- May 21, 2008
- 14
- 0
- 18,510
Ok so here is the deal, I built this machine about a year and a half ago and I am having issues keeping it stable even at its default values.
The specs are as fallows:
Intel E6300
ASUS P5B Deluxe Wi/Fi
2 x 1Gb Corsair XMS2Pro 6400 4,4,4,12
Seagate 320 Sata 2
EVGA 8800GTS 640
Zalman 9700 LED
Creative X-Fi Soundblaster Xtreme Gamer Professional
Windows XP Professional
So everything ran great when I bought it and I planned to overclock from the get go, for the first year I had it clocked at 3.3Gh, totally stable after heavy stress testing with prime95 for at least 15 hours, maybe more but i cant remember exactly. The voltages were not anything ridiculous, around 1.35, and with my heat sink, temps would never go above 63 at load. I then decided that I wanted to try and optimize things as much as I could and dropped it down a few times, eventually leaving it at 2.8Ghz, allowing my memory to run at the stock 800Mhz, and the vcore at 1.18. This is where I am now, and about 6 months ago I started to notice some issues with game play and everyday desktop performance. The first thing I noticed, and probably the most annoying issue is that after about an hour or so of heavy usage, games mostly, it will start to stutter ever so slightly, once ever second or so. My frame rate is still good and so are temperatures on my video card and CPU, if i restart my computer it goes away temporarily, but will return after another hour or so of gaming.
And recently it has become even worse, I have fiddled around with memory timings, loosening them to 5,5,5,15, and auto settings which for some reason are 5,5,5,18, well above the Corsair ratings, and this seems to show little improvement to the stuttering. After that I decided to try and simply run my CPU at default values, a rather unimpressive 1.87Ghz, just to keep the computer rock solid stable, and in hopes of keeping the stuttering at bay. But to my dismay, setting everything to auto for voltages, and having the memory timings at both the recommended 4,4,4,12 and auto settings of 5,5,5,18, I am now unstable and fail prime95 in less than an hour, and will get random blue screens during extended game play.
The only abnormal things about my setup are 1, my video card, the PCI-E frequency has to be bumped up to 112 for the motherboard to set itself to 16x, otherwise its stuck at 1x, a common issue for P5B owners. And my sound card which for whatever reason refuses to run on any drivers except the ones that came with it on the disk, any updated versions cause windows to crash shortly after showing my desktop.
I do also add a slight video card overclock before playing CoD4, but I always bump the fan to max and its turned back down for normal desktop usage.
Just recently i ran a memtest 86 test and it was perfect up until the 9th pass with no errors, when everything seized up showing nothing but the errors going crazy from 0 to somewhere in the ballpark of 3900 or something. This was done at default everything and memory timings at 4,4,4,12. Also done with a boot disk, not some windows app, if there is such a thing. I don't know much about that utility or how it works but i just assumed the PC crashed... it had been running overnight and after 8 clear, error free passes, the memory was probably fine.
Anyways I am looking for any insight or suggestions to these issues. I have thought for a while that the CPU was just dying after extended periods of overclocked use. But the really strange thing is that it will run prime95 fine at 2.8Ghz, more stable overclocked than at lower default values? Nothing here adds up to me at all so out of desperation I have come to the masses for insight. Any similar problems or any suggestions as to solutions are definitely accepted here and I tried to be thorough with the specifics but if more information is needed, just ask.
The specs are as fallows:
Intel E6300
ASUS P5B Deluxe Wi/Fi
2 x 1Gb Corsair XMS2Pro 6400 4,4,4,12
Seagate 320 Sata 2
EVGA 8800GTS 640
Zalman 9700 LED
Creative X-Fi Soundblaster Xtreme Gamer Professional
Windows XP Professional
So everything ran great when I bought it and I planned to overclock from the get go, for the first year I had it clocked at 3.3Gh, totally stable after heavy stress testing with prime95 for at least 15 hours, maybe more but i cant remember exactly. The voltages were not anything ridiculous, around 1.35, and with my heat sink, temps would never go above 63 at load. I then decided that I wanted to try and optimize things as much as I could and dropped it down a few times, eventually leaving it at 2.8Ghz, allowing my memory to run at the stock 800Mhz, and the vcore at 1.18. This is where I am now, and about 6 months ago I started to notice some issues with game play and everyday desktop performance. The first thing I noticed, and probably the most annoying issue is that after about an hour or so of heavy usage, games mostly, it will start to stutter ever so slightly, once ever second or so. My frame rate is still good and so are temperatures on my video card and CPU, if i restart my computer it goes away temporarily, but will return after another hour or so of gaming.
And recently it has become even worse, I have fiddled around with memory timings, loosening them to 5,5,5,15, and auto settings which for some reason are 5,5,5,18, well above the Corsair ratings, and this seems to show little improvement to the stuttering. After that I decided to try and simply run my CPU at default values, a rather unimpressive 1.87Ghz, just to keep the computer rock solid stable, and in hopes of keeping the stuttering at bay. But to my dismay, setting everything to auto for voltages, and having the memory timings at both the recommended 4,4,4,12 and auto settings of 5,5,5,18, I am now unstable and fail prime95 in less than an hour, and will get random blue screens during extended game play.
The only abnormal things about my setup are 1, my video card, the PCI-E frequency has to be bumped up to 112 for the motherboard to set itself to 16x, otherwise its stuck at 1x, a common issue for P5B owners. And my sound card which for whatever reason refuses to run on any drivers except the ones that came with it on the disk, any updated versions cause windows to crash shortly after showing my desktop.
I do also add a slight video card overclock before playing CoD4, but I always bump the fan to max and its turned back down for normal desktop usage.
Just recently i ran a memtest 86 test and it was perfect up until the 9th pass with no errors, when everything seized up showing nothing but the errors going crazy from 0 to somewhere in the ballpark of 3900 or something. This was done at default everything and memory timings at 4,4,4,12. Also done with a boot disk, not some windows app, if there is such a thing. I don't know much about that utility or how it works but i just assumed the PC crashed... it had been running overnight and after 8 clear, error free passes, the memory was probably fine.
Anyways I am looking for any insight or suggestions to these issues. I have thought for a while that the CPU was just dying after extended periods of overclocked use. But the really strange thing is that it will run prime95 fine at 2.8Ghz, more stable overclocked than at lower default values? Nothing here adds up to me at all so out of desperation I have come to the masses for insight. Any similar problems or any suggestions as to solutions are definitely accepted here and I tried to be thorough with the specifics but if more information is needed, just ask.
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