High FSB with Intel

[Redfallon]

All right, all right Tin, got a little time at work here, so I'll give it a shot. If you're trying to get a high FSB overclock on an 800FSB processor, read on. Let me start by telling you briefly about my newest rig. In the beginning ( ) it wasn't going to be an OC'ing toy by any means. I already had an older test rig for playing around. As such, I started with 2x512MB of pc3200 crucial, Asus p4p800 deluxe and 2.8C northwood p4. Eventually, of course, the desire to OC my first 800FSB p4 overcame me. I cannot stress enough the importance of buying good parts, as Tin and many others here have said. Of course, even hand picking parts is no *guarantee* that you will reach XXXX FSB. That being said, I have a few items that I would recommend (I have no *proof* that these parts are better than others, but I've used a fair share of them myself and have had nothing but good results.)

Motherboard
Asus p4p800 deluxe or p4c800 deluxe
Abit IC7-MAX 3 ->best OCing intel board, IMHO
*Any of those 3 boards will give you a good, stable OC with the right components. I prefer the 875 chipset over the 865, and the Abit over the Asus due to 1)the extra voltage options in the BIOS (3.2vdimm out-of-the-box) and 2)the OTES mosfet cooling system and active northbridge cooling.

RAM -perhaps most important component for high FSB, next to cpu
Geil or OCZ, pc4000 or higher. 2.5CAS Latency
*I like either of those for OCing, the other usuals, kingston hyperx, corsair, as well as the lesser name brands tin recommends (buffalo, adata) but I've never used them. Geil is perhaps my RAM of choice, however it usually requires at least 2.6, sometimes 2.8V even at stock. Due to the fluctuations in RAM prices, I'd get which ever is cheaper between the Geil and OCZ (taking latency into acct)

Processor
I've heard the 2.4 and 2.6 northwoods are excellent OC'ers, and can reach nice FSB. The 2.8 northwood is also an excellent OC'er, and any northwood will stay good and cool, often with nothing more than the stock HSF. One must be cautious when raising northwood core voltage, anything above 1.8 can kill a chip instantly. That being said, I've taken a northwood 2.8 to 1.86V on air cooling, and had no heat issues. However, I found the gains in FSB by going over 1.7~1.75V were negligable. The higher the voltage goes, the less gain in FSB you get. Eventually, you have to decide if risking smoking the chip is worth another 2mhz FSB.
Then, of course, there's the prescott. This little chip, although often discouraged to new builders due to it's blast-furnace tendencies, is one HECK of an OC'er. I would recommend a prescott core 2.8 or 3.0 to anyone looking to get an insanely high FSB and has a decent knowledge of cooling, or better yet is using water or some other modified cooling.

PSU
The usual list of good brands applies here. I cannot, however, stress the importance of a UPS between your rig and the wall. Not so much for the surge suppression or battery backup, but the clean, consistent line voltage. I've heard people say this problem doesn't exist in other countries, but at least in my neighboorhood, the voltage on the line surges and dips throughout the day. Ive done some monitoring with a multimeter to check after hearing the occasional beep from my UPS meaning it's switching to batt power.

cooling
Stock HSF will get you close to if not up to the max OC on a northwood. I recommend AS5 rather than the thermal pad if you're serious about OCing. For a prescott, look to one of the aerocool tower HS's (although they're monsters) or a thermalright (unsure of model numbers here, never used one personally but they're good, perhaps the best.)

Hard Drive
Sure it has nothing to do with that high FSB, but why let that speed go to waste without a pair of WD Raptors in a RAID 0

When I start out OCing a chip, I start at stock voltage and off the bat up the FSB to 220. *always* lock down the PCI/AGP bus to 33/66mhz. I've seen/heard of a few boards that have a setting for the SATA controller tied into this speed, but have no personal experience with that. After a good 12hour run of prime at this speed, I begin upping the FSB in increments of 5mhz. In between every jump I allow prime to run for a couple of hours. After I get to a point where either a)windows won't boot or b)prime cannot complete a couple hours of torture testing, I up the vcore in whatever increment the motherboard allows (usually .025v). I test after every vcore increase for stability, and keep going until I get it. If you can't get your chip stable after an increase of .1v or so, start looking at the RAM settings. As it goes, the "breaking point" for many intel OC's seems to hover right around 246~250 FSB (especially with a northwood)! It was around 246FSB with 1.8vdimm that my northwood would randomly reboot or cause a fatal error in prime (reboot, not just fail the test).

