For Overclocking Noobs like me, bugs, audio cuts...

[Erforce]

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Ok, rapid sum up :

 

6 month ago I've bought some pricey FB-DIMM for my mighty MacPro in order to happily overclock my FSB from 1333 to 1600Mhz or more.

On Mac i can do that but the system OS is based on the core frequency, ie when rising the FSB, the clock goes faster.

It means when encoding a video, the rendering time displayed is the same. but seconds go faster than light.

BTW my MacPro refuses to start after a reboot while overcloked. So i was stuck with this ... feature* !

Most games (not many so... easy to test) are going out of sync. The only good thing happened with that is running faster in WoW... but i don't play this game for years now. :music_whistling:

 

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Anyway, On Windows, i don't encode anything, so no need to do that, but.. then came DBS BS2.

 

So i happily overclocked my FSB with SetFSB, easy to use, and Xeon compatible :P I re ran some test in DCS and didn't found any transcending differences. But.. anyway when i saw you guys overcloking to 4.8ghz and running 40fps i said to myself : it's already lost wait for the next Xeon.

 

Then came the bug (in fact it was here from the first OC day) of partial audio speech, cut off messages and almost everything with a sound in DCS.

Exact same problem as here :

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=67929

Solutions were IRQ, PCi-E switch, Swap files, and some other useless things for me.

I don't have a Bios, and no one knows EFI... yet.

 

Then i remembered that i was sure thoses F1 in the last Grand Prix were really fast with VLC when dragging the window. And semi-lagging when releasing. It came clear to me : This is the TimeWarp effect of OCing the FSB.

I took a watch, and closely watched the clock in ABRIS.

When the Abris clock hitted 1Mn, my (real)watch still at 45s.

(Then i remembered how good i was, finishing the BS2 campaign 30% faster than you :D)

 

After a Tiny search over the net with something like Internal Clock frequency with a known search engine i found one post :

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/569893-must-read-setfsb-o-c-game-problems-fixed.html

 

Bingo !

The problem you guys are running into is a new Windows 7 "feature".

WinTimerTester were totally out of Sync, Wooooow, really new COOL FEATURE they've made in Windows 7 !:megalol:

 

anyway, i've done the command lines, rebooted, and now...

I just saw my FPS going from 19 to 25.

and Betty finishing the word EKRAN !

 

i'm happy, i had to share it ;)

[blackbelter]

For overclockers, I also have one thing to share:

 

To test system stability, forget about all those stress tests, use WEI assessment in their stead. Don't mind about the results. As long as your system can pass one WEI assessment, it is stable. Using stress tests such as IBT or Prime95, you can waste time running them for hours and hours, and still cannot be quite certain about your system stability. Using WEI, it takes you about 10 minutes. At least in my case, this has worked like a charm.

 

Using IBT (Maximum memory usage) to test the thermal situation of an overclocked CPU under load is a good idea, though.

Edited June 27, 2012 by blackbelter

[LawnDart]

For CPU OCing I monitor RealTemp then run Prime95 and Intel BurnTest to check stability and temps until passing satisfactorily*.

 

For GPU OCing I run Heaven DX11 Benchmark and 3DMark11 to make sure it passes without any crashes or artifacts.

 

*I generally don't run any of these tests for very long aside from making sure there aren't any crashes, which may or may not take several hours before finding the highest possible stable overclock. I'm not one to let it burn for a dozen hours (only to find out it didn't crash or it did). Instead, once I have what seems to be the fastest yet most stable OC I take it to the test playing BF3 maxed out for hours or rendering HD videos for several hours while multitasking, browsing, watching video and throwing all kinds of heavy tasks at it that I'd be doing any given day anyway...

 

If it then passes without any crashes for several days of "normal heavy ops", I'm good.

 

I'd never rely on any Microsoft/Windows benchmark or test to verify an overclock!

[Erforce]

WEI have passed the test of 3.4Ghz successfully. (from 2.66)

But i know the system is highly unstable.

 

As for saving my C drive, there is no way i do that.

My RAM prevent any loss to the system with FB (>ECC)

If i lose windows, then ... oh damn :D Hello MacOs

 

But, i know i like Raid0 very much too, i'm going nuts !

 

anyway, what you've said apply for the safety of all.

Knowing the max Temp of your CPU is also a good thing, for me it's 65°C

[blackbelter]

Well, I guess different people have different experience then... In my case, I could run stress tests for hours, IBT or Prime95, but crash on daily using (ie, gaming). I then found a strong correlation between daily usage and WEI assessment. Seems working perfect for me.

Edited June 30, 2012 by blackbelter