I'm over-clocking BloodRun... Right, well here's the deal. I get into my BIOS and the internal clock is at the default of 133, I boost it to 140, reboot, POST, rinse, repeat. Once I got to 145, things got hairy. It POST-ed fine, but when Windows tried to boot, I received a DOS-ish error message. Depending how high I was kicking for, it told me that either VCACHE wasn't working right, or I was getting a VxD error and I needed to run Windows Setup. What did I do wrong? I'm running Windows 98. Do I need to upgrade my OS? Or do I simply OC, then reinstall? Help here would be awesome.

Hardware specs:

Intel Celeron 2.26GHz
512 MB DDR 400 Dual Chan
Biostar P4VMA-M MainBoard
GeForce MX 4000 128MB

I have it sitting at 140, giving me a boost of 120MHz with my CPU and makes my DDR 400 say 432

sounds like your memory cant take the O.C. I dont know that board.Can you adjust the mem multiplier down, or try upping the cpu multiplier with a lower bus speed

I think it's your motherboard. Biostar is the low-end of the spectrum. While not fancy, overpriced doorstops like ECS, or PCchips, their ability to be OC'ed is worse than Intel reference boards.

If you're willing to bite the bullet, here's a replacement in your form factor. Then again, MicroATX isn't a really candid source of overclocks, unless you go Dothan (very expensive).

You may want to place heat-spreaders on the Ram with Arctic Alumina epoxy.

Also, you probably want to upgrade your ram. 512mb and BinXp don't mix, trust me on that one. You'll need 1GB.
It's painful otherwise, trust me (personal experience).

Quote: Originally Posted by Seikatsu I think it's your motherboard. Biostar is the low-end of the spectrum. While not fancy, overpriced doorstops like ECS, or PCchips, their ability to be OC'ed is worse than Intel reference boards. If you're willing to bite the bullet, here's a replacement in your form factor. Then again, MicroATX isn't a really candid source of overclocks, unless you go Dothan (very expensive). You may want to place heat-spreaders on the Ram with Arctic Alumina epoxy. Also, you probably want to upgrade your ram. 512mb and BinXp don't mix, trust me on that one. You'll need 1GB. It's painful otherwise, trust me (personal experience).

I was running XP with 256 at one point... Ugh... As of now, I'm stuck in the stone age with 98.

As for the idea of getting a new board, I could kick that idea around for awhile.. Next check is a little ways off and it won't be a big one at that... Also, my case is large enough to take an ATX or (possibly) AT, although the latter would be a tight fit. Cooling solutions of either air or water is in my buget, somewhere... (Water cooling isn't cheap, but fans can be loud. ><)

Otherwise, thanks for the help, and keep pimpin' it! :thumb:

Alrighty, I'm going to try some more insanity and go for atleast 2.5GHz... I was tooling around with the BIOS and found my voltages locked... A bit more monkeying and I found out about the "Warpspeeder" technology in newer BS boards. Apparantly an external tool will help me OC this bad-boy... Well, can't do more than blow it up, then I'll have an excuse to splurge on a P4

I'm installing the util as I speak...

WHAT?!

Okay... I'll get back to you on this later...

EDIT: The warp speeder is nothing more than a glorified system monitor... Psh.. Oh well

Well, I'm sitting high and tidy, right now! After snooping about my BIOS for about half an hour, I found some settings that piqued my interest. By dropping the RAM bus to 100mhz, I was able to run the system clock to 165MHz. I am now running at 2.81GHz from stock of 2.26. Ran Prime95 for 15 minutes with no errors, and temps peaking at ~55C. I'll let it go tonight and see just how stable she is.

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Quote: Originally Posted by Kratos Well, I'm sitting high and tidy, right now! After snooping about my BIOS for about half an hour, I found some settings that piqued my interest. By dropping the RAM bus to 100mhz, I was able to run the system clock to 165MHz. I am now running at 2.81GHz from stock of 2.26. Ran Prime95 for 15 minutes with no errors, and temps peaking at ~55C. I'll let it go tonight and see just how stable she is.

not to burst your bubble or anything, but with an effective DIMM speed of ~247mhz...your system will probably run slower now than it would if you were simply running it at its rated speed...

congrats on a great overall overclock, however, but the overclock is no good realistically if all the elements dont add up....

old saying "only as strong as your weakest part" is very true here...

I hope thats not an error, 100Mhz Ram Bus?

Granted thats a good overclock, but your system is probably weighed down heavly. Why dont you compare results with software sandra before and after the overclock?

Noted and rectified. I went into my BIOS and upped the DRAM speed to 166. Now, my DIMMs are running at DDR408.

Now, I really think I've gotten this down.

That's what I like to see, a person learn using the trial by fire method. What you've picked up on that old system will help you when you eventually get some primo gear. I into the dark arts on a Pentium Pro 200.

Not to insult the observation skills of the BigA, but, this is my 'primo' gear. This is BloodRun that I'm OCing.

On another note, I've gotten PCMark05 downloaded. I'll run that tonight and let you guys dissect the results tomorrow.

Okay, so this is where the shiat hits the proverbial fan. I was running smoothly at 2.81GHz, or so I thought, when I had a spontanious shut-down. Hrm... Interesting. It had been early on in the day, and I wasn't so sure what it was. A second crash, two hours later gave me a good idea. I turned her off, crawled into the BIOS and pulled my CPU time back to 2.6G. To no avail. This is where I learned the value of benchmarks.
Prime95 gave me errors twice, regarding rounding errors. This morning, I set her back to near-stock speeds. I'm setting Prime95 to run while I go about my own torture tests at school.

I've narrowed the cause to three culprits, in order of likelihood:

-RAM
-PSU
-HSF

Needless to say, I'm looking for replacements of all three items.

Hope this thing doesn't die.

Kratos