Overclocking Issues

[jverkoey]

So I've been dinking around, overclocking my powerhouse system, but I've run in to a wall rather early on.

Basically, in my BIOS I can't modify a whole lot of stuff, here's one of the screens (a bit different, but close)
http://prohardver.hu/html/lap/a64_sout/msi/bios/fsb.jpg
The only difference being mine doesn't have a CPU VCore option.

Now, I was overclocking my FSB bit by bit, 5mhz at a time, and I am currently running it stably at 230MHZ (normal is 200) and therefor my system is clocked at 2.3ghz....however, if I try and bump up the FSB to 240MHZ, the system won't even boot up to the BIOS screen anymore.....it just sits there when I reboot and the monitor stays on but nothing shows up. The first time I tried it I let it sit for a bit thinking it might work, and then my computer started beeping repeatedly so I quickly shut it off. The only way to get my computer to boot again is to take out the CMOS battery and reset the BIOS.

Is this something with me not having enough voltage? If so, is it even possible for me to fix change that seeing as there's no CPU Vcore option?

Here's my processor's specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Code Name: NewCastle
Package: 754
Voltage: 1.472
Current Core Speed: 2299.7MHZ
Multiplier: x10.0
L1 Data: 64KBytes
L1 Code: 64KBytes
Level 2: 512KBytes

[Jez]

The most likely culprits are the CPU itself or the memory. First determine which. Try reducing the CPU multiplier and see if it boots. If so then it's the CPU maxing out. If you have the option of using a higher multiplier, then turn down the FSB freq. then if it's o.k. then it was the memory maxing.

If it is the CPU maxing, then the only way to higher clock speeds without increasing the voltage to it, is to reduce the temperature.

[jverkoey]

My BIOS seems to really suck though, as I can't change the CPU multiplier at all....or really anything else for that matter.

I'm thinking my next purchase is going to be a new motherboard because I stupidly got a micro-ATX style one, *sighs*.

[adrianxw]

When I see the amount of trouble overclockers have caused at the various distributed computing projects, I start to take a dim view to overclocking. Great, it runs 5% faster and is "stable" but at the same time it's floating point arithmetic is screwed.

You can probably push a chip a bit, but the "extreme" overclockers are deluding themselves.

[jverkoey]

I'm running the prime95 program (suggested for at least 24 hours) before I start up F@H again, to make sure my processor's not going crazy.

[Perspective]

>>L1 Data: 64KBytes

wow, that seems small. *scratches head*

[Jez]

>I'm running the prime95 program (suggested for at least 24 hours) before I start up F@H again, to make sure my processor's not going crazy.

Good idea. When I did my O/Cing it was indispensible, would always show errors when everything else was fine.

Memtest86 is a good one for checking out memory/cache too.