Posts by dustypilot23

..I guess I see he actually went ahead and pulled the grease out of his Mustang, so he managed to get it out 😳 😬 😳

Mr.Ex.President said:Look, I wasn't really trying to get into some kind of argument with you about whose setup is better or whatever,... I was just saying🙂

Anyway, it cost me $100, and honestly, I think it's worth it...

I mean, I basically just threw that into Google😁
just ask it how much the cooling ended up costing😁

man, what's even the point of talking about thermal paste...
it's not like I'm actually applying it myself 😬

..but I remember one time I put down a bit more and ran some slightly better tests 🙂

..and as for the cooling setup... how much did that end up costing you? because I think I spent way more 🙂

I’m pretty sure my cooling setup is totally toast..

temps are bouncing around between 44 and 59 while I'm sitting at 2500... which, I guess, tells me there's just way too much hot air trapped around the cooler and one lonely little 80mm fan probably isn't enough to clear everything out of the case🙄

score :

3dmark2001se: 12400
3dmark2003 : 3400
3dmark2005 : 1400

the GPU is kinda weak (not even an overclocked 😁 )

but I guess that doesn't really matter much..

honestly, I'm still not even totally sure why I picked up the phone 😳 ..it's probably just because they're getting so hard to find lately 😎

PS
I actually ended up with an extra one lying around right now (haven't tested it yet) ..maybe someone might be looking to buy one, do you know anyone? 🙂

The delta 350W is basically just built for small desktop builds
vulcano 12
AMD mobile 2500+ @ 2300 (11.5 * 200) -- I guess you could try the 12.5 multiplier too, though it probably wouldn't make much sense, and the vulcano might get way too loud for me, which isn't really what I'm looking for right now
Seagate 7200.7 200GB
2x512 MB RAM pc400

Everything else is pretty old school: a radeon9600pro, an Epox 8rda3i, Live 5.1, and an AL621

🙂

Which no-name brand are you even talking about?

Maybe you should give Hynix a shot? They seem pretty decent, I guess.

I guess those aggressive latencies are pretty much useless anyway, since I think you're probably better off just bumping up the memory frequency rather than trying to force it down for tiny, negligible gains

yeah, I'm with you on that..

The difference you get from moving the FSB from 133 to 166 feels way more significant than whatever little boost you might get from tweaking settings from, say, cl2.5 down to cl2

so, like Kovi says... "there's always going to be some kind of sweet spot somewhere" 🙂

goldenowl73 said:I think the multiplier is stuck at 13. I don't think it'll hit 13.5 once you get into Windows. Hopefully, when those new memory sticks arrive, we can push it to 11x200

That seems like a better way to go, right??

Oh, and I had one more thing I was wondering if anyone could help me out with.

I'm running a Soltek SL-75FRN2 / NV400-64 / NV400-L64 board

It's got the BIOS REV D1.5L Phoenix version

I saw there's a newer BIOS version online, but I guess I'm wondering if it's even worth the hassle of flashing it, or if I should just skip it to avoid potentially bricking something??

Also, does anyone have a recommendation for a good program to overclock an ATI Radeon 9600pro??

Well, it sounds like your BIOS is working just fine, so if you're asking me... I probably wouldn't mess with it if I were you..

And regarding the Radeon... honestly, maybe just grab some OMEGA drivers.. they should let you do it without much trouble.. I know a ton of people recommend using those drivers instead.🙂

I don't really get it? How did you hit 3000???

It seems pretty decent overall, I guess... it's probably hard to expect anything better when you're looking at this price range 😉

Maybe you can expect the temps to drop by another degree or so after things settle down a bit and the dust settles... but that's about it, I suppose...

Plus, it is technically summer right now, so you might want to keep an eye on that too..

I personally hate seeing temperatures hit 60° or higher, especially with these newer CPU packaging designs

Yeah, exactly..

I actually have a Glacialtech 2520 at my place..
It cools okay I guess, but man, it’s pretty loud since it runs at 4500rpm..

I suppose it's an $17 decent enough cooler, but you shouldn't expect any miracles..

Even when I overclock my rig, it holds up, which I guess means it kind of justifies its $17 price range 😉

But maybe you should think about whether you really want that one, or if you'd rather go with something running at 3000rpm 😉

goldenowl73 said:so does anyone here actually have experience using the Glacialtech 2520 pro cooler?? I guess it might be okay for cooling an Intel chip, but I'm not really sure if it's worth anything for that...

..wait, is that the one I have lying around? 🤔

Let me go take a look at it... then I'll maybe get back to you with more info.

Raymond Rodriguez40 said:I mean, why can't you just drop the memory timings down to 2.5-3-3-8?

