For those of you who are overclocking P4's, ideally Northwoods, what have you found to be the best-performing and stable BIOS settings? I'm mainly referring to the CPU/RAM settings...and most importantly the CPU:MEM ratio.

I have an Asus P4S533 with a 1.6a, but I got some odd results in 3DMark2001 SE today. At 133/33 (2.13 GHz), without any vidcard tweaking for my GF3, I got 7161. When I upped the FSB to 150/38, setting the ratio to 4:3, my 3DMark score dropped to 6737, at the much faster & higher-bandwidth speed of 2.4 GHz!

I'm going to set the ratio back to "Auto" and try again, but maybe someone can explain to me how the ratio functions (4:3 vs. 4:5 vs. 4:6)...I read it somewhere months ago but I'll be damned if I can find it now! I have found many AMD mobo BIOS tweaking guides, but not having much luck finding Intel guides.

Thanks!

I can run my 1.8A @ 2574 18x143.
I get stability @ 18x155 but no matter what cpu/mem ratio I chose the benchmarks are lower.

I've done some testing in 3DMark and checked my seemingly low results on the ORB...I usually expect to be in the top 10% or so with my tweaks, but something seems amiss with this platform. Yeah, it overclocks great, nice and stable and cool, but far below what I'd expect for a 2.4 GHz & GF3 @ 225/520 MHz. I'm only getting 7813, and I was getting about that same score for a T-bird @ 1425 MHz & GF3 at similar settings...wondering what I've overlooked!

I'm even using the same vidcard drivers I was using for my AMD system. Definitely, having the CPU:Mem ratio set to "Auto" improved my scores about 600 points above 4:3 ratio....maybe I should try 4:5 or 4:6?

Any other suggestions? What might I be missing here--I've always considered myself pretty good at getting great scores, but I get the feeling something is going wrong, "behind the scenes"...

Well I was able to hit 8772 with the latest 40.71 Detonator drivers (beta), and when I did a search, the fastest ANY P4 got with a GF3 is just over 11K, so...I don't feel too bad; but I still feel I can get a lot closer to the max than what I have now. Some of the guys beating me have similar CPU speeds but much lower FSB and therefore, bandwidth, that just doesn't seem right...

Seems like I'm yakkin' at myself here, but this is really the most appropriate thread for this topic...

Well, I've now pushed it to 9267 3DMark2001 SE, running my 1.6A at 2.45 GHz (153/38 FSB x 16, 4:5 CPU:Mem ratio, Fast Writes disabled (they usually don't gain enough performance to warrant the potential lack in stability), and my Vcore @ 1.60 Volts. For some reason, I'm able to overclock my GF3 in this system more than I could in the AMD system (I have 2 identical OEM GF3's). I'm running this one at 240/540, and not even with my custom AGP cooling like I used with the Charger case. The best I got without artifacting with THAT one was 225/530 or so.

Also using the 40.71 Beta Detonators, they were good for about a 500-point increase. I don't see any artifacting or lockups/crashes to desktop at all, making me wonder how much further I should push it?

When comparing my GF3 results to those in the processor range 2.4 to 2.5 GHz, I come in 14th place (if you don't include the cheaters who don't run all the tests, ironically the dude with the best score of 10570 is from the 3DMark team, and he ALSO doesn't run the full suite of tests...hmm!)...if you do count those dudes, I'm in the top 30 GeForce3's.

This is partly to pat myself on the back, as well as provide my experiences and settings that got me a nice overclock with only air-cooling, for other people out there (since only one person bothered to answer my question in this thread, I found out for myself). Thanks corruptjoker, btw.

dont ever worry about any benchmarks, expecially 3dmark, i myself know how to fake scores in that, and i can explain how but id rather you dont do it, so you cant use other peoples faked rankings as examples to what you should get, and also, with the 330 build 3dmark my points dropped 500 points not touching a thing, weird, anyway, dont depend on generic benchmarks, chekc your fps and benchmark with UT2003 or the demo to see more realistic performance ratings

Quote: Originally posted by ThE InSoMnIaC dont ever worry about any benchmarks, expecially 3dmark, i myself know how to fake scores in that, and i can explain how but id rather you dont do it

Actually, as long as people aren't 'faking their scores', any benchmark can be a useful comparison tool. I don't just compare my systems to other people's; I compare it to my OWN. I use several benchmark programs to get a "before & after" idea of some upgrade I did, to see if a change in configuration or something made a significant difference. I'm mostly all about trying to exceed my previous scores. I know full well which losers are cheating on 3DMark; I don't compare myself to them, I simply don't consider their results valid. Those idiots are only fooling themselves, which is quite sad, really.

