Belarc Diagnostic tool - highly recommended

[beet1e]

As Peter said (Peter is the guy whose laptop I used to read my mobo manual) When you get a real problem on your hands, you always learn something. Yep, sure do. Not just about the hardware, but also that I should have printed that section of the mobo manual before I started

[MrRiplEy[H]]

This thing is free AND connects to the internet? LOL.

I wouldn't touch it with a long stick if I were you.

[Chairboy]

Of course, if you all have good personal firewalls, you shouldn't be worried about this, right?  After all, you'd be able to see if it actually connected to the internet (and more) instead of just using your browser to show you the results.

Get a good firewall like Norton Internet Security, it'll show you what's happening.

[sirch]

Oh well I'm not sure what I did when I changed those settings, now I am having trouble booting my puter also. I now  get lockups after playing AH for a while. I don't think its overclocking, but I'm not sure. I have to shut power off and switch it back to reboot now after a lock up. I must have changed something in there  for this to happen. Goin back in to choose the option there that gives me the previous setting and see what that does. If it works like before I will live with the 1150mz speed, until I can get a Pro in to fix it. When it rains it pours, the dam UPS guy just left without waiting for us to answer the door, he has my Cougar with him. So much for paying $33 bucks for 2 day air delivery. LOL my wife was running down the block after this guy. ( I was sleeping after just getting home from a double shift)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Heh at least you didn't find out UPS had left the goods for customs declaration without noticing the receiver.. I had a shipment returned to sender overseas because of their lousy service.

[beet1e]

sirch -

Yes, sounds like you made a mistake like mine.
Run Belarc and then post back here to say what mobo you have, and I will look at the manual for it.

I can see why manufacturers like AMD advise against overclocking.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Overclocking is great if you know what you're doing.

If you don't even know what a FSB is, don't play with any bios settings.

[beet1e]

Oh the talented MrRipley speaks - yet again. Gawd, I thought I posted a lot, but Ripley has posted hundreds more threads than me in a much shorter time. Where would the world's computer expertise be without you, Mr. Ripley!

I can tell you that I built my PC from the ground up, starting only with an existing case and power supply.

If you don't even know what a FSB is, don't play with any bios settings.

 Oh yeah, like I did it without setting up the BIOS settings - LOL

You want to overclock? Be my guest. But when I read all the posts in here about people who have had problems that have been difficult to solve, often there's a reason such as overclocking. I listen to guys with experience, like bloom25, and ndrtkr over on the WB AGW board. But I also pay attention to manufacturers' recommendations. And if they advise against overclocking, then I for one am not going to do it. I'll buy a more powerful processor instead.

Just for the record, here's an excerpt from the Asus A7V133 mobo manual. All except MrRipley, please read the last paragraph. MrRipley need not read it because he knows more about computer components than the manufacturers themselves.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I had a go at modifying the FSB (front side bus) speed on my BIOS. I changed it from 100MHz to 133MHz. But oh! When I tried to boot up, my system just died. The monitor went into standby mode and remained blank. According to the Asus A7V133 mobo manual, the system can become unstable, or hang, with some settings, but you're supposed to be able to restart the BIOS in safe mode. That didn't happen, so I had a dead PC that I could not start.

That's exactly how an experienced user sets up his computer! Who was I to doubt your expertise.

All manufacturers advise people not to overclock the hardware because it may lead to instability problems, shortened lifespan and derived from that, law suits on the manufacturer.

So instead they say guarantee is off if you OC, it's your own responsibility.

The truth however remains that with proper equipment and knowledge you can get a notable performance increase by overclocking - without losing stability or even lifespan in any meaningful way. My first overclocked PC is now over 3 years old and it's still running fine at it's new owner. It is overclocked by FSB and 30% over the specs. The price difference for a processor of similar speed would have been $200 at the time.

Another truth is that PC hardware is designed for a much longer lifespan than what it's real life use will be. Therefore an overclocked CPU may not last up to it's designed age but it will with fair certainty survive the 2-3 years which is the maximum useable lifetime of a modern computer. In fact I have several fully working cpu's in my closet collecting dust. I have no use for them.

[beet1e]

Yep, I made a mistake with the FSB setting. I changed it before I realised the clock multiplier was set to 12. All I said after that when I came to correct my error, which began by reading that mobo section, was that I realised that I had been set up at 1200MHz already, and did not want to overclock. So I effectively restored the status quo by means of disabling jumper free mode, and setting the parameters on the dip switches. Nothing else I could do.