..well, yeah, you totally can..
you could probably even go lower than that 😁

though I guess Kova basically calculated that 2.5 3 3 -> 8 is the sweet spot 👍 so I'm kind of with him there 😉

when it comes to messing with RAM, there isn't really much of a risk, I suppose.. because I honestly don't know anyone who's actually fried their memory 😳 ..worst case scenario is it just doesn't boot, and that's about it.. 🤔

amberorca192 said:The thing is, there’s just a much higher risk of actually frying your processor, and honestly, pretty much any CPU is going to run hot at those voltage levels.
Overclocking basically just adds instability and might end up cutting the lifespan of your chip short.

Just to add my two cents here..
I guess you really need solid cooling, constant monitoring, and maybe a bit more technical know-how than just some amateur overclocking 😉

It seems like most people asking questions here are pretty green, so I think being cautious is totally fair..

Temperatures can spike really fast even with just a tiny bump in voltage (though I suppose that varies from one core to the next), and I really wouldn't want anyone coming back to me later asking, "Why didn't you warn me about this?" 😉

Scott Morris8 said:so, uh... here's the deal...

I picked up:

Intel Pentium 4 (333 MHz)
an epox 8rda3i board with nForce 2
512 MB of DDR pc3200 (400 MHz) Kingmax superram

I'm wondering what the best way to tweak my BIOS settings would be to squeeze out as much performance as possible, though I really don't want to mess with any soldering since I have no idea how to do that and don't even have the tools, so just sticking to the BIOS stuff... oh, and the cooler came with the processor, so I'm just using the stock box one.

thanks

I actually have that motherboard, though not that specific CPU... anyway, I guess you should try bumping up the Intel little by little until you hit maybe 2x200=400, and for the memory, I'd probably set it to something like 2.5 3 3 11

you might need to bump the voltage a bit too, but I wouldn't suggest going more than 0.2V over the base—so maybe somewhere around 1.7~1.75 at most

Tyler Lee57 said:I totally forgot to mention what happened when I tried overclocking my rig. I bumped it up to 3.0 GHz and hit save and exit, and the PC actually stayed running, but then the signal to my monitor just cut out completely. So I shut it down and rebooted, but all I got was a black screen with some BIOS failure message telling me to insert a system floppy disk... (you know, one of those old floppies)
Man, I almost had a heart attack, Tyler Lee57, seriously. I ended up power cycling it a few times until I finally managed to get back into the BIOS, reset everything back to the default 2.4 GHz, and eventually made it back into Windows.....

..but honestly, that's not really a disaster at all 😉

you just go ahead and reset the CMOS—there's usually a jumper on the motherboard—and pretty much just like that, everything is back to factory defaults 😉

goldenowl73 said:The cooler is some off-brand thing, I don't think it's Zalman or anything recognizable, but it does have a copper base and aluminum fins.

So, I just checked my temps after grinding Far Cry for about two hours 😁 and it's sitting at 54C. Same thing happened after playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. I tried messing around with the voltage to see if I could bump things up, but I guess it didn't really change the stability much, though the temps did climb a little bit, so I probably should've just left it at the defaults.

Honestly, that sounds pretty okay to me, like everything is running fine... I mean, you aren't exactly expecting miracles from a random cooler, but if everything stays stable, then it's all good I guess. 😉

It's fixed.. 😉

So.. if you actually want to play games, then 😬
just bump up the Front Side Bus slowly, kind of like how Mr. ex President says, just a little bit at a time.. I don't think anything bad will happen..

You definitely need to wait until Windows fully loads (it's a drag, but you really have to)

If there comes a point where Windows won't boot up, just dial the speed back by 4 or 5 MHz... and that should do it..

I'm not sure what memory you're running, but since the PC is already working fine on an FSB 800, I'm guessing it probably won't perform any better than 2.5-3-3-10 🤔

goldenowl73 said:AMD Barton 2500, two sticks of 256mb 333 RAM, and a Radeon 9600 pro

what should I be tweaking in the BIOS??

thanks

The Front Side Bus moves in sync with your memory, so you just bump it up by maybe 2 or 3 MHz at a time, then reboot and keep going as long as everything stays stable and doesn't crash..

You can drop the memory speed down and compare the results, though ideally, you'd want that memory running on 2-2-2-6 timings..

..but honestly, it looks like you're pretty new to this, so I guess you probably shouldn't mess with it too much until you get more comfortable and learn the ropes a bit more..

Main advice though.. if anything stops working because of the overclocking, you'll just have to clear the CMOS

just do everything at your own risk 😉

amberorca192 said:An FSB 300 MHz, which basically gets the Pentium 4 up to 3.6 GHz (if you're running about 1.6V).🙂

I gotta say though, that Cooler Master seems to be handling the heat pretty well.👍

😲
that's just cutting it close 🙂