ChrisUK

Okey dokey!

I have a 3.4EE ES Gallatin LGA775 and P5AD2 board all being cooled by an Asetek WaterChill. I'm trying to get the thing to run at 1066FSB using the processor with a 14x multiplier and 266Mhz FSB. The DDR2 ram is good for 667Mhz but I'm only going to run it for this test at 533Mhz.

The cpu core voltage is at default but I have increased this to 1.65v, the DDR is also at its default at 1.8v.

Anyway, by increasing the FSB to the above settings means the processor should only be running at around 3.7Ghz (no big deal there). However, once I save the settings in the BIOS rather than it just reboot itself normally I hear a noise which resembles a "clap". My pc appears to switch off and then it reboots as normal. It at this point either will not get a VGA signal or will get to the boot screen and inform me that overclocking has failed.

If the ddr is not being run out of spec then it must be the processor......or is it?

I have the BIOS v1008 on the board. I also set the PCI-e speed to 100 although I've heard that this cannot be "locked". My PCI bus speed is set at 33Mhz.
I have a 550W Antec TruePower supply powering 2 x Optical drives and 3 x 160Gb Maxtor SATA drives plus the WaterChill. Sound is via and Audigy2 Plat and graphics in the form of a Sapphire X800XT.

Is there anything I'm missing with setup of the BIOS. I've also heard rumours about connecting SATA drives to the Southbridge being a potential overclocking barrier.

This overclock shouldnt be a problem at all should it?

Any help appreciated. I guess Zardon is the best person to answer this 1 as he knows this chip very well! (3.4EE ES)

Cheers,
Chris

Zardon

Hi Chris ive had 4 EE ES chips now and all of them have hit 3.7ghz easy so im almost certain there is something else coming into play here.

Im guessing by the PSU that your rails are good under load but it might be good to check them just to make sure everything is fine.

Once that is out of the way, go into your bios and put all your voltages to auto (this is to test). also put the PCI e speed to auto. This ensures that the mobo will set the best lock. The noise "clap" you are hearing with 1008 bios on the original non E P5AD2 board is the board setting the frequencies as it has to break intels 10% overclock hardlock figure - it actually seems to turn itself off for a few seconds. They have since improved this on the E motherboard incidentally and this is all done much faster.

With regards to SATA drives you are right, they dont lock like PATA drives on the PCI bus and they "float", quite unpleasant and I ran into some major issues with high FSB and Western digital raptor drives in which I couldnt go over 258fsb, moving over to the new maxtor 16 meg cache drives resolved the issue for me. Nontheless this would not be giving a problem as you mention as the only issue this causes is the fact the drive(s) will vanish, quite unpleasant as you would imagine if you had your operating system on it.

What you should try is raising your 14x to 15x just to verify that it is not the high fsb causing the issue. you need to start narrowing down the possible problems. for example try booting at 15x246 to hit around 3700mhz at a lower fsb. then go back into your bios and if its still not stable try playing with core voltages. Ive found with the extreme editions 800fsb that they tend to like voltages in the 1.625 to 1.7 area. unless you are on vapo the thermal heat at core voltages higher than this tend to cause instability (every chip is different, also take into account room ambients etc). So if auto is still unstable at 3.7ghz, then go into the bios and try 1.6, then 1.625. then up slowly as you reboot. get yourself a hold of memtest+ and make a bootable ISO disc to test. this not only tests memory but if you are getting processor problems this will throw up sequential error reports on the read out via DOS, this is also amazingly useful as you will never risk a hosed OS or a corrupted page file.

Its going to be a matter of trying various settings, you have made a good move of not making the ram the deciding factor in testing and keep it low until you get the clock speed you want then crank it and continue to test in memtest. The corsair ram you have incidentally seems to like in the 1.8-1.9 zone so watch it if you go much higher, you wont gain anything just cause more heat. Go into the manual chipset override and put the ram to 12-4-4-4 , you can get it slightly tighter to 10-3-4-4 incidentally but you might need 1.9 volts for that at higher speeds around 675-700mhz.

With regards to the ASUS P5DA2 mobo, the back plate for heat is very good and works well if you are running under 240fsb, but you might need to look into a decent fan (40cfm+) on a zalman arm or a strong side case fan to keep those mofsets cool, I have a 120mm fan bolted onto a zalman arm in my own and temperatures are lower and stability is increased - its right over the northbridge, with the added benefit of air circulation flowing outwards all over the mobo. im running the E motherboard right now at 300/1200fsb and the 1066fsb 3.46ghz P4 EE @ 3900mhz, 1.65 volts.