Need help overclocking Barton 2500+ on AsRock K7VM4 and video capture questions
 

I recently purchased the following setup:

-Athlon XP 2500+ Barton retail with stock heatsink/fan
-Kingmax 512 MB PC2700 DDR
-Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM, 8MB cache, ATA-133
-AsRock K7VM4 MB, VIA KM400 chipset with onboard PCI bus S3 Uni-chrome
video chip sharing 64MB system memory
-Winfast XP2000+ Deluxe TV turner card
-Generic 400 Watts PSU/Case

Using the onboard video. I've overclock the 2500+ to 380 FSB (from
1.83G to 2.09G) with default 11x multipler and WinXP runs perfectly
24x7 and watch TV without any problem excpet when I do anything video
intensive like following tasks:

-While recording TV program with my TV turner card, WinXP would freeze
or reboot maybe 5 to 10 minuties into recording. CPU usage stay around
85-90% during recording and I've plenty of hard disk space and free
physical memory left.
When I check the BIOS, I see that the CPU temp reached about 50C (idle
temp is about 45C). Even without overclocking, during recording the
CPU usage would be constantly at 95-100% and sometimes when I just
open explorer to browse for files, the video would freeze. I've
looking at the CPU temp everytime it freeze and it's always 50C.
BTW I'm recording at 640x480 capture resolution and 30 frame/sec using
Divx codec.

-When I play games like Need for speed 5, simcity 3000, or quake 2 it
always freezes on me and sometimes they won't start.

I've also tried to raise CPU clock to 194, it won't even boot. The
best I can do is 192 CPU clock. And when I use default 166 CPU clock
and try 11.5x multipler, that won't boot either. So I guess my Barton
2500+ is probably still lock, unlike many whose CPU come unlocked
already. But I don't worry about that, I'm happy being able to
overclock to 190 CPU clock as long as I can resolve the unstability
while recording and occassionly game play.

Also with the CPU core voltage raised 5% (BIOS feature), it didn't
help and shorten the CPU heat up time.

Here're my questions:

Is the onboard video not able to handle the overclocked FSB or the
amount of data during TV recording?

Is my CPU overheating at only 50C? The motherboard have CPU overtemp
auto shutdown. But I don't suppose 50C is too hot to auto shutdown.

If I can lower the CPU temp with larger heatsink/fan, would that help?

Would using a seperate AGP card (i.e. MSI GF4 MX440 AGP8X 64MB DDR)
help with CPU usage running high and freezing up during recording?

Is the MSI GF4 MX4400 card able to handle TV capture at high
resolution? What would be a good budget card for the task?

Any comment or suggestion appricated,
Thanks
Bill

Bill wrote:
I recently purchased the following setup:

-Athlon XP 2500+ Barton retail with stock heatsink/fan
-Kingmax 512 MB PC2700 DDR
-Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM, 8MB cache, ATA-133
-AsRock K7VM4 MB, VIA KM400 chipset with onboard PCI bus S3 Uni-chrome
video chip sharing 64MB system memory
-Winfast XP2000+ Deluxe TV turner card
-Generic 400 Watts PSU/Case

Using the onboard video. I've overclock the 2500+ to 380 FSB (from
1.83G to 2.09G) with default 11x multipler and WinXP runs perfectly
24x7 and watch TV without any problem excpet when I do anything video
intensive like following tasks:

-While recording TV program with my TV turner card, WinXP would freeze
or reboot maybe 5 to 10 minuties into recording. CPU usage stay around
85-90% during recording and I've plenty of hard disk space and free
physical memory left.
When I check the BIOS, I see that the CPU temp reached about 50C (idle
temp is about 45C). Even without overclocking, during recording the
CPU usage would be constantly at 95-100% and sometimes when I just

Your using PC2700 memory (166 MHz FSB). I'm sure it may overclock
open explorer to browse for files, the video would freeze. I've
looking at the CPU temp everytime it freeze and it's always 50C.
BTW I'm recording at 640x480 capture resolution and 30 frame/sec using
Divx codec.

-When I play games like Need for speed 5, simcity 3000, or quake 2 it
always freezes on me and sometimes they won't start.

I've also tried to raise CPU clock to 194, it won't even boot. The
best I can do is 192 CPU clock. And when I use default 166 CPU clock
and try 11.5x multipler, that won't boot either. So I guess my Barton
2500+ is probably still lock, unlike many whose CPU come unlocked
already. But I don't worry about that, I'm happy being able to
overclock to 190 CPU clock as long as I can resolve the unstability
while recording and occassionly game play.

Also with the CPU core voltage raised 5% (BIOS feature), it didn't
help and shorten the CPU heat up time.

Here're my questions:

Is the onboard video not able to handle the overclocked FSB or the
amount of data during TV recording?

Is my CPU overheating at only 50C? The motherboard have CPU overtemp
auto shutdown. But I don't suppose 50C is too hot to auto shutdown.

If I can lower the CPU temp with larger heatsink/fan, would that help?

