Overclocking - Is 470mhz DDR 2.5-3-3-6 better than 400mhz DDR 2-3-2-5?

[fury]

I got back into Folding and decided, what the hell, why not overclock again?

So I overclocked my X2 3800+ to 2.35 ghz with the 235mhz HT, 1x HT speed (that's all the system will even try to boot at when it's overclocked). I tried to keep the RAM at the lowest timings possible, so I put it at 2/1.66 which put the RAM at about 400 (give or take a couple, i forget) so that the timings could be set to 2-3-2-5. It's OCZ PC3200 LL. But, I did not notice a difference in the folding performance between this and regular 2.0ghz (same RAM speed).

I told the RAM to go 1:1, which meant I had to raise the timings a bit to 2.5-3-3-6 I believe... I don't know if this is supposed to be better or not, it seems thus far just as stable as before but I haven't yet gotten a complete frame done so I don't know if it's faster yet.

Basically, for folding purposes, should I prioritize minimal memory timings, or maintain FSB/RAM speed synchronization no matter how high I have to put the timings?

Gigabyte GA-K8N-Pro SLI
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ currently 2.35ghz @ 1.75v ()
2gb OCZ PC3200 LL (2x1gb)
BFG Geforce 7800 GT OC
Watercooled by a Zalman Reserator Plus

[DigitalMocking]

Run some benchmarks?

[Syk0tiK]

I think the 235mhz will be faster

[darkninja67]

That vcore seems a bit high dude. What is stock on that proc?

I would try to go to a median between the timings and the FSB/RAM speed

[BBnet3000]

i cant wait to try the folding@home GPU client. i might not end up running it full time though, depending on how much sound my cards massive blower makes

[fury]

Originally Posted by DigitalMocking

Run some benchmarks?

I literally just installed Linux on that thing just before putting Folding on it. Folding is the only thing I know of benchmarking so far.

I can't tell how fast it is right now, I'm at work (lol, productivity), but hopefully it'll have enough frames done by the time I get back for me to get a good solid estimate.

The default Vcore is 1.35. Raised it in .05v increments until it started booting, and it ended up being 1.75v before it started up.

Originally Posted by BBnet3000

i cant wait to try the folding@home GPU client. i might not end up running it full time though, depending on how much sound my cards massive blower makes

Hence my watercooling... The 7800 GT OC had such a nasty noise, it was unbearable

[BBnet3000]

Originally Posted by fury

Hence my watercooling... The 7800 GT OC had such a nasty noise, it was unbearable

was it a big blower or just a heatsink?

mine has a blower that takes up an extra slot, however my gf has a high end nvidia card (cant remember which one) that has a regular (in fact rather low profile) heatsink, with a pretty small fan, her computer is very quiet until that fan comes on full blast, it is VERY loud

[fury]

Big ass blower, on a big ass heatsink. It was humongous, and it didn't know when to shut up. It couldn't pick a speed to stay with, either, which is the main reason why I couldn't stand it (everything else that has a constant sound, I can tone out, like hard drives)

I thought my Radeon X850 Pro was bad until the 7800.

[BBnet3000]

Originally Posted by fury

Big ass blower, on a big ass heatsink. It was humongous, and it didn't know when to shut up. It couldn't pick a speed to stay with, either, which is the main reason why I couldn't stand it (everything else that has a constant sound, I can tone out, like hard drives)

I thought my Radeon X850 Pro was bad until the 7800.

heh, yeah, on mine everything is big ass. the card is probably as big as some motherboards, its so long that i had to remove a hard drive in order to be able to plug the power into it

[the snake]

1.75Vcore seems extreme for a dual core, i have my opty 170 @ 1.47 and 2500Mhz 24/7 cause i have a so-so overclocking chip, i would really watch those CPU temps dude.

and F@H is all about Mhz any ways

[KorruptioN]

1.75V is way too high.

[fury]

Well, higher RAM frequencies are better, it's now doing 24 minutes a frame instead of 28 at 2.35ghz.

I will try and see if I can lower that Vcore any, but it's like, the system would just reset instead of proceeding past the "Overclocking CPU bus to 235mhz. If system hangs, press DEL on next post" screen until I bumped it up to 1.75v.

[fury]

I managed to lower the Vcore to 1.7, but only when I took the FSB down to 233.