P4P800-E Deluxe - Is Overclocking to 3.6GHz Possible?

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silenceseeker2003

Greetings,
I just got my second ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard. Works great!

This time I got it with a 3.0GHz P4 CPU and I decided to experiment a
little bit with overclocking and see whether I can get something for
nothing. :-)

So, I went to the BIOS, selected 20% overclocking, rebooted and...
everything works like a charm! (Windows 2000 SP4)

The temperature went up by a few degrees, but still within very healthy
margin.

I checked to see the reported speed on ASUS PC Probe and there it says:
3,601MHz. Wow! :-)

However... during boot (I haven't installed enough applications yet to
test the speed with them) I did not notice any speed improvement.
Moreover, it even seemed slower a bit (at least psychologically, I
didn't take time with a stopper).

Is this possible? That is, is it possible that the CPU itself is
overclocked to 3.6GHz, but overall system performance degrades?

One of the reasons I am a bit suspicious about this reported 3.6GHz is
that the P4P800-E Deluxe manual says in the specifications that it is
capable of speeds of up to 3.2GHz only...

BTW, the memory I am using is:

KINGMAX Super ram 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Unbuffered System Memory Model MPXC22D-38 - OEM


Thanks in advance,
Sam
 
Greetings,
I just got my second ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard. Works great!

This time I got it with a 3.0GHz P4 CPU and I decided to experiment a
little bit with overclocking and see whether I can get something for
nothing. :-)

So, I went to the BIOS, selected 20% overclocking, rebooted and...
everything works like a charm! (Windows 2000 SP4)

The temperature went up by a few degrees, but still within very healthy
margin.

I checked to see the reported speed on ASUS PC Probe and there it says:
3,601MHz. Wow! :-)

However... during boot (I haven't installed enough applications yet to
test the speed with them) I did not notice any speed improvement.
Moreover, it even seemed slower a bit (at least psychologically, I
didn't take time with a stopper).

Is this possible? That is, is it possible that the CPU itself is
overclocked to 3.6GHz, but overall system performance degrades?

One of the reasons I am a bit suspicious about this reported 3.6GHz is
that the P4P800-E Deluxe manual says in the specifications that it is
capable of speeds of up to 3.2GHz only...

BTW, the memory I am using is:

KINGMAX Super ram 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Unbuffered System Memory Model MPXC22D-38 - OEM


Thanks in advance,
Sam
Click to expand...

Get a copy of CPUZ from cpuid.com .

It will tell you what settings the BIOS is currently using,
RAM timings and the like.

What you may find, is the AI Overclock Tuner does boost the CPU
core clock, by boosting the FSB - but it also turns down the
DRAM frequency. (An overclocker on one of the private forums
would use 5:4 divider with your RAM, but the AI Overclock Tuner
uses the lower 3:2 divider. At least that is what I've read.)

To do decent overclocking, you should set all the numbers
manually yourself, testing with memtest86+ and Prime95 as
you go. While the AI Overclock Tuner can give you a quick
indication of whether your processor is overclockable, it
is not a substitute for a proper test strategy and a
series of manual tweaks.

You also need to find some proper benchmarking tools, ones
that separate disk testing from CPU core testing. If your
system is slow, make sure you figure out which part of it
is slow - disk I/O or CPU/memory related.

Paul
 
This time I got it with a 3.0GHz P4 CPU and I decided to experiment a
little bit with overclocking and see whether I can get something for
nothing. :-)

So, I went to the BIOS, selected 20% overclocking, rebooted and...
everything works like a charm! (Windows 2000 SP4)

The temperature went up by a few degrees, but still within very healthy
margin.

I checked to see the reported speed on ASUS PC Probe and there it says:
3,601MHz. Wow! :-)

However... during boot (I haven't installed enough applications yet to
test the speed with them) I did not notice any speed improvement.
Moreover, it even seemed slower a bit (at least psychologically, I
didn't take time with a stopper).

Is this possible? That is, is it possible that the CPU itself is
overclocked to 3.6GHz, but overall system performance degrades?
Click to expand...

Relative performance in the "FEEL" range may not be noticeable as you
are not doing much that you even need 3 ghz to crank on when just
booting. When booting the limitation is not the CPU, it's the
drive/chipsets.
 
Greetings,
I just got my second ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard. Works great!

This time I got it with a 3.0GHz P4 CPU and I decided to experiment a
little bit with overclocking and see whether I can get something for
nothing. :-)

So, I went to the BIOS, selected 20% overclocking, rebooted and...
everything works like a charm! (Windows 2000 SP4)

The temperature went up by a few degrees, but still within very healthy
margin.

I checked to see the reported speed on ASUS PC Probe and there it says:
3,601MHz. Wow! :-)

However... during boot (I haven't installed enough applications yet to
test the speed with them) I did not notice any speed improvement.
Moreover, it even seemed slower a bit (at least psychologically, I
didn't take time with a stopper).

Is this possible? That is, is it possible that the CPU itself is
overclocked to 3.6GHz, but overall system performance degrades?
Click to expand...

While testing my P5P800 I found that it automatically dropped my RAM
from DDR3200 to DDR2700 if I over clocked beyond 5%. I saw this on the
boot screen. I did not mess with any of the RAM settings in the BIOS to
see if I could get around this problem as I later found that even 5%
over clocking causes intermittent BSODs with my setup.
 
Paul said:
Get a copy of CPUZ from cpuid.com .

It will tell you what settings the BIOS is currently using,
RAM timings and the like.

What you may find, is the AI Overclock Tuner does boost the CPU
core clock, by boosting the FSB - but it also turns down the
DRAM frequency. (An overclocker on one of the private forums
would use 5:4 divider with your RAM, but the AI Overclock Tuner
uses the lower 3:2 divider. At least that is what I've read.)

To do decent overclocking, you should set all the numbers
manually yourself, testing with memtest86+ and Prime95 as
you go. While the AI Overclock Tuner can give you a quick
indication of whether your processor is overclockable, it
is not a substitute for a proper test strategy and a
series of manual tweaks.

You also need to find some proper benchmarking tools, ones
that separate disk testing from CPU core testing. If your
system is slow, make sure you figure out which part of it
is slow - disk I/O or CPU/memory related.

Paul
Click to expand...

Thanks, Paul. Your answers are always right-on-target, thorough and
very educating. I really appreciate the effort you take into helping me
and others.

In this particular case, I didn't need the tools you mentioned to
realize that my suspiciaon ("feeling") was right on the money: I just
noticed that the motherboard boot screen actually shows the speed of
the RAM at which it is currently running (in addition to the CPU speed
of course). Even 10% overclocking reduced the RAM speed to 266MHz
(instead of 400MHz). I am back to no overclocking. :-)

When I have more time, I may experiment with manual overclocking, but
for now I am all set.

Thanks,
Sam
 
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