Newby (ish) oc need help

[danmitch1]

Hi guys , Im new to the forrum here so HEllo to all of you first off and hope to have happy threading with ya !

I have a feeling im gonna get some moans and groans from this but here it goes..

I have a dell xps 700
win vista home premium with SP1 beta
core 2 duo e6400
nvidia geforce 7900 gtx 512
agiea physx card
4 gb 667mhz ddr2 ( 4 x 1gb)
1000watt psu
xps advanced thermal cooling case

I have read that the e6400 cpu is a great cpu to oc , ive read from 2.13 to 3.5 increase..
Anyways i got my self Ntune and really didnt like the program.. it seemed to do the opposite of what i wanted it to do ,increasing fan speed when i say decrease ,adjust the GPU core when ive only selected the CPU etc.

I also read that dell locks settings and that i might have to flash a non dell bios inoder to pass the limits . With ntune the pc would restart its self after setting the cpu core to 2.4 and above which i think is because of dell considering the temp doesnt even budge passed 29c-30c... and is only a 300mhz increase per core...

Anyhow im not the most seasoned oc er so if anyone would kindly set me in a good direction id really appreciate it !!!

Thanks for your time !!!

Dan.

[sswilson]

First off, welcome to HWC!!!! It's always great to see new faces.

Now, onto your dillema.......

My first advice would be to avoid (at all costs) flashing to a non-dell bios unless you can find a source you absolutely trust who has flashed your exact motherboard (dell model, not manufacturer's) and has had good results. Chances are you'd end up with a rather expensive paperweight rather than an overclockable motherboard.

Next step would be to run some diagnostic programs like cpu-z and sissoft sandra to get as much info as possible about your board / cpu / memory and report back to us with what you find. (motherboard model, make of memory etc....).

Some pictures of your bios screens would help as well.

That said.... I wouldn't hold out too much hope.... big box computers are notoriously hard to OC via bios, and as you've found.... software OC's tend not to work very well either......

Get back to us with the info though.... you never know what somebody might come up with......

[jdrom17]

I believe theres an option in the Dell XPS BIOS to enable overclocking. Once you do that then nTune should work correctly.

[danmitch1]

Hi guys ! Thanks for your replies.
I couldnt get pictures of the bios but i wrote down the version
the system is dxg061 bios version 1.1.3 07/31/06 .
Yes ,there is an option to enable overclocking but i had it set on when i was using ntune.
Here are cpu-z's results .



Thanks again !

Dan.

[danmitch1]

Yeah i just tried another program called clockgen... locked up my pc .
Damn dell...

[sswilson]

First thing I'm noticing from your cpu-z screenies is that your cpu is showing as running at a multi of 6 which tells me that you've still got the power saving features running.... try to find them in bios and turn them off if you can.

You're also probably running into problems with your memory.... it's rated pretty low and samsung isn't known for making the best overclocking memory on the planet.

[danmitch1]

Hey, i checked my bios settings in power management and everything that would look like it was a power saving feature is off.
The ram came with the pc no doubt that dell would cheap out on that eh,
it came with 2 sticks of 1 gb and i upgraded 2 more sticks matching all the specs but they are kingston.
Are there any other settings i should check for that powersaving stuff? Im new to vista so im not sure .

Thanks for your time !!

Dan.

ps: Do i have to mess with my ram inorder to oc my cpu ?

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by danmitch1

Hey, i checked my bios settings in power management and everything that would look like it was a power saving feature is off.
The ram came with the pc no doubt that dell would cheap out on that eh,
it came with 2 sticks of 1 gb and i upgraded 2 more sticks matching all the specs but they are kingston.
Are there any other settings i should check for that powersaving stuff? Im new to vista so im not sure .

Thanks for your time !!

Dan.

ps: Do i have to mess with my ram inorder to oc my cpu ?

Unless the ram is set in bios to run "unlinked" it's going to ramp up as you raise the fsb, and I'm not certain there is any way to run it unlinked when you are trying to do a software OC.

I'd try an initial OC using just the kingston mem to see if it is the samsung holding you back. (2gig is easier to OC than 4gig as well). That way you'll at least remove that possible block out of the equation.

It would really help if you can get your hands on a digital camera of some form so that you can upload pics of all of your bios screens.

[danmitch1]

Cool, i found more power saving options and i think that did it



After changing the setting to performance cpu-z cpu multiplier jumps inbetween 6x and 8x (dont know if it should jump )

So i took ntune and got the cpu up to 2.31 from the 2.13 without the pc shutting down.
Then i did the vista performance test and had the cpu running at 100% for about 10 min and the cpu temp reached a max of 42c (is that good?) .
Should i try a little more, what is an acceptable 100%usage temp for the cpu ?

Also about the ram, what your saying about the ram not being the best for oc what symptoms will low quality ram have like over heating?

with the cpu oc it also oc the ram from 667 to 722 is that bad?

Thanks again !

Dan.

Update: I just played crysis with all settings on high AA 4x and the cpu oc really made it playable , probably doubled my frame rate. Although i was monitoring my temps at the same time playing in window mode the cpu never went over 37c but Holy jumping juniper! the gpu was running at a steady 69-70c !! bad?

[Babrbarossa]

temps look very good, ram is fine- youve still got the power saving on if your multi is shifting. disable anything with C1E or EIST in it in the BIOS