P41.6a@2.56GHz!!

[Jwyatt]

I bought a setup last weekend. P4-1.6a MSI 845 ULTRA ARU----2-Maxtor ata133 60g HDDs. I already had the ram from when it was cheap 256 crucial with Micron chips.

At first my road to OCing or even running at default was hell. I first started by setting up my raid setup to strip. Giving me 120g HDD.
I then installed (tried at least) Windows 2000 pro. After 3-4 hours i finally got 2k up and going.

Sometime I would get crashes at different parts whether I was OCING or not.
I finally narrowed it down to either one of the hard drives or the raid controller. I pulled the drives out of the raid sockets and intalled them on the first ide controller and procedded to install WIN98 then 2000 server as dual boot.

Both installs were flawless even overclocked at 150fsb giving me a stout 2.4ghz!

After about 4 hours of prime 95 I figured it was ok for now. Then pump in the memtest86 software. It ran for a few hours and everything still running at 150fsb with memory timings at 2-2-2-5 is great!!

The only problem i was having is the reboot issues. I decided to do the wire trick using rear defogger kit instead of trying to find some wire small enough to get in there. reboot issues are a way of the past for me now! Now im happy as a pig in slop running at 160fsb(first overclock i have had to do anything over 144 stable!!) Tried jumping up to 166, but got win98 errors. I think the pci is a bit high at that point.

At this point im going to ask, am i cheating on this OC? The only thing i have in there right now is a trident PCI video card and a NIC to make tranfers easier than having to burn from my other computer.

Another thing. I was considering selling my water rig I never quite finished up. For the mainreason i was tired of seeing it laying around and didnt feel like installing it. Now im thinking about using it again to try to beat the heat from this monster. I know the CPU is strong enough to pull 166fsb..probably faster if i wanted!

You ask what cooling am i using now? Well its the nice aluminum one that intel happened to drop in the box with my CPU. I ripped the stock pad from there and used some ASII. Slightly lapped the HS(it was 2 am and i didnt feel like doing it more than 2 minutes )

Anywhos..just thought i would give some hope to the MSI 845 ULTRA owners and 1.6a owners out there. If memory serves me my chip was a Costa chip. FPO/Batch#3203A725. Sandra shows it as revision/stepping 2/4(9) and stepping mask B0 whetever those numbers mean.


I also have to thank all the people who post here to give some info on everything. Thats what makes this board so good. People speak usually from experience, and not just what they read!

 

[Pauli]

Wow! Great OC! That gives me some hope for my 845 ULTRA ARU - I have only been able to get it up to 137FSB stable so far (stock voltage). I think the problem is with my Kingston DDRAM - I saw a review that could only get these modules up to 138FSB. Damn these modules!

 

[KatLei]

I've got my 1.6A@2.51GHz with Kingston DDR valueram at 2-2-2-5 (157Mhz FSB), nanya chips... That RAM is sweet. I didn't think it'd reach that high...
Using a P4B266 instead though. And i installed a thermaltake active heat spreader for the RAM (I really don't know how much this helps but hey, if it works it works)

 

[wildting88]

i am very new to this whole overclocking thing. can you please help me. i think i have the same parts as you. here's what i have and here's what i've done.

Asus P4B266-C Motherboard (bought at newegg.com)
Intel P4 1.6A Chip (bought at newegg.com)
1 stick of 512 DDR SDRAM (bought at Frys)
1 Barracuda II 20 Gig HD
1 Maxtor 45 Gig HD
1 Promise ATA100 Card (both HDs are connected to the promise card)
Geforce 3 Ti200 Video
no sound right now
ATI TV Wonder PCI Television Card
Dazzle Firewire Card
A really fun casing that has a window and blue light.

OK... my friend who knows some stuff about overclocking overclocked it to 133FSB. Everything else was left default. I ran Prime95 and it only lasted for like 10 minutes. I figured that might be because I was also multi-tasking. He told me to not use my computer and then test it. So after that... i got this error after 11 minutes: "FATAL ERROR rounding was .4999482769, expected less than .4. Hardware failure detected. Consult stress.txt."

What does that mean?

Anyway. I am really asking what to do now. It seems that I cannot even overclock my computer to 133 (which is supposed to be standard for this board I have read). Do I increase the voltage and or decrease those numbers that everyone says 2-2-2-2-5. Can someone please PM me or just reply back to this thread letting me know what settings they have if they have this same board and chip? OR... do you think my RAM could be bad or something?

Thanks in advance.

Jason

ALSO, if you have another testing program, that would be great.

 

[Platinum321]

if you bought the generic ram from fry's, maybe you should try some brand name ram like that from crucial or samsung. from my experience, the generics, although cheaper, can't overclock worth jack. hopefully that would be your problem. prime95 is just telling you the cpu didn't compute a value correctly due to some kind of incorrect value being produced by the cpu which would be affected by anything in your system (memory being a possibility).

 

[Jwyatt]

To check your ram DL memtest86 I think thats the name of it. It runs from floppy and will test for hours on end. If theres a problem with ram at a certain speed it will find it.

 

[Jwyatt]

Check out this tip