!st time OC'er questions

[unfaithfulsfan]

After reading quite a bit at LR I've taken the plunge and OC'd my Athlon 64 3000+ Orleans from 1.8 to just a hair under 2.0 using EasyTune. As of midnight last night everything seemed to be fine with the system temps at ~31 and CPU at ~33-34. My wife has filly-farted around on it today doing research, email, etc. and reported no abnormalities.

I kinda drew a blank on what apps to use to really load it up to see how it reacted. So out of boredom I ran 3DMark and (yeehaaaa!) with onboard video, went up from 59 to 101. I'm smokin' now!!!! C'mon 9600GT!!

But the odd thing was the temps. CPU went DOWN to 27 and system went down to 25. The only thing I noticed was fan RPMs went up about 8 or 9 %.

What's the favorite app for really loading up the CPU 'round here?

Thanks,
Jack

[DMB2000uk]

Prime95 in stress mode.
Set it to small FFTs to stress the CPU.
Tick the option on one of the drop down menus to warn on "round off error checking".

Maybe the CPU was *just* hitting a temp threshold to ramp the fan up which caused it to get cooler overall?

Dan

[unfaithfulsfan]

Thanks, once again, Dan for coming to my rescue. I'll give that a whirl this weekend and see what happens

Jack

[unfaithfulsfan]

Have been running prime95 for about 3.5 hours with no major problems. CPU temps still hovering around 33. However, EasyTune suddenly shows my System Fan rpms at 0 but it's still running.

I'll see how it goes for the rest of the night and try kicking it up a bit more tomorrow

[unfaithfulsfan]

YeeeeeHaaaaa. My "new" (old) CPU just came in. Now there's 4 hours and one Dr's appointment between me and installing it. Finally I'm in the Dual Core club!

[unfaithfulsfan]

Well, got my "new" CPU in last night and I have to say it's definitely faster but not yet where I want it. Gave myself a small heart attack removing the old one. The thermal paste had solidified over the last 2.5 years and I yanked the CPU out of the ZIF socket while it was still latched down! But all seems to be OK

In the meantime:

How long should I let the CPU burn in before I try to overclock it? Out of sheer impatience, I tried bumping it up last night to 2.5 and it immediately rebooted.

Also, which is better, to use a higher multiplier and lower FSB or vice versa when using EasyTune or even in the BIOS?

Thanks,
Jack