Overclocking P5N-D

[ganymede-]

Hi,

I noticed in one of the older forum postings that I found on Google that a number of people where familiar with my mb. I am a newbie to overclocking and so I am having trouble oc'ing. I can't even keep the pc stable when I am using asus auto oc setting when I go above 10%, which I think is strange because before buying this asus mb, I had one of there less expensive models ($129) which I exchanged, but I had no problem setting the auto setting to 20%. Whatever about that. But I know the CPU can handle at least 3.60Ghz because all my temps were stable and not elevated at all.

Now I would like to try and work with the settings in manual mode, but I can't find the some of the same settings that people are referring to in the threads on this mb--specifically the one in which you were a contributor.

To give you some basic info:
I have an Alienware 5100 (three years old)
I have the Intel 6850 which runs at 3.00Ghz
I have the latest Phoenix BIOS, revision 0302

The deal is I don't know where to make the FSB adjustments or other if necessary. People are referring to an FSB base, but I don't see anything named as such. When I was fiddling with the manual settings in the Jumpfree configuration, I honestly didn't know what to do.

Specifically under FSB an Memory Configuration the FSB memory ration was set to auto, and the FSB (QDR), Mhz = 1533. Are these the settings what I am supposed to adjust, aside from the vcore voltage? As I understand it, our mb might be underpowered, but that is only what I read somewhere, so vcore would be important if that where the case, right?

Finally, under CPU configuration, every thing is disabled but CPU thermal control and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep. I thought all the settings were to disabled if you wanted to oc, but when I tried to reboot at the auto 10% oc, which is the best I can do right now, and it's stable, the computer won't even boot past the BIOS, so I enabled those two settings and it booted fine then.

So, as you can see, I am driving blind here, so any help/guidance would me greatly appreciated. The computer is too slow for my taste, and I really want to give it a boost.

Thank you
Skyler

 

[flyin15sec]

To start OC the Asus P5N-D in the BIOS:

Advanced -->Jumper Free Settings, change AI Tuning to Manual

System Clocks, keep PCIe at 100mhz
Voltages:
CPU Vcore = 1.35v, you can go lower but this is a fine starting point
Dram = set it to what your memory vendor lists, usually between 1.8v - 2.3v
HT = 1.2v
NB = 1.2v
SB = 1.5v

FSB & Memory:
Use "Unlinked" memory.
Set your QDR to 1333mhz
memory to 800mhz

Exit from Jumperfree and go to Chipset. Make sure all your memory timing is on Auto for now. LDT multi, should be at 5x.

Exit and go to CPU. Make sure all settings are disable. You can't change the CPU multi. SAVE and exit your BIOS. Make sure you can boot into windows. Download and have all tools you need for overclocking.

When you are ready go back into the BIOS. Go to Jumperfree --> FSB&Memory. Adjust the QDR to your desired speed. The math for your CPU is : (QDR / 4) * 9 = CPU speed. I have that CPU on a different board and I can say with almost certainty that it will do 3.4ghz without any voltage increases. Change your QDR to 1500mhz. That will put you at 3.3ghz. SAVE your BIOS and restart windows.

Run Prime95 v 25.6 for stability. How long depends on you. I typically go early on only about 5-10mins. If it does not fail or if you system does not crash then reboot and go into your BIOS. Increase your QDR, I recommend no more than 5-20mhz. SAVE BIOS, enter windows run Prime95 for stability. Repeat the process until you get a failure or your system becomes unstable. At this point, you need to increase the voltage, start with your CPU voltage, up it a notch. SAVE BIOS, reboot and retest. Rinse Repeat process.

If you find that increasing your CPU voltage is not helping then you'll need to adjust your NB and/or HT voltage.

When you get to your goal CPU speed, you'll want to run Prime95 for an extended period. For me it is 8hours of Small FTT, then another 8-12hours of Blend.

 

[ganymede-]

Hi Flyin15sec:

Sorry I didn't respond back yesterday to the post but things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped with the oc'ing. More about that in a second. First, I wanted to say that it was ironic that you are the one who answered my post because, because it was you who I initially wrote the post to in via a PM. However, I decided at the last moment to just post it in the BIOS section since you weren't on-line at the time.

Enough about that, so were back to talking about my mb, the Asus P5N-D. Here's the deal. Your sections and settings were right on the mark. You obviously have the exact same BIOS as me, which was extremely helpful. I can't thank you enough for that since as I mentioned I am a newbie to oc.