As for the prescotts, I've taken mine to over 3.7GHz stable, although the heat is quite a problem. I've heard people on the forums here with prescott's running cooler than mine, and am soon to be removing it to reapply artic silver as I was doing some minor tinkering one day and removed/reapplied the HSF without redoing my AS5 application. The same process applies to a prescott core as a northwood. Small increments (FSB or vcore) and testing thoroughly in between with prime 95, f@h, or anything which will utilize the CPU 100%. Always run dual instances of prime or f@h when testing. I like prime the best for stability testing as it will tell you flat out if you encounter a rounding error, you have to watch f@h's log for "errors" in proteins more closely.

When you get to the point where it looks like no voltage increase will get your system stable, the final thing to try is upping the RAM voltage as high as your board will let you (don't worry, it'll handle up to 3.2), dropping the RAM to a divider (you did get pc4000, right? So it's not on a divider already! ) and/or loosen the timings as much as you can. If you still can't get rid of that pesky prime95 rounding error (forget the exact wording right now, doh!) then your chip has probably hit the max. A few other things you can try at this time are increased case cooling (unless you've got a northwood!), chipset cooling (active northbridge cooling and passive southbridge), running off one stick of RAM (don't know if this one's worth it, but people say with one stick of RAM a higher FSB is possible, I personally would keep my GB and live with the FSB I've got). With intel, having a locked multi makes OCing much easier than the world of AMD. Essentially removing one more variable from the equation makes for less "guessing and checking" which is all OCing really is. Of course, there's a lot of knowledge needed to get a successful high FSB out of an intel system. The most important is knowledge of your components, what's good, what's not, and how far they can be pushed. I personally don't hand pick my chips or RAM as Tin does. I prefer to order what's available and see what it will do. I don't look at CPU stepping or RAM chips (with the exception of making sure I'm getting the speed I'm paying for). I personally know of no places to recommend if you're interested in hand picking cpu's. IMHO, the fact that all intels are multi locked, and the fact that the differences between stepping revisions are usually minor, and *every* chip (regardless of stepping) is a crapshoot as far as OCability, I just get what's cheap and throw the rest towards other parts. Also, unlike Tin, I don't flash to a beta bios (guess I'm still a little skiddish!) and have *yet* to do any hard mods to my components. I had considered doing a volt mod on my p4p800 to get more out of my RAM, but couldnt see throwing a 3 year warranty down the drain, when buying the Abit would give me 3.2V and a warranty to boot. Good luck guys, and although I'm not nearly as much help as Tin, feel free to PM me anytime you've got a question on what hardware to buy, or where to go/what to do to help out your OC. And to those who think OCing is just a "cheap" way to get more performance, take it from me, and Tin Canary, Panama Red and others, you don't do it to save money (as it ends up costing more in the end than buying, say, a 3.4 p4 in the beginning.) You do it because a)you can b)it's enjoyable and you learn an incredible amount about how everything works together to make the end result c)because you can't add any more/newer/faster parts to your 305 SS and d)a 2.8 prescott at 3.7 would blow the doors off a comparable clock speed chip at stock FSB.

Happy trails

[kram 2.0]

Very nice . I'm gonna go Northwood with my chip, hopefully I won't find the need to OC, but if I do, this is a very useful guide. Thanks RedFallon (btw - YGPM)

kram

[Blue_Gundam2002]

Must be a slow day at work . Maybe this thread should be stickied to help others in the future.

[Redfallon]

Originally Posted by Blue_Gundam2002 Must be a slow day at work . Maybe this thread should be stickied to help others in the future.

no doubt, he should go find some work to do

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Originally Posted by Redfallon no doubt, he should go find some work to do

Maybe he could try this: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...light=fun+work

On topic: sounds great, should be sticked. Have you ever thought of writing an article for PCMech? They want new writers and you seem good at it, maybe an article on overclocking?

