Overclocking Issue?

[sswilson]

I'm not familiar with that particular bios, but the first thing that comes to mind is your spread spectrum settings. (I've got cpu,sata, & pcie).

These should be disabled for any successful OC. I'd guess that the AI oc probably disables them automatically and that manual might not.

Just a shot in the dark, but without actually getting a chance to play with it myself that's all I can do....

 

[Corpus Masochist]

Hello again, yeah man I have to say spread spectum?? no idea what that is.

I am giving up on this shit. I have put way to much time into it and getting no results. I mean if I was to get the slightest again then sure I would keep going but no yeilds means F*&% it.

I have also been trying to flash the bios in my video card being that I have a x800gto 2. Hours apon hours I have spent trying to flash this card DOS flashing, winflash I am thinking to hell with it lighterfuild and match flash is next I read that it comes with 12 open pipes but with a bios flash you can open up other 4 pipes making it a 16 pipe card. Essentially that is a x850 card, plus this card has supposidly good OC capibilities but once again I can't get anything working like these sites/forums are stating. Anyway I will be hanging out seeing what you people are doing.
Corpus

 

[sswilson]

Spread spectrum is a setting in bios which offsets frequencies a small amount to prevent interference with other electrical devices.

It is a government mandated thing that really doesn't do anything for the mobo, but it can play havoc with overclocks. (Don't know why for sure, but I suspect it is tuned for default cpu freqs and thus doesn't play well in the sandbox when the cheese is moved.... hows that for metaphores???? ).

It's a simple thing to do to find it in your bios and disable it.

That said.... Overclocking shouldn't be a chore. I do it more for the fun than for the performance benefits. If you're getting frustrated, then just use the Automatic AI OC and think about looking at a manual OC at a later date.

The full OC process normally takes me a weekend for the initial OC, and then probably couple of weeks to a month tweaking individual settings & testing to get the best completely stable OC I can wrestle out of a mobo/cpu/mem combination.

 

[Corpus Masochist]

Wilson, thanks for the explanation. I like know what people are talking about I am going to settle with the AI overclock for now but .2 is hardly worthwhile. For me I love the I deal of pushing stuff to it's limit (but not frying it) I guess I will keep reading the forums and hopefully come accross the anwser I need in order to pull this off.

And yes overclocking shouldn't be a chore but and this mofo is!!

In stead of soft flashing my bios like I have been I flashed using awdflash in dos..... hmmm I haven't tried OCing since I did that I will try as soon as I finish this reply.. cross finger and get fire extinguisher at the ready


On a positive note I finally managed to unlock the extra 4 pipes on my vid card. Funny but just that little enhancement really increases the performance of my video. Now to up the clocks, I have been trying to use ATITool to find my max core speed and max mem speed but I get a black screen after a while of ATITool running???? Any feed back on that issue will would be cool.

Ok now to OC this bitch
Corpus

 

[sswilson]

Sounds like a heat issue to me. Is that a sapphire card?

If it's a sapphire, they've got a fairly decent user run help forums over there.

Not sure about the x800gto2s but my last card (sapphire 9600xt) needed an after market cooler to get any kind of OC out of. (It wasn't just sapphire with cooling problems on the 9600s, it was all makers)

You can try leaving the side open and direct a house fan at your vid card to see if that makes the problem go away. If it does then you can be pretty sure it's heat or airflow (almost as important as your cooler) causing the problem.

 

[Corpus Masochist]

Yeah, I think it is a heat issue. I turned the clocks up manual for a while a watched the temp gauge rise...... Performance wise = great but defenantly need to deal with that heat issue. I just installed a 5 inch fan and am going to ncix today to pickup a Zalman fan atenuator I have a Zalman CPU cooler with came with a pot that allows you to alter the fanspeed. Thought that I would do the same to the 5 inch because I don't want it in full tilt all the time.

This should help a bit but I will be getting a Zalman GPU cooler eventually. I might just hold of and go the a new unit all together Nvidia 8800 GTX oh yeah!!


Corpus

 

[sswilson]

Not completely sure what their power requirements are, but if you're looking at the 8XXX line of vid cards you might want to put some money aside for a PS upgrade as well. I'm running the same PS as you are and thinking that it's probably time for an upgrade.

OC'ing + dual core + high power vid cards needs a lot of good stable amps.

Upgrading PS is an ongoing argument at most OC boards, but I've never heard anybody complain about their PS being too good to let them get the OC they want....

 

[Corpus Masochist]

Damn it!! I want want want but I'm broke broke broke. I was at ncix today the location on kingsway. They built a little tempation display ACK!! Just happens they have most the stuff (if I had the cash) would buy and yeah they had a OCZ 700w sitting 2 inches from me.

Yeah that will be the day that we start hearing people say "man, my system is way to awesome I think I am going to down grade" BAAHAHAH, now that would be funny. For the better part I am happy with my stuff, I built only a year ago. So do I up grade your do I make do with what I have and start banking so that in a year or 2 I buck out and get an entirely new system.

As it stands now Intel and nvidia are on top in my mind and If I could would go with them but anyway will keep this unit alive with some OCing and hope nothing sets fire so I am forced to buy new gear

Corpus

 

[Babrbarossa]

I think that while there are bad times to uppgrade, like right before a few big techo-jumps, right now is not one of them. That said, it is never a mistake to wait becuase no matter what, you'll want the latest new gear a year after you upgrade, so with a great system like yours, you could easily wait another year until some of the bugs were worked out of vista, quad core, new chipsets, directx10, and until the arrival of ddr3. You won't be missing much with your system in the next year, and you'll save some money by not doing it now.

 

[Corpus Masochist]

Very nicely put Babrbarossa.

Thanks
Corpus