New system build finally complete!

[soul83]

System specs:
Q9450 [C1 stepping - SLAWR) @ 3.2ghz running stable at stock VCC (assuming 1.21250V is stock...)
OCZ FlexxLC 2gb (1gbx2) 6-6-6-24 1.9v
Scythe S-FLEX SF2IF
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6
3xWD 5000AAVS 7200rpm drives in RAID5.
LG Blu-ray burner
Winfast DTV5000H
Floppy
Old ZIP drive
Netgear WPN311 PCI card <-- causing a few headaches with Vista compatibility.
Sapphire Radeon 4870x2 (would love to have enough spare cash to put another of these beasts in crossfire mode!).
Zalman 1000w PSU
Dell Ultrasharp 24" TFT 2408WFP
Logitech MX5000 kb and mouse
Coolermaster CM830 black with 4 additional 120mm coolermaster blue LED fans.
6x120mm fans in total controlled by a Sunbeam Rheobus Extreme 6 channel fan controller.
Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit (awaiting the shipment of my order for 64-bit).
Windows XP (still deciding whether or not I should dual boot this for older games).

HDTV looks awesome on this monitor but would like to have the ability to record a show and watch another at the same time...

Want to get 3dmark vantage scores higher but don't want to push the CPU above 60C (full load) on air.

Might consider upgrading to water cooling when I recover from this latest spending spree...

I will post a separate thread on my Prime95 woes... BUT it cannot be overemphasised that configuring the ram should be done in the BIOS prior to considering overclocking!! I was keen enough to spot the underclocked CPU settings in the BIOS. But even after setting the OC to 400mhz FSB (3.2ghz), I never thought to check the ram timings and voltages.

So, spent 2 full days running Prime95 large ffts and trying to work out why they kept failing on random cores whenever I changed VCC, VTT or NB voltages. Turns out all I had to do is increase the voltage to the RAM to the specified level on the website and alter the timings to 6-6-6-24. Prime95 is still running a large fft test at the moment (about 3.5hrs) with no problems 😀 After just over 3.5hrs it completed a full large fft stress test
EDIT: Was running Vista in safe mode with C1E and clock lowering disabled. But gigabyte util runs during normal boot to lower the clock speeds down to 2.4ghz when the CPU is idle. So, will run a few games and test out my OC a bit further to ensure stability. Will then go back to the BIOS and start enabling the power saving options.


Prior to adjusting the ram, I ran memtest for 8 hours (13 passes) with no errors. Games were jamming after a couple of hours (Gothic 2, Doom 3 and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory). Yeah I know they're older games, but it's taken me this long to upgrade to a machine that could play them at a decent frame rate. Btw, Doom3 limits fps to 60fps doesn't it?

The game jamming scared the s*** out of me because it came up on the monitor as a series of repeating random lines and jammed sound. Thought my graphics card was dying...certainly hoping the ram was the culprit.

Right now, my primary concern lies with the 4870X2. Last time I checked CCC it was registering 83C idle (hadn't been playing games). Doesn't sound normal...can anyone recommend a good program for measuring GPU temp and fan speed?

BIOS settings for the GPU are at 100mhz default PCI express speed. Made a point of avoiding increasing anything to do with the graphics card!

CPU stock temps (measured with Speed Fan - very similar to CoreTemp and I'm aware of the slight diffs due to TJmax): idle is 39-41C, 100% load (P95 stress test) 48-53C.

One more thing, not sure what monitor rev I have but it's been about a week since I started using this and I can't see any major problems at all. It's a bit hard to make out details in very dark scenes in Splinter Cell but seems alright (the night vision goggles compensate well :lol: ). No ghosting, no over-saturation and no discernible input lag. I'm very happy with this monitor so far
I should note that if I look right up close, I can see a slight 'shadow' on black text but this monitor is so damn big that you don't need to sit that close anyway! The so-called mouse trails don't seem any more obvious than on my last CRT...well maybe I'm blind but to me the monitor looks OK and gives a clear, crisp, bright image (esp. on HDTV).

 

[groo]

you can download vista64 on the p2p sites if your in a hurry.

I dual booted my sytem to xp and vista 64. I only used XP for a specific program that didn't run in Vista. you've got enough power in your machine that it makes no sense to run some games in XP for performance reasons, only if they just wont run at all in Vista.

 

[Shadow of Dawn]

83c idle for the 4870x2 doesn't sound that bad, my 4870 runs at 71c idle. I would recommend Rivatuner 2.11 for fanspeed and temp monitor. I change the fanspeed to 35% and it now idles at about 44c.

 

[soul83]

Looks like I was getting ahead of myself last night. The BIOS had reset the CPU to default speed (2.66ghz) so no wonder the prime95 large fft test came up clear!

Tried to force the 6-6-6-24 timings at 1.9v under 400mhz fsb (3.2ghz) and the computer wouldn't boot. Just reset the BIOS to default settings automatically after 3 failed attempts at powering on. So I've gone back and set things up in the BIOS with the following: 400mhz fsb (3.2ghz), stock voltage, +0.2V on ddr3 to get it over the 1.9v mark, ddr3 timings left on auto which is coming up in the BIOS as 7-7-7-20.

Small ffts ran for 12 hours no problem. Large ffts keep failing:
1. Settings as above: 38-41C idle; 57C load; core 2 failed after 25mins; core 4 failed after 18mins.

2. Increase VCC to 1.30625 (=1.3V after 0.06V Vdroop); 43C idle; 63C load; failed core 4 after 16mins.

3. VCC to 1.21250 (default voltage); +0.025V (1 step) north bridge; VTT normal default; 44C idle; 61C load; failed core 2 after 12mins.