[Redfallon]

never saw that thread on what to do at work! Rather than drag up a 2 week old thread and listen to all the griping, I'll say here that was hilarious! ROFL! If only there were more people in our office....We only have 12 people here, and we're all within earshot!

Have you ever thought of writing an article for PCMech? They want new writers and you seem good at it, maybe an article on overclocking?

Did ya happen to read it before I corrected all the typos I would drive the pcmech editors mad, or have to do alot of proof-reading. Besides Tin Canary knows far more than I about OC'ing. Even though he says he doesn't mess with Intel, the process is the same sans changing the multi.

[bigandy]

Excellent guide RedFallon. A very good read.

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by WhatsThisBoxFor? Maybe he could try this: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...light=fun+work

LOL - that's great - can't wait to do that once I find myself a steady job . I like the "3) For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as "Bob"." the best - that's great. And also, Bob (Redfallon), sent ya a PM.

kram

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Originally Posted by kram8806 Originally Posted by WhatsThisBoxFor? Maybe he could try this: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...light=fun+work LOL - that's great - can't wait to do that once I find myself a steady job . I like the "3) For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as "Bob"." the best - that's great. And also, Bob (Redfallon), sent ya a PM. kram

I did that a school, my form tutor is about the stupidest person on earth (told everyone his password, incase he forgot), and he got very confused. Although I don't think that your job would be steady after you try some of those.

[Tin]

very good readin there Red . BTW my name is Bob too LOL. this needs to be stickied.....along with my AMD write up . welcome to the black arts fellow PC Mechers.

[ric449]

Very nice, I will link to both yours and Tin's guides in my sites overclocking guides once I get the chance. Nice work!

[Tin]

id also like to add, the reason why northwoods suffer from northwood sudden death syndrome is because the P4 is build on a 6 layer PCB. AMD can handle higher voltages because theyre built on 8 layers. the more layers you have the more juice you can feed it. this also applies to memory. usually, the cheaper generic stuff is built on 4 layers, while the good stuff is built on a 6 layer PCB.

[Redfallon]

Didn't know that...see I told ya'll Tin knew far more than I Thanx Tin!

[jack 1]

i can't believe you wrote all that im going to build my own computer and that has totally put me off i don't even know how to use a jumper

[Redfallon]

It's not hard, besides, jumpers are becoming more and more a thing of the past Seriously, though, if ya need any help, this is the place to get it!

[glc]

If this is your first build and you don't even know how to use a jumper, don't bother reading the overclocking threads. Learn to build stock first, worry about modifications later when you have more experience. When you are first learning how to drive a car, you don't try to learn how to race it.

[Spade713]

if my mob0 is built for pc3200 ram how can i put pc4000 ram in it?

IM running a 3.0E ghz (prescott) and this motherboard any ideas on that?

[ric449]

Simple, plug it in . As long as your motherboard can accept the type of RAM it is, it should work.

[Spade713]

oh ok as long as its DDR well ill try it out as soon as i get my hands on some good memory

[Spearball]

Just a little question.... What is FSB?

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by Spearball Just a little question.... What is FSB?

http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/S/system_bus.html

[Jaco]

what do you think of the abit ag8 motherboard with uguru

[coolwam]

Hi,
i read your article.felt you'd have enough knowledge to solve my problem:
i have 2 pairs of rd ram 128mb(64x2 pc800) and 512mb(256x2 pc700). But since my mobo(intel 850GB) supports only pc600 and 800,all my rimms are running at 600 :-( can you please tell me a way to overclock it to run atleast at 800 ?

[Floppyman]

Originally Posted by coolwam Hi, i read your article.felt you'd have enough knowledge to solve my problem: i have 2 pairs of rd ram 128mb(64x2 pc800) and 512mb(256x2 pc700). But since my mobo(intel 850GB) supports only pc600 and 800,all my rimms are running at 600 :-( can you please tell me a way to overclock it to run atleast at 800 ?

If you are using an Intel board I doubt you'll be abe to overclock your RAM. Intel boards are generally pretty limited when it comes to overclocking options. HTH

[glc]

The only way to get your ram to run at 800 is use PC800 ram in all slots. The 850GB has NO overclocking options or adjustments.