question about my motherboard and overclocking the CPU

[michaelb15 0]

my system specs are : ive got a dualcore Pentium D 820 2.8ghz (@2.92 Ghz)AsRock 4coreDual VSTA motherboardNvidia geforce 8600 GT PCI-express550 watt PSUmain hdd is a 320gb SATA drivewith 2 80gb secondary IDE harddrivesand a crappy DVD drive there is more then enough ventilation, for everything in the tower, the CPU has not been more then 56 degrees C. I think I could overclock my CPU wayyy more then what it is at, Ive heard of ppl having the CPU that I have at 3.3ghz and higher, with no problems with just the stock heatsink. Sombody said that I should increase my Vcore voltage a bit to make the CPU more stable at higher clocks, but I went into my BIOS and there is no way that I can find to adjust the Vcore. There is a screen in the bios that shows what the voltage is, but no way to adjust.. am I missing somthing? or is my motherboard just that crappy? The only voltages that I can adjust is the AGP voltage, and the DRAM voltage.. and I think thats about it? Is it at all possible to reflash a modified BIOS that has settings for voltage? or what can I do? Thanks

[michaelb15 0]

ohh yea also there is a function in the BIOS when I overclock the CPU there is the option of having the CPU/pci-e synced or I can adjust PCI-E independently of the cpu. Right now I have the PCI at the defualt, stock setting, with only the CPU overclocked... Would I gain any peformance by increasing the PCI clock setting? I have increased it before, but I have not thourghaly examined it.. Im not 100% sure but it may have made my system not as stable as it should be.. but thats only speculation.. as I said i have not tested it extensively. Also I was wondering on how to tweak out the RAM settings.. there is 2-3 pages of settings in the BIOS dedicated for just the ram settings like latincy, caches and mush more stuff I know very little about... btw its DDR2 I think

[alainneedle1 97]

he's using a different mobo but that will give you an idea where to start.

[michaelb15 0]

he's using a different mobo but that will give you an idea where to start.

ok thankyou for that vid, it gave me some good info about my CPU, and RAM, but im still wondering about my motherboard, and the BIOS thats loaded on it, because it seems my mobo and BIOS doesn't have as many of the functions as the one in the vid. I am willing to spend up to 6-8 hours to reprogram the BIOS if that is even possible, so I can get the extra control of the voltage, and other functions. So does anyone know what I should do with my BIOS, or if anyone knows of a place where I can download a new BIOS to flash to give the extra controls, I would be reallly happy and thankful Well cheers for nowand thankyou for the helpMike

[ZachLW 36]

So you're using stock cooling? The Pentium D's were hot chips, and overclocking mine only marginally helped with FS9. Using a good after market cooler, and a faster Pentium D 960, my temps were always very high. Was your PC prebuilt? Custom built by a shop? Did you build it? EDIT: Disregard all of the above. Apparently your board does not support VCore changes.

[michaelb15 0]

here is a video that shows my MoBo and all the BOIS settings (it shows BIOS at end of the vid)

[ZachLW 36]

Refer to post #5

[michaelb15 0]

I built the computer myself, having slowly ungrading everything execpt the case since Ive gotten it back in 2003. It used to have a different mobo with only 1 gig ram and just a P4, and a 450 watt PSU.. over the years i slowly built it up to what I have now which is dualcore Pentium D 820 2.8ghz (@2.92 Ghz)AsRock 4coreDual VSTA motherboardNvidia geforce 8600 GT PCI-express550 watt PSUmain hdd is a 320gb SATA drivewith 2 80gb secondary IDE harddrivesand a crappy DVD drive I used to be quite knolegable about oc'ing and tweaking back with my P4, but over the years ive gotten rusty because once I upgraded everything I didnt need to OC anything for it to run FS9 great... But then I got rid of FS9 and replaced it with FSX, and now im back to the peformance of how my old comp ran FS9.. so now im trying to catch up on everything to get the max peformance out of what I have.. Im not too concerned about frying my computer as I do have a couple, although not quite as good, it will still do the trick with fs9, until I replace whatever I fried. Ive found out that I may be able to change the vcore voltage by phisically replacing a resistor or two on my mobo, but im still reasearching that to make sure I know what im doing. Ill keep ya's posted on what I do once I figure out what to do. but one thing I have found is I really should get an aftermarket CPU cooler, because apperantly 55 degrees C is the max I should have it at. it seems pretty cool for a max temp but I can deal with that.. cheers for nowand again; thankyou for the helpMike

[ZachLW 36]

Sounds like incredibly more trouble than it is worth. Good luck

[HumptyDumpty 420]

Sounds like incredibly more trouble than it is worth. Good luck

Zach as you stated that board does not have a voltage control , can't he use the FSB and multiplier ? probably the multiplier may also be locked but what about the FSB ?

[NGX 1]

Can only still go so far before he needs to add some volts

[ZachLW 36]

Zach as you stated that board does not have a voltage control , can't he use the FSB and multiplier ? probably the multiplier may also be locked but what about the FSB ?

I think I could overclock my CPU wayyy more then what it is at

The OP already has a mild overclock, but can't go higher because of instability.