4. VCC=1.30625V; NB=+0.025V; 51C idle; 65C load; failed core 1 after 2 mins.

5. VCC=1.21250V (default voltage); NB=default; VTT +0.05V (1 step up); 58-63C load; failed core 4 after 3mins.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but it's definitely confusing me :-/

Surprisingly, the most successful run of Prime95 was 2 hours with VCC=1.188V. Core 3 failed after 2 hours. Doesn't sound right because the BIOS is stating that the default stock voltage for running 2.66ghz is 1.21250V. So I assumed running a 3.2ghz overclock would require more power, not less!

Here are the rest of my settings:
1:2 FSB😀RAM ratio --> DDR3 running at 1600 (=400mhz). Standard speed for this RAM is supposed to be 1600mhz. The website claims the RAM supports 6-6-6-18 timing...should I consider increasing voltage to the RAM.

As you can see, I've run around in circles with no clear methodology left for attempting the OC. Any input into this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[soul83]

I've decided to focus on getting the ram stable at 6-6-6-24. Upped the voltage to it's limit under warranty (+0.35V) and so far booting is ok and memtest86 is coming up error free. Will leave it to run for 8 hours or so to make sure the ram will be ok.

 

[soul83]

Still no luck. Tried quite a few combinations and the best prime95 could do was 5mins before the first core failed. Even default ram timings in the BIOS didn't help.

Perhaps 400mhz is not attainable on this particular chip. Small fft's worked perfectly fine for 12 hours at 1.21250v (stock voltage) at 3.2ghz overclock but large fails (to the point now where launching prime95 hangs the computer at this setting). Memtest86 is ok. So by my process of elimination, only the motherboard's NB is left...

 

[soul83]

Checked out the BIOS a bit more and discovered I wasn't supplying enough power to the ram....wasn't getting to 1.9v

Going to run memtest86 overnight and see if it runs stable now....

 

[soul83]

The computer won't progress past the raid setup section with the voltage increased to 1.9v

Looks like it's the expensive ram i purchased that's causing the problem -.-

EDIT: finally found a forum with settings that allowed me to boot up into memtest. Will give prime95 another try and aim to stabilise vcores.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38787

 

[groo]

raid setup???


if your trying to install your OS while OCed, DON'T!

 

[soul83]

Ran Prime95 blend test for 20mins with no problems. Running large fft test overnight, followed by extended blend and small fft tests. Finishing up with one final extended memtest86 test.

So far though, its running stable at stock voltage 1.2125v. When I ran the blended test, a strange squealing noise could be heard from within the computer. Can't put my finger on which component is causing it....Large fft test isn't causing it at all. Perhaps a weird memory acoustics issue?

Temps are running quite hot atm: 56-57C. Perhaps arctic silver would be worth investing in?

 

[soul83]

raid setup???


if your trying to install your OS while OCed, DON'T!

groo, by raid setup I meant the AHCI screen that pops up just before the OS loads.

 

[soul83]

Can someone recommend a good guide that explains memory overclocking - starting with the basics like what each of the terms mean in the BIOS settings (extended options: trrd, rank write to read delay etc.).

Also, is the increase in the CPU clock driving control from 800mv to 900mv really necessary? What does it achieve?

 

[groo]

first make sure you memory is stable at stock speeds, then use a memory divider to set the memory at artificialy low speeds (as if it was DDR2 533 or the like), then find your peak stable CPU OC, then start bringing the memory memory speads up until it fails, then loosen the setting to see if that helps gain more spead out of it.

In order of importance to performance:
CPU speed, memory speed, memory timing (lower is better, I'm not real sure myself exactly what the numbers mean)

hope this helps.

 

[cow_moo]

nice Setup

 

[soul83]

first make sure you memory is stable at stock speeds, then use a memory divider to set the memory at artificialy low speeds (as if it was DDR2 533 or the like), then find your peak stable CPU OC, then start bringing the memory memory speads up until it fails, then loosen the setting to see if that helps gain more spead out of it.

In order of importance to performance:
CPU speed, memory speed, memory timing (lower is better, I'm not real sure myself exactly what the numbers mean)

hope this helps.

Therein lies the problem! I can't get the memory timings to default to 6-6-6-24 (manufacturer specs) at the motherboards default voltage (1.7xxv). Note the manufacturer specs want 1.9v so I tried this out in the BIOS (+0.3v = 1.8xxv in total) was as high as I could get the voltage to go and still maintain loading into windows. Above that, the computer wouldn't post. 6-6-6-24 was manually set up in the BIOS along with default processor speed of 2.66ghz.

My prime95 results were extremely erratic! Tried to increase vcc to get better results but each step produced a different result each time. Went from 2 hrs stable, 5mins stable, <1 min stable, 3mins stable, <1min stable. It was all over the place and don't get me started on the vtt and NB attempts.

Strangely enough, the following mem timings, NB and vtt voltages produced complete system stability at 3.2ghz (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38787).

So now I want to get started on trying to tweak those settings to lower NB voltage in particular (running at the highest voltage might not be good for it) and definitely tune up the memory and see if I can get better performance from it. So it's time to read up on memory terms and overclocking procedures.

Starting on lowering VCC might be a better option for me to begin with: going to try and experiment with lowering everything to stock (except mem timings and 3.2ghz oc) and see what increasing VCC will do to stability now. Will report back with results.

 

[soul83]

Good news for now: after loosening the ram timings according to the OCZ forum, I've been able to achieve about 7 hours stability of long ffts at stock voltages on everything and clock speed of 3.2ghz.

About to attempt some gaming for a while. Will then set up the blend test for a full 24 hour run. Load temps are hovering between 53 and 57C.