Windows freezes while running Prime95

[DasSmoof]

Greetings, not sure if you've seen a few of my other threads, but I'm starting to go through the motions reading the above guide for OCing my system. Problem is, windows freezes while running Prime95 when I'm up at 235 with a multiplier of 11. It ran fine at 230 and didn't have any issues, and I recall reading something about windows freezing when you get to a certain point OCing. Is 235 just too high?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Yep, too high, or you need to up the vcore


And you should download "Orthos" which automatically runs Prime95 on each core

Orthos

 

[DasSmoof]

Ahh cool, thanks. However, in the OCing guide it says I shouldn't go above 1.45vcore, which is what I was at. Is it possible to exceed that, or am I stuck at 230?
Thanks for that program, I was just running Prime95 in two instances and setting the affinity to each core.

 

[Furen]

Is that an AMD CPU? You may need to lower the HT multiplier, if so. Or it could be the RAM, too.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Good point Furen! Make sure you have dropped the HT multi from 5x to 4x.
On voltage 1.45v is pretty conservative, I wouldn't hesitate going up to 1.5v-1.55. But I'm pretty hard core and upgrade every 18mos or so, if you plan on keeping your rig for several years 1.45v is safer.

I will say however, I've been doing this quite a long time and overvolting past what many consider safe and have yet to kill a CPU. I've still got an old athlon tbird 1.4ghz CPU that still works fine that I overvolted 20% and it ran that way for 7yrs before I took it out of daily service.

I usually take the volts up to the point of diminishing returns. When a CPU gets near its max it gets to where it takes more and more volts just to get a small mhz increase. I try and find that point and settle just below that.

Another utility that I really like for AMD CPU's is "RMclock" when used in conjuction with "cool n' quite" enabled in bios it allows you to throttle your overclocked CPU based on CPU usage. When setup properly it drops the CPU multi and volts when the CPU is idling (90% of the time when web surfing,etc...) using less electricity and putting less stress on the CPU. Then instantly ramps up to the max multi and voltage when you launch anything CPU intense. Kind of the best of both worlds IMO. It takes a little tweaking to find the best min/max settings to use, but well worth in IMO.

 

[richardrds]

GD,

Thanks for the info on using RMclock instead of the AMD coll n' quite driver. This is exactly what i was looking for because the normal cool 'n quite driver slows down the processor too much when disk access is happening along with heavy cpu usage (i.e. video processing).


I found a nice how to doc for the RMclock utility so i figured i would share it so others trying this utility understand it better and don't make config mistakes. Thanks for the info GD!!!!

http://winhlp.com/rmclock.htm