Brick Wall in overclocking Pentium D 805

[cuno32]

I am not new to computer hardware, but am still very green to overclocking (as well as asking for help on a forum), and am having trouble with my new rig's overclocking past 3.2 GHz.

To start out- my rig stats-

CPU- Pentium D 805
Mobo- Intel D975XBX Bad Axe Rev. 304 with core voltage mod
RAM- 2x 1GB G.Skill RAM rated at 667MHz, currently running at about 640MHz, overclocked from 533MHz
Video Card- eVGA 7900GT KO Superclocked
Thermaltake Bigwater SE watercooling for CPU

Now the symptoms- I am using Intel's overclocking suite (Desktop Control Center), and up to 3.2 GHz, no problems occur. IDCC uses a "friendly" interface that just asks the user to choose a percentage they wish to increase the frequency (I don't think they use that word, but that is what it is doing), so this is at the 20% range, which I have been using and has been solid for about two weeks. When trying to up the percentage to 22%, the screen goes black, the speakers make a loud hiss, and the computer restarts. Trying to up the voltage on the CPU or RAM has not changed the situation, and CPU temperature has rarely gone beyond 68C. I know very little about RAM timings and have not messed with them, but know that they are 4-4-4-12 on my rig, if that helps at all. As I am typing this, I am realizing that it could be that the already superclocked video card might be the limiting factor, but would this cause a system reboot? Anywho, I'm at work so I cannot test anything during the day, but any suggestions on a course of action would be greatly appreciated.

 

[rodney_ws]

From personal experience (with an Asus board) I've had NO luck using software to overclock a processor... most I could get was 3-5% using the Asus software... wow... 5%... amazing! Thanks Asus!!! I did a little reading online and quickly realized that going into my motherboard's BIOS was the only ticket... after adjusting numerous settings (ram timings, CPU voltage, etc) I was able to achieve an 18% overclock... took my AMD X2-4400 up to AMD FX 60 speeds.

I guess all I'm saying is this... ditch that software and do it the right way. Sorry I can't be more specific as I haven't used an actual Intel board in years. Good luck and please search the internet for some OC'n guides... 3.2 is a wretched overclock for that 805... especially with Intel 930 prices dipping so low.

 

[icbluscrn]

well return your ram timing to stock, leave that for your more advanced stages.
First ,through your bios screen i would look for some kind of ram divider to run the memoey a little slower back it down so you know your mem is not the problem, what is your mem voltage?
what is your cpu voltage? you might have to up it a little as you go however your temps are high as it is already,

your video card will not be the problem, you do however need to lock the bus speed.

as far as software overclocks i never had an issue, using ai booster on my 2 805's and getting 50%+ overclocks. the only issue is you cant adjust your ram divider from windows but thats fine

 

[rodney_ws]

The RAM divider was my issue as I had used Corsair Value RAM and there was no way that memory was going to accept an overclock like that. Congrats on your success with the AI software... maybe my one bad impression was just that... one bad impression... and not representative of the concept as a whole.

 

[OCstone]

Trust Me Do It Manualy From Bios Never Use Software They All Fail Including Amd's Software For Overclocking

 

[cuno32]

Thank you all for the thoughts, I plan on working on it tonight and into the weekend until I figure out limiting factors (Numbers I gave are all from my memory, and I'm a forgetful person). In the meantime, I was wondering something else. I also plan to do quite a bit of underclocking to save on electricity and noise when I'm just surfing the web or working on projects, it would be nice to have the RAM divider go back to default as part of a saved profile on IDCC. If it is not possible, would it change performance significantly while underclocking? Just as a practical issue, it would be easier to be able to change settings within Windows and not have to restart.

 

[icbluscrn]

if i remember on my intel x975 you can save it but when you go from overclock to stock/underclock it will ask you to restart the pc.
also i know that the intel overclock software will limit to 35%oc there is a mod out there for a higher overclock, I did not try it however.

 

[OCstone]

It Would Be Easyer But Less Stabel And If You Want To Overclock With Less Power Thats What AMD Is All About Im Almost At 3Ghz Im Working On That Issue Now But Software In Windows Changing Numbers On Hardware has bad stability Issues That Can Cause Worse Probs
Honestly Manualy Doing It From Bios Will Get Your More Tons More..

Oh And AMD Has A Patch For All Dual Core CPU's And Pretty Much Compleats Reverse Hyper Threading Witch Can Be Better Than The Conroe So If You Want Performance And Much Less Power And Heat o AMD .....

If I Went Intell I Would Get The OVerclock Of My Video Card Or Mem
Just Cause Of How Hot They Run .... Check It Out

And AMD At 3Ghz Smokes Any Intell At 3Ghz Check Sandra Soft For Benchmarks But Research All Cpu's

 

[OCstone]

i ment to say i would not get the overclock on the rest of my hardware due to intells heat issues

 

[vsamaco]

I am having issues overclocking my 805 to 3.3ghz. I am using gigabyte 965P ds3 with corsair xms2 6400. It runs fine stock with cpu 1.25v and memory 1.9v and 533mhz fsb. When I run some benchmarks on 3.3ghz, it crashes my system. So I increase vcore to even up to 1.55v and it will not stablize... Should I try to increase memory voltage? I don't think this mobo has memory divider... there is system memory multipler

 

[LPS]

I am having issues overclocking my 805 to 3.3ghz. I am using gigabyte 965P ds3 with corsair xms2 6400. It runs fine stock with cpu 1.25v and memory 1.9v and 533mhz fsb. When I run some benchmarks on 3.3ghz, it crashes my system. So I increase vcore to even up to 1.55v and it will not stablize... Should I try to increase memory voltage? I don't think this mobo has memory divider... there is system memory multipler

Please detail all your specs. In particular the PSU.

Are you OCing your graphic also?

Have you taken the memory timings off auto?

Check that your PCI and PCI-E are locked and not OCing as well.

 

[vsamaco]

Gigabyte 965P ds3 f4c bios
intel d805
2x1gb corsair xms2 6400
2x 74gb raptor drives
x1900xt
antec 550w tpII
zalman 9500

Graphic card is not overlocked. I tried setting 4-4-4-13 as timings and pci-e to 100 but it didn't make a difference.

I am able to overclock to 3.32ghz by increasing the dimm voltage +.1 with only 1.375vcore. CPU Temperature at 3.32ghz is around 40C. As soon as I try the next step of 3.60ghz, higher vcore or dimm voltage didn't stablize.

There are other voltages such as mch, fsb, and pci-e. I tried increasing one or another of these voltages and still no luck... I am not all sure about how much you typically increase these voltages.

Does corsair publish information about voltages at different timings? I haven't attempted to try anything above +.3v on dimm voltages. I am looking at an anandtech and it goes to 2.1v for 800 ddr2. I think my mobo default voltage was 1.8v with stock settings. Setting the bus to 180 puts memory at 720mhz.

 

[vsamaco]

An update. I am able to overclock to 3.8ghz. After I manual set the memory multiplier, I was able to step 3.6ghz and 3.8ghz on 3.33x multiplier using 1.4vcore and +.3dimm. One thing I noticed was that 3.8ghz had higher superpi and cs:source scores but lower 3dmark score. When I tried 3.6ghz with 4x multiplier, 3dmark score was better than 3.8ghz but only better superpi and source than 3.6ghz with 3.33x memory. Come to think of it... I have a better 3dmark score overall with 3.32ghz and 4x memory. I'm gonna try 3.6ghz and 4x memory at the moment.