Overclocking help

[Calabr1a]

Ok guys, I have a question about overclocking:

For some reason the computer does not remember the clock speeds that i set it too, for example: if i set the cpu to 2150 mhz (215 HTT), then i restart it, and when i go into the bios it will still say 2000mhz, and when i go into cpu-z it might say 2150 mhz, but after a second reboot it will go back to 2000mhz in cpu-z.

Btw here is my comp:
-Asus A8n5x mobo
-Amd Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
-Kingston Valueram 2gb
-Antec Smartpower 450w

any help would be appreciated.

[Jofaba]

Re: Overclocking help

Might be a bad cmos battery? Also, sometimes a bad overclock will reset as a safety feature. You might have some bios options that will let you disable those safety features. That used to happen on my agp based A8V mobo.

[Calabr1a]

Re: Overclocking help

ok here is exactly what happens: I will change the htt bus to 215MHz in clockgen (windows), my memory is already set to 166 MHz, so i have cpu speed of 2150 Mhz, I then run a 15 min Prime95 toture test, it will turn out to be stable, if i check cpu-z it will still say that the cpu is at 2150MHz. Now i go to reboot, i check the bios, it says 2150MHz, i load to windows, check cpu-z: still 2150MHz. Then about 2 minutes later i will check cpu-z again and it will go back to the default 200MHz.

[LoD]

Re: Overclocking help

ok here is exactly what happens: I will change the htt bus to 215MHz in clockgen (windows), my memory is already set to 166 MHz, so i have cpu speed of 2150 Mhz, I then run a 15 min Prime95 toture test, it will turn out to be stable, if i check cpu-z it will still say that the cpu is at 2150MHz. Now i go to reboot, i check the bios, it says 2150MHz, i load to windows, check cpu-z: still 2150MHz. Then about 2 minutes later i will check cpu-z again and it will go back to the default 200MHz.

Clock gen is not perminant, you need to change your bios settings.

[Calabr1a]

Re: Overclocking help

ok, i changed the htt frequency to 220 MHz in the Bios. I booted up windows, opened up asus ai booster, the cpu was running at 2200 MHz, just like it should do. Opened up cpu-z, the cpu wass running at 2200MHz. So after about 2 minutes i checked up on cpu-z again, the cpu speed was back down to 2000MHz!

Heres a screen shot if it helps:

http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=overclock2206eo.jpg

I just built this pc so i dont think that a low battery on the mobo is the problem, i really just dont know what to do!

[Talus]

Re: Overclocking help

Did you also increase your CPU voltage?

Man..am I ever happy with my A643000+, it handles 2.2 GHz with ease.

All I did was lowered my RAM freqency from 200 to 166, then upped my HTT from 200 to 245, then upped my voltage from 1.4 to v1.45.



Also, why did you load up AI Booster and what does it do? Sorry, I don't use any of Asus' utils. So maybe that app is trying to set your CPU settings back or just plain interfering with how CPU-Z reads the data.

[Calabr1a]

Re: Overclocking help

No i didnt increase my Vcore, there shouldnt be a need to after a 200MHz increase. And if the Vcore wasnt enough, then it would just show an insatiliby in prime95 or anything similar.

Yeah i lowered my ram to 166MHz.

AI Booster is basically cpu-z except it allows you to change the clock frequencies, it came with my mobo so i just thought i might try to get some use out of it. anyway, i tried uninstalling it, i rebooted, set the frequencies in the bios, then booted into xp, still the same thing happening

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Overclocking help

Turn off cool n quiet in the bios maybe?

[Talus]

Re: Overclocking help

Aha...I forgot about that.

That has been the issue for MANY users.

[Calabr1a]

Re: Overclocking help

Ok, thanks for the help guys, even though i still havent fixed the problem, i really apreciate it.

I think that my problem may be the cool n' quite feature. Now, when it is disabled in the bios, the cpu frequency still changes, it will change about +- 5 MHz. But when i enabled cool n quite in the bios, then took a look at cpu-z, the cpu frequency was still changing +- 5 MHz!

[Talus]

Re: Overclocking help

That can be normal.

Have you tried stress testing and benchmarking to see if it holds up?

[Calabr1a]

Re: Overclocking help

Ok, i have decided that the problem is with the bios, the bios is not properly interacting with the cpu... i think. If i try to change anything in the bios that has to do with the cpu, it doesn't change in windows. Also, if i try to enable cool n quite (it was disabled by default) still nothing happens with the cpu speeds in windows.

Here is some more specific information, i asked for help in the asus support forums:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20060513184643310&board_id=1&model=A8N5X&SLanguage=en-us

EDIT: Yes i have tried many torture tests on prime 95, the cpu is stable at the default frequency, yet i have not been able to test it at different speeds.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Overclocking help

Update your bios then.

[LoD]

Re: Overclocking help

Odds are the battery is not dead on a brand new mobo, like Wreck said update the bios first.

[Calabr1a]

Re: Overclocking help

Ok, not to say your suggestion aren't helpful, but i updated the bios right when i got xp installed. I'm not to sure about what this battery is, but if its something that saves the bios settings then it is still working, because i can change things in the bios like memory frequencies, add hardware... and that will change the settings for windows too.

I welcome all suggestions, so if you think you any idea about what to do, then please don't hesitate to post it.