Best Processor Upgrade for Gaming Excluding Core I5/7 or AMD

[Cronos18]

Never Tryed it at 3.6 before, it was running great last night though, I must have been on aion for atleast 8 hours throughout the day and today, until just a few ago, All i had done was installed Intel burn in and utorrent today, just to check some settings out in utorrent because when my brother uses it, it slows down the whole network so i was looking for options on how to disable a few things and make it not gib the network. Going to post a SS of all the settings I have from CpuZ and PcWizard. I only use the bios to OC, I only changed the C1E support for speedstep to be disabled, and set the OC to me manual, 9x multiplier 425 fsb I believe i was going to set cpu voltage to 1.25 but just left it auto thinking it could configure itself based on the needs, but thinking it might be less stable or not choose always what would be better suited to run stable. I've seen people post SS'S of their bios settings, is there an easy way to do this from within computer settings? I'll go check it in a few if and when it crashes again, pretty sure it will. but otherwise it seems to be running fine.


Don't know how to make the image appear in this so ill just post a link to imageshack where I uploaded a SS from printscreen/paint of cpuz/pcwizard.

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1714/cpusettings.jpg

[Aaron_8015]

Figure I may reply to the most long winded thread I have read (and I did read it all).

From your screenshot I can see you are overclocking your memory, I would unlink your memory from the fsb and set the memory to run at 800mhz. Then see if you can clock your chip higher....

[Cronos18]

Hmmm don't believe I've ever touched memory in the bios but I can do that if that's the case. or atleast search to change it within the bios. For some reason the cpuz reports the memory as 400mhz when it's supposed to be 800, is there some king of 2x multiplier there as well? or maybe that's the dual channel? No idea tbh lol. I do know I've seen something report it as 800mhz, and that is what I paid for.

[Aaron_8015]

DDR = Double Data Rate...

In my bios overclocking options it goes by the 800mhz speed so I gather it will in yours also...

[Cronos18]

Gotcha lol. just no idiotproof label on the ram itself (I've checked before) to state that it is indeed 800mhz after the rate is applied >.> lol. There was of course a ID number but I did never bother to write it down. Though I believe CPUZ named that as well and I searched it and even posted a link to the ram I had earlier in this long, derailed, poorly constructed thread of mine. But it's Chaos with all the variables I'm looking at, some of which should be more obvious to be the root cause then others and I really don't know shit, just base things on trial and error and browsing other threads via google lol.

Anyways Imma take a look at the cpuz report, how can you tell that my ram is being linked to the fsb? is it the FSBRAM ratio being 1:1. so that increasing my fsb to 425 is like increasing my ram to 850 instead of 800 at 400fsb actually 400fsb would give me 3.6ghz, I think the stock is like 333x9 = 3ghz so that means if it was linked all along I'd be getting 333x2 = 666mhz ram? So all along I've been overclocking my processor and ram which is why I've probably been getting a decent performance boost lol, but also, is that why it's unstable? I believe I've read OCing ram usually isn't that good of an idea etc. Then again what do I know.

TLDR best bet is to set ram to not be 1:1 based off fsb, and set it to 400mhz? and DDR2 Will clock it at 800mhz for the correct speed?

[Aaron_8015]

That is pretty much it, I have not found a motherboard where you can change the ratio. If you set it to run at 800mhz it will change the ratio for you...... (well 400 or 800 depending how the motherboard does it (mine is 800)).

[Cronos18]

Ok so, I couldn't change the ratio and I couldnt directly change the Dram to what I wanted. The Dram was directly related to the fsb, if I set fsb to 400 dram would let me choose 800mhz, if I selected 425fsb Dram would let me select 851mhz as the lowest setting. so 412fsb would have resulted in 825mhz as the lowest, upwards of like 1050 etc to 1700mhz.

As for the rest of the settings.

CPU ration = 9x
FSB Frequency = 425mhz
PCIE Frequency = 100
FSB Strap to northbridge = Auto (not sure if this really means anything, I belive there was a few incriments between 333-600 or something like that)
Dram Frequency = 851mhz (was set to auto, just changed it, though auto was probably outputting this number anyways if fsb was 425 and the ratio is 1:1)
Dram Timing = Auto

There is a few other options which I just now tryed that when set to enable are supposed to enhance dram OC but windows didnt boot with them enabled so I turned them back onto default Auto. I can name them if you like but Ill have to go back into the Bios. Probably not too important.

Guess I'll see what happens now.

[Aaron_8015]

So in the Dram frequency does it not let you set it to 800? Another thing to consider is you may have found a random fsb wall.... have you tried going for 4Ghz?

[RacerX]

Those screen shots pretty much covered it and Aaron has the same answer, undo the Auto setting on your ram, it's running it at 850, and even though your timings are loose, it just may not like running over 800, thus crashes when you go higher.

once it's set to manual, you should have some options to move it down in set ratios, like 5:6, or 1:1.20 or something, depending on the board, and it should then show what that change is.
get your ram down to 800 or lower, then work on the fsb to see what it will do.
also, undo the auto voltage on the CPU and start at 1.250

i suspect you should be able to get between 450-500 ( if it didn't hit the wall) before having to mess with the NB voltages.

start going up with the fsb in increments of 10 with the memory set lower, and see what it does, if it starts to flake out, look at small voltage jumps on the CPU.
Besides the C1E, see if it has a separate EIST setting and disable as well for now.

once you hit the wall on the CPU, you could drop the multiplier to 8 or 8.5 and see if the fsb will go even higher, while keeping the CPU down some, then back things down to a solid CPU point, and adjust the fsb accordingly to see what the ram will do.

once all that is done (yes it will take some time and trial and error) then decide your best performance ratio of fsb+multiplier+ ram speed and set it and your done.



here's a few tips on how i test everything.

i still have a floppy drive for flashing, etc, so i run memtest from it, but you can look into burning an .iso for a CD.

get memtest and when you get to the memory clocking, set the boot sequence to boot to that first.
this way if you boot to it and it starts to fail immediately, you'll never run windows stable, back things down. if after a minute or so it isn't giving errors, you should be stable enough to boot to windows and run some benches.

i do a few quick runs with sandra first (CPU and mem benches), if it passes, reboot and go higher.
once you've gotten to the point you want to test for true stability, then you can run the intel burn at maximum for a couple of runs.
you can also do the Prime95, but be warned, the blend is a very good test, especially on the memory, but sometimes can be misleading and give errors that aren't really there, since other running process's can cause it to stop working and tell you things are bad, so try and keep background tasks to a minimum when benching.
finally top it off with furmark, on the stability test, extreme burn in setting for a while.
let your video card put some heat in the system and see how it all goes.

after all that, play some games and see what it will do.


as for system recommendations, i still say go with better ram and a better cooler.
the socket 775 has plenty of life still.

[ShyguyXPC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cronos18

Hmmm don't believe I've ever touched memory in the bios but I can do that if that's the case. or atleast search to change it within the bios. For some reason the cpuz reports the memory as 400mhz when it's supposed to be 800, is there some king of 2x multiplier there as well? or maybe that's the dual channel? No idea tbh lol. I do know I've seen something report it as 800mhz, and that is what I paid for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aaron_8015

DDR = Double Data Rate...

In my bios overclocking options it goes by the 800mhz speed so I gather it will in yours also...