When I upgraded to the Athlon, it made a big difference to Warbirds, which I was playing at the time. A 7-kill sortie in a 109F! - unthinkable before the CPU upgrade. But in Aces High I'm getting the results I want already. I know that my CPU is a year old now, and that there are much better ones available now. But I will neither upgrade nor overclock until there are clear indications that my Athlon 1.2 is not cutting the mustard. That time has not yet arrived.

Some people flog their cars by driving them at their limits much of the time. They might argue that they're only going to keep the car a couple of years, so to them it doesn't matter. (It's the poor sod to whom it's sold on who'll pay the price) And that's what springs to mind with your arguably cavalier approach to CPU overclocking. At the other end of the user spectrum, there are some guys here who have a pink fit that my Athlon idles at 55° Celsius!

[MrRiplEy[H]]

So I effectively restored the status quo by means of disabling jumper free mode, and setting the parameters on the dip switches. Nothing else I could do.

You could have just reseted the bios settings with the proper jumper and rebooted.

Some people flog their cars by driving them at their limits much of the time. They might argue that they're only going to keep the car a couple of years, so to them it doesn't matter. (It's the poor sod to whom it's sold on who'll pay the price) And that's what springs to mind with your arguably cavalier approach to CPU overclocking. At the other end of the user spectrum, there are some guys here who have a pink fit that my Athlon idles at 55° Celsius!

A car and a CPU cost a little different amounts of money, I certainly wouldn't risk damaging a $20 000 CPU.

You're also shortening the life of your hardware by running your CPU that hot, even without overclocking it.

[beet1e]

MrRipley!

You could have just reseted the bios settings with the proper jumper and rebooted.

I thought that's what I did... On the A7V133 board, there's a jumper which enables or disables jumper free mode. The default setting is to enable jumper free mode so that settings are modified in the BIOS. As I said before, because I made a mistake, I could not restart the PC at all. According to the mobo manual (page 62) it's supposed to restart in safe mode, but it didn't. So to force the correct settings, I had to do what I did. See the notes I have reproduced in the .ZIP file

[MrRiplEy[H]]

"I thought that's what I did... On the A7V133 board, there's a jumper which enables or disables jumper free mode. The default setting is to enable jumper free mode so that settings are modified in the BIOS."

I'm not really familiar with the Asus board, but switching from jumper free mode to bios control is not the same thing as clearing CMOS. Clearing CMOS just clears the settings to default in bios without any other jumper settings. After that the machine will autodetect your CPU and boot to proper settings if it has a jumper free configuration mode.

Find the 'clear CMOS' jumper on your board and after that you can switch settings back to jumper free mode and continue experiments with bios controllable FSB.

The key to overclocking is never to make big changes, change the FSB 1 Mhz at a time, reboot, test stability and if it works, push it higher. When temps rise too much or the system becomes unstable, turn the speed back a notch.

Under no circumstances should one change the fsb straight from 100 to 133 unless the speed has been detected wrong and the cpu / ram really support the speed.

[beet1e]

I note your remarks about CPU temps. My previous processor (AMD-K6-3 450MHz) ran for two years without incident. I've been running the Athlon for a year. I've got the mobo utility installed - Asus Probe - and the temperature the CPU runs at is well below the Asus defined threshold of 85° C

I've scoured the AMD website for further details on cooling, but all I could come up with is the attached guide, which gives no details about specific temperatures, but advises on cooling fan configuration. It seems to indicate that if you're using a recommended heatsink cooling fan, as I am, then everything should be OK - one of those no need to know issues. If you know different, please advise.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Beetie it all depends on how hot your cpu becomes under extreme load.. The treshold of 85C means that the heat becomes damaging after it. It's not reckommended to run the cpu near to those levels for an extended period of time.

Often if the idle temp goes up to 50's it means much higher stress temperatures. That then could lead to crashing under load or even a damaged cpu. A good way to stress test the computer is to run pifast in cycles for an hour or so. If your computer hasn't crashed and / or heated severely, you have proper cooling.

If you want to void your warranty and experiment with overclocking, the first thing to do is to install an effective cooler to your cpu. It's absolutely essential. I have had a watercooled system for quite a while now. Effective and quiet.