or multiplier until I get a stable prime.

I hate how speeds after 2.4ghz for me really require cranking up voltage.(or it just may be my power supply is having trouble supplying the voltage?)

Like 2.4ghz is 1.625v for me, 2.5ghz is a bit over 1.7v, 2.6ghz is like 1.9v, and 2.7ghz is over 2v. I think it starts to have a noticable effect on room temperature as those vcores get higher.

 

[JDCentral]

You know what I hate even more???

Running prime95 and having it 'close' after 12 hours.

No errors... no BSOD... it just wasn't running when I came back to my computer.

Doh!!!! I'm contemplating whether to run it again, or to up the voltage and run it again. I mean... it crashed for a reason, but it might have just been a 'freak windows accident'.

(Running win2k pro, no SP.. sorry - only windows disk I could find!! Plan on running linux, anyways - but OC tools in windows are much better)

 

[JDCentral]

Decided to step down to 2400 (200x12), because the extra 100Mhz costs around an extra .075 volts, and about 8C in load temps

 

[coomar]

yeah i had the same thing, the massive voltage increase to get incremental cpu increases, the warming of the room with the cpu

 

[JDCentral]

Wow.. quiet and faaaaaaast!

Installing gentoo linux right now... used to installing it on my PPC 1.0Ghz.

Can you say 'bootstrap GCC in about an hour?'