However, I ran into problems. Not initially though but a little later when I started upping the FSB QDR setting. First, I followed exactly what you wrote to do with my settings in the BIOS (for anyone else reading this is posted right above). The computer reboot fine and I ran Prime95 for like an hour, as I had an errand to run. All was good with the stress test, except one in the results text page. It read as follows:

[Fri Jul 25 20:09:49 2008]
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

I have no idea what that means, aside from the obvious thing that something didn't work with my hardware, but I don't know which product. In addition, I don't how to consult the stress.txt file. That didn't appear on my desktop. Do you know where this stress.txt is located? As I said all the other stress tests were fine, and I was able to close out Prime 95 and open Firefox, which is about all I did. I wish I had done more at that time because henceforth I never was able to have a stable environment again.

After I had the stable environment, I upped the FSB QDR to 1520. Then no matter how much I upped the vcore voltage the computer froze at some point or didn't even get past the BIOS. I went as high as vcore=1.42500V. I rose the DRAM after a while to see if that helped to dram=1.910V. But I still froze. On another front, as you told me to do, everything in the CPU configuration is disabled. But I was wondering if I really needed to disable the Enhanced Intel SpeedStep or the Enhanced C1 setting?

You also said in your post that if increasing CPU voltage wasn't helping then I would need to adjust the NB and or HT settings. But I don't know what settings to put them, any advice there?

Finally in frustration of not being able to get a stable environment, I switched everything back to the settings you recommended, and to my surprise I couldn't maintain a stable environment anymore? The computer froze either immediately after booting into Windows or if I tried to access anything for a few minutes. The computer this time froze up almost immediately on the the stress test. I was totally perplexed at this turn of a events and I gave up for the night, before I strangled my computer.

So any suggestions on how I should proceed would be welcome. I really need your sage advice .

Thanks, Skyler

 

[ganymede-]

Flyin15sec:

Update: At the moment, my PC seems to be stable at the settings mentioned in your first post. But I need to run some more tests. I wanted to post this before you tried to troubleshoot why the first settings where not working. I have no idea why it seems to be stable now after it wasn't last night, but I had switched the computer back to AI Overclocking 10% this morning and that cleared everything out, maybe that did something, maybe I missed something?

But I do know for sure that moving the FSB QDR to 1515 causes instability know matter what I do to the settings. So I still need advice there at the very least. I will provide an update after I use some programs for awhile. Thank you again.

Skyler

 

[flyin15sec]

Ok you have alot of questions. I'll try to answer then as best as I can.

When you say stable, do you mean the 1333 or 1500?

You should disable EIST (Speedstep) and CIE because they are power saving features. When overclocking, these features will downclock your multiplier and voltages, which may cause instability.

Prime95 has 3 torture tests. Small FTT, Large FTT and Blend. Basically SmallFTT will put load on your CPU, and not use much memory. If this test fails, most likely you need to up cpu vcore. using the other two, will test put load on CPU and use various amounts of memory. If these fail it can mean you need to up cpu vcore, HT, NB, or SB. Running your memory unlinked at 800mhz, should alleviate any problems with memory overclocking.

To increase your HT or NB, voltages just up it a notch in your BIOS settings. This board for some reason likes both the HT and NB voltages the same.

one last thing, change your LDT multiplier to 4. This setting has a long history, but I've not found any conclusive article on how this is used with Intel systems.

 

[ganymede-]

Hi Wise Sage Flyin15sec :

I sent this as a PM but I am not sure you got it, as it came back into my inbox, so I am going to post it here, too.

I noticed you were on-line and wanted to thank you for latest post on overclocking my pc. I am glad to say that I have been stable now for a day on your initial specs, though I haven't run a lot of heavy duty programs to really rest the stability of the system. I will probably do that today, this afternoon.

I think the question you asked about 1333 or 1500 was QDR? If so my QDR is 1500, as you mentioned in the first post. I am going to give the new suggestions a whirl now, though I can only do it for a little while as I have to head out, but I will continue until I can hopefully maintain stability.

Thanks for the breakdown on how Prime95 works, as that is helpful. I was only using the blendmode, so know I now to switch them around.

I think one mistake I made was to up the QDR too quickly. I am going to try just 1505 first, instead of jumping to 1515 or 1520 like I did at first. I guess that might be too much at once for my system.

I will also adjust the HT and PT settings at the same time, if necessary.

Again, thank you so much for your help. This overclocking which I have been putting off for months because I thought it would take forever to get the answers that were specific to my BIOS, hasn't been bad at all--you saved me there. Lucky me.

Naturally if I have another question I will submit a post. Take care. Later.

Skyler

 

[flyin15sec]

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