Abit AA8 DURAMAX WITH UGURU OVERCLOCKING SLOWS DOWN?

gearing · Post by **gearing** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 9:22 am

I have just purchased a P4 3.6 prescott cpu in a AA8 mob.
I am only just beginning to get involved with overclocking.
Something strange is happening that someone may be able to explain or perhaps point me in the right direction.
Using the UGure overclock function, when the default setting is changed to "normal" and in turn "turbo", the cpu speed increases from 3.67ghz to 3.8 to 3.96 respectively.
The strange thing is that I have done timing tests with TMPGenc and Adobe premiere pro encoding and rendering, (I do a lot of video editing) .The higher the settings with uguru overclock, the SLOWER the encode and render times are with these 2 applications. With the turbo setting on, the cpu speed at almost 4 ghz gives exactly the same render times for my sample file as my older 2.4ghz non hyperthreaded asus mob and cpu ! The harder Uguru drives the overclock facility, the slower my encode and render times !
Could you please offer any ideas in this area to assist me in moving forward with regard improving my standard 3.6ghz encode and render speeds.
Ps.
With the standard “default” setting of the uGuru overclock settings my new Abit and 3.6ghz cpu are at least 50% faster.
It seems the higher the overclocking goes, the slower it performs ????

Hope you can help and thanks in advance.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 7:07 pm

Take a look at the timmings on your ram as uGuru increases front side bus speed. Rendering is directly impacted by the speed of the ram if the ram. If the ram is staying at the same speed ie. 400mhz and the timings are staying the same then the problem is else where. if its increaseing with the front side bus then ie. 415mhz and the timings are being increased as well that may account for the rendering problems. There is also the possibility that your CPU is generating errors that are not critical but are impacting your encoding i would use a program like superPI to test stability at each setting. If your cpu is indead creating errors the application will fail out. When the errors are created the CPU has to flush the pipeline and then repopulate it. This is a huge performance hit, and could be the source of the slow down.

gearing · Post by **gearing** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 7:31 pm

Thanks for your comments and ideas.
I am not very conversant with overclock settings and where to find values.
Could you please tell me where to find them.
I've looked in the soft settings in the uguru... I fould something along the lines you mentioned but...
The soft menu "ratio" was not set on default. When I put it on default (which appeared to then select "set by cpu" rather than auto the pc crashes on start without access to bios. I had to reset all to get going again. I guess this was a red herring!
Getting back to your point.... I have paired Corsair 533mhz RAM (pc4200)to give 1 GB. This is the ram most used and recommended on the corsair site for this board. How can I check what you have mentioned.
Thanks in advance.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 7:39 pm

you can use cpuz to check your settings, http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

gearing · Post by **gearing** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:01 am

Thanks. I think you may be onto something but not sure what...
I'll tell you what I have found with your advice.
Firstly prior to checking out the ram I observed the settings differences on uguru with turbo and default.
By elimination I have found that I can use the same turbo clock speed (3.96ghz), but keep low Vcore to 1.3875 (from 1.5875 in turbo), keep low NBV to 1.5 (from 1.6 in turbo) and keep low DDR2V TO 1.8V (from 1.9v in turbo).
This fixes the slow problem encoding and actually finishes encode time 15 sec over 4 min better than the default...... So.... this may mean something to you???

Now for the RAM test.
In default mode of uguru the RAM speed is 271.7mhz.
In turbo (and also my last user setting that I've described) the speed is 292.6 mhz.

Does any of this give you a clue as to the problem when using the higher voltages and whatever other changes uguru use in the turbo mode?
Thanks in advance. (sorry I dont' know your name !)

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:05 am

hum...

That is odd... I run the AA8 in my LAN rig, but it's for gaming only. If you want me to "double check" anything let me know. I'd be more than happy to fire it up and run some benchmarks. I don't use uGuru personally though. I'll stick to the BIOS ;)

gearing · Post by **gearing** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:08 am

Sorry, 1 more thing....
All other timings using the cpuz remain the same...
FSBDram 3:4
latency/delay/precharge etc all remain in same values and order at 4 4 4 12.
thanks.

gearing · Post by **gearing** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 1:44 am

Hi, Apoptosis...
I hope you are happy to join into my problem.
Hopefully you have read that I do a lot of video.
It would be good if you could just check someway that you are getting value out of your overclock settings.
As soon as my voltages go up, as outlined above, the encode times come down !
Idease welcome !

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 9:46 am

K i think i was heading in the right direction but it would be very helpful if you could post some screen shots of cpuz at the differnt settings. one for turbo, and one for normal. it sounds like uGuru is playing it safe with your ram and running it way below its rated speed and with very loose timmings. but some screen shots would help me varifiy that.

LVCapo · Post by **LVCapo** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 1:30 pm

Gear,
do you have SP2 on your system? i ask because after doin some research i'm seeing some people having similar problems to your and it comes down to m emory issues within Windows, and mores specifically after installing SP2. The fix seems to be a fresh install of windows...what a shock.
If thats not it I tend to agree with infinite on this, i have seen alot of complaints with the UGURU utility and its affect on different systems, it may just be ratcheting down your memory too much.

gearing · Post by **gearing** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:29 pm

yes I have sp2.
Are you suggesting reformat or just running repairing by re running the xp pro over what I already have?

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:32 pm

You may not have to, it could be related to the uGuru, if you set your overclock in the bios you may not have the same issues.

LVCapo · Post by **LVCapo** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 7:06 pm

I would use a format and clean install as a last resort. my point was that it could be a couple of different things working together, Windows and SP2 allocating your memory, tied in with the O/C features of your board.
As a first step i'd reccomend adjusting your timings manually in your BIOS and exhausting those options before moving on to a format/clean install

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 9:16 pm

i would use the following settings in your bios to test your configuration. set your frontside bus to 200mhz and your ram to a 1:1 so it runs at 400(200fsb) with timings of 3-3-3-8 and see if superpi runs ok, then i would set your frontside bus to 215 still with the ram at 1:1 so now at 433mhz same timings. again test with superpi and your rendering apps, keep using the same video file to time with so the results are consistant. i would keep going in 15mhz bumps up to 250 fsb and then start in smaller incements until it either fails superpi or fails to boot, then knock it down a notch. this how basic overclocking is done. onece you get it to this point you should see an improvement in performance. this is also the point that you can start to really tweek your system for max performance if you so wish, but from the sound of it this would be a good place to stop.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 10:52 pm

Just checking to see if you have any news, changes or more info since yesterday.