Barton 2500@3200, Prime95 fails but...

[JFL]

Last night I decided to turn up the juice on my Barton 2500 and brought it to 11X200FBS. I decided to put the voltage at 1.675 volts just to be on the safe side even if it posted and booted into Win XP at default voltage. I also decided to download Prime95, latest version and run it on my PC to see what would happen. I somewhat wasn't surprised when Prime95 game me an error message almost as soon as I started. I decided to bring up the voltage to 1.70 volts for pure curiosity. Prime95 latest a little longer but still gave me an error, so I said to myself "Hmmm, not stable, O/C not working" but before I brought down my CPU speed down a little bit, I decided to play a little Wolfenstein:Ennemy Territory just to see what would happen. 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours and so on, but my PC kept on going without a hickup. I got up this morning and decided to run thru a few of my games to see if any of them crashed, but I've yet to have one crash on me. So my question is, how relevant is Prime95 to testing an O/C PC's stability if everything else is running smoothly? I know a lot of people swear by Prime95 to test there O/C, but I've also read some people not caring much about it. Here are some of my specs:


AMD Athlon XP 2500@3200 (11X200FBS@1.675 volts) with Alpha 80mm heatsink with 40CFM fan, but can't remember exact model number, pretty sure you know wich model heatsink
Epox 8RDA+ Rev. 1.1 (unknown chipset revision) with onboard sound and LAN used
512 megs of Crucial PC2100 @ 2.7volts and 133mhz
ATI Radeon 8500 64 megs
Enermax 420watts (pretty sure it's the right wattage, haven't rechecked)
Antec 830 mid-tower case with 4 80mm fans

As I'm righting this, case temp is 34C and cpu temp is 51C Idle, but temps are average for summer temps. So for now, I'm keeping my Barton @ 11X200mhz if I don't get major stability problems.

I'd really appreciate some thoughts into all of this

 

[Jeff7181]

What's the stepping on your XP2500?

 

[Shimmishim]

off topic a lil, you can download cpu-z to find out what stepping you have for your 8rda+



as for stability... i say to each his own... i like to make sure my processor can do at least 6 hours or so...

but if you can play games for hours and hours with no hiccup and you think that's good enough... well gosh darn it, it's good enough (for you)

 

[Richdog]

Yes it makes sense, PRIME 95 puts your system under the sort of strain it would NEVER get from a game, it gives it the most extreme stress. That program is good for if you want to know your PC would be stable under a hurricane, but if all your games and applications run fine and you receive no errors or lockups then its relevence decreases a little. I say keep it like that and if you have any trouble, THEN decrease the settings.

 

[bjc112]

Your running 200 FSB on some Crucial 2100?!?!

Lower your FSB to like 185 and bump that multiplier up to around 12...

That could be why your system is crapping out...

 

[JFL]

bjc112: I never said my system was crapping out, all I said was that Prime95 wouldn't run without errors. If having Prime95 not running properly is, for you, the same as having a PC crapping out, then we have a different way of seeing what an unstable PC is. Also, my memory is running at 133mhz, as I did not set my memory to run at 100%, wich means the memory would be running at 200mhz(ouch!!!).

Jeff7181: My Barton is week 19. I read that week 19 did pretty good for a Barton, so I was happy when I received my Barton and that what week it was.

One thing I didn't try is to run Prime95 with my Barton 2500 running at stock speed. I'm gonna go play in the bios and then retry Prime95.

 

[GoingUp]

isnt 11x200 2200mhz?

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: bjc112
Your running 200 FSB on some Crucial 2100?!?!

Lower your FSB to like 185 and bump that multiplier up to around 12...

That could be why your system is crapping out...

I was also confused by that...

 

[joshg]

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
isnt 11x200 2200mhz?

Yes, 2500+ and 3200+ are the AMD PR Rating System values. The 2500+ chip is actual clock 1.83GHz and the 3200+ chip is actual clock 2.2GHz. Therefore, a Barton running at 11x200, 2200 MHz, is the equivalent of a Barton 3200+, 2.2GHz Clock speed, chip.

 

[joshg]

Also, to the original poster, what are the timings on your memory? I could get mine stable at 11x230 but Prime would spit up at me no matter how much voltage I pumped, the only thing that fixed it was reducing the timings on my memory... For now I'm running stable @ 11x200 memory @ spd (1GB 2x512 TwinMOS PC3200 Winbound BH-5), will tinker some more when I have time (maybe this weekend?).


And have you tried running PC3200 memory at 100% with the CPU to maybe see if running seperate bus speeds could be the problem? (never heard of this but you never know .. ).

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: JFL
bjc112: I never said my system was crapping out, all I said was that Prime95 wouldn't run without errors. If having Prime95 not running properly is, for you, the same as having a PC crapping out, then we have a different way of seeing what an unstable PC is. Also, my memory is running at 133mhz, as I did not set my memory to run at 100%, wich means the memory would be running at 200mhz(ouch!!!).

Jeff7181: My Barton is week 19. I read that week 19 did pretty good for a Barton, so I was happy when I received my Barton and that what week it was.

One thing I didn't try is to run Prime95 with my Barton 2500 running at stock speed. I'm gonna go play in the bios and then retry Prime95.

Ah, did not know you were not running memory sync with FSB...



That would have been some impressive Crucial.

 

[JFL]

Well, I lowered my Barton to it's stock speed(1.83ghz) and just did 6 hours straight of Prime95 without any errors, so yes, my o/c Barton will not do Prime95 at 11X200mhz, but like I already said, everything else is doing OK. Anyway, my case temps are too high and I need to bring it down by 4-5C if I can do it. I've been looking at this case for better cooling. I might get myself a new heatsink with larger fan and higher CFM. ALuminum is way better for heat dissipation and prices have come down since it was first introduced in PC cases. Anyway, this is not my first o/c and a lot of people will tell you that overclocking is always a work in progress