Would using a seperate AGP card (i.e. MSI GF4 MX440 AGP8X 64MB DDR)
help with CPU usage running high and freezing up during recording?

Is the MSI GF4 MX4400 card able to handle TV capture at high
resolution? What would be a good budget card for the task?

Any comment or suggestion appricated,
Thanks
Bill
You're using PC2700 (166 MHz FSB) memory; it's not surprising that the
system has problems at 190 MHz FSB. I'm sure the memory will overclock
somewhat, but 190 MHz is really pushing it.
If you can, increase the voltage to memory (Vdimm) and decrease the FSB till
the system is stable. Use Memtest86 and Prime95 to test stabilty:
http://www.memtest86.com/

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

"Bill" wrote in message
om...
I recently purchased the following setup:

-Athlon XP 2500+ Barton retail with stock heatsink/fan
-Kingmax 512 MB PC2700 DDR
-Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM, 8MB cache, ATA-133
-AsRock K7VM4 MB, VIA KM400 chipset with onboard PCI bus S3 Uni-chrome
video chip sharing 64MB system memory
-Winfast XP2000+ Deluxe TV turner card
-Generic 400 Watts PSU/Case

Using the onboard video. I've overclock the 2500+ to 380 FSB (from
1.83G to 2.09G) with default 11x multipler and WinXP runs perfectly
24x7 and watch TV without any problem excpet when I do anything video
intensive like following tasks:

-While recording TV program with my TV turner card, WinXP would freeze
or reboot maybe 5 to 10 minuties into recording. CPU usage stay around
85-90% during recording and I've plenty of hard disk space and free
physical memory left.
When I check the BIOS, I see that the CPU temp reached about 50C (idle
temp is about 45C). Even without overclocking, during recording the
CPU usage would be constantly at 95-100% and sometimes when I just
open explorer to browse for files, the video would freeze. I've
looking at the CPU temp everytime it freeze and it's always 50C.
BTW I'm recording at 640x480 capture resolution and 30 frame/sec using
Divx codec.

-When I play games like Need for speed 5, simcity 3000, or quake 2 it
always freezes on me and sometimes they won't start.

I've also tried to raise CPU clock to 194, it won't even boot. The
best I can do is 192 CPU clock. And when I use default 166 CPU clock
and try 11.5x multipler, that won't boot either. So I guess my Barton
2500+ is probably still lock, unlike many whose CPU come unlocked
already. But I don't worry about that, I'm happy being able to
overclock to 190 CPU clock as long as I can resolve the unstability
while recording and occassionly game play.

Is the MSI GF4 MX4400 card able to handle TV capture at
Any comment or suggestion appricated,
Thanks
Bill

I hope you understand you are putting your Kingmax PC2700 at great risk by
running at 192mhz - you may have already done the damage and never get
stability even at default clock. I am not usually a scaremongerer unless I
really believe you could damage your memory but I have seen it and done it
myself by overclocking some TWINMOS PC2700 to 185fsb - which killed it. Your
Kingmax maybe more able to take this mis-use but I wouldn`t want to risk it
anymore unless you have a good return policy and don`t mind a 1 - 2 week
turnaround + stability problems before you realise you memory is knackered.

Bill wrote:


-AsRock K7VM4 MB, VIA KM400 chipset with onboard PCI bus S3 Uni-chrome
video chip sharing 64MB system memory

Remember that when you raise FSB you also raise PCI and AGP clock. When
you raise FSB to 190, PCI clock raises to 190/5=38MHz. Default it is
33MHz. It can be dangerous for some PCI devices such as Hard Drives,
Sound etc. And it can also cause lack of stability and even can kill
your hard drive. If this is the problem then the only way to solve it
is by lowering the FSB:/


--
Lukasz Ledóchowski
GG:503647

"£ukasz Ledóchowski" wrote in message
...
Bill wrote:


-AsRock K7VM4 MB, VIA KM400 chipset with onboard PCI bus S3 Uni-chrome
video chip sharing 64MB system memory

Remember that when you raise FSB you also raise PCI and AGP clock. When
you raise FSB to 190, PCI clock raises to 190/5=38MHz. Default it is
33MHz. It can be dangerous for some PCI devices such as Hard Drives,
Sound etc. And it can also cause lack of stability and even can kill
your hard drive. If this is the problem then the only way to solve it
is by lowering the FSB:/


Yeah and just to re-iterate overclocking fsb can damage (some) memory - I
will never overclock fsb again and I have overclocked fsb before in the past
but only small amounts eg Celeron 400 to 450 at 75mhz from 66mhz w/o
problem - my current setup is overclocked XP 1700 @ XP 2000 but fsb remains
in spec. I also suspect a highly out of spec overclock 124mhz with a PCI/AGP
divider of 2/3 killed a graphics card prematurely running at 81mhz AGP
instead of 66.

Thanks for the warnings, I guess I got too excited after reading
articles about how far they can overclock their Barton