Quote: so you cant use other peoples faked rankings as examples to what you should get

Don't worry, I don't...I know who's legit and who's faking. Besides I use several utilities to benchmark my system performance, not just 3DMark. When taken altogether, they give me a very good idea how well my system is performing.

corruptjoker
how did you get to OC soo much. I get up to 2.07 (114X18) on my p42 dragon ultra. I am a noOb to oc. I have ddr 2100 512 (2X256) keep getting a stop error 0x0000007f which MS says I am trying to oc and it is a low level corruption i.e. ram. I assume I have some crappy ram??? I have a geforce 2 and a northwood 400mhz FSB intel 1.8

I have an Asus P4B533 with two 256MB DDR 2100 memory sticks. A Thermaltake Volcana 7+. The FSB is at 143 the PCI and AGP are set at 33 and 66. The voltage was upped from 1.5 to 1.6 and I have 100% stabillity. Oh yeah the multiplier is locked at 18.

thanks corrupt, any ideas why I am having trouble?? I am using the stock heatsink/fan. voltage is auto, did not mess pci/agp mhz. I will try to mess with my voltage and PCI/APG bus.

Your voltage might be part of the issue. I can get mine to a 133 FSB without changeing the voltage, but 134 will crash if I do not up the voltagte 2 notches 1.55 volts. You should logically be able to get to 133 FSB. That is what your RAM is supposed to be.

Try taking out one of your RAM chips and see how far you can overclock; then swap it with your other RAM chip and repeat. Very likely you're having a hardware issue (i.e. RAM) because you don't usually get "stop errors" with overclocking. You usually just don't boot, or you don't get to the Windows desktop successfully...then you lock up.

When you use 2 memory chips, you are introducing one more link in the chain that could be weak; an extra point of failure. I would assume the most successful and reliable overclocks were done with a single RAM chip, because there's less that can go wrong.

You also don't mention the brand of your RAM. Generic PC2100 RAM can be quite crappy. If it was a Crucial 2100 chip, then I'd almost guarantee you'd hit 133 (or some other well-known quality brand). But with some no-name generic stuff, maybe not.

Again, try only with a single chip, then try with the other chip, and see if one overclocks better than the other. If neither does, then try a good brand of RAM, like PC2700 or PC3200.

will try the one chip. I got the mem from crucial. I have a soyo p4s dragon which might be part of the issue. heard there were some problems. I set my clock to 133, and the ratio changed so my speed did not increase according to the bootup. I belive the ratio was 3/4. Set 1/1 and that did not work. and I upped my volts to 1.55. I am a newbie to this and breaking my virginity on this board. I guess I have to keep playing, hopefully one of my ram chips are bad. thanks for the input.

Hey guys, I have found that CPUID is a very useful tool for checking out the end result of your changes to the BIOS.

After each successful bootup after changing settings, go look at everything with CPUID.

It will tell you your current CPU clock, FSB, RAM speed, some of the timings, etc.

Coel, I am not familar with your BIOS, but is it possible that the ratio your working with is also affecting your PCI / AGP bus ?

My Abit board does that and it tics me off. If I had independant control of the ration so that RAM, wasn't tied to the PCI / AGP then I could be running much higher then I am already, and unlocking would let me run higher still.

Just thought I would mention it bro.

lc, I'm not having any probs with either of my boards. But yes, the Asus P4S533 has a CPU/MEM ratio adjustment. Some settings would just not boot beyond the POST, and one setting does. Stupid me, I can't even remember which setting it was, but I think it was 3/4. Next time I fire it up I'll stop by the BIOS and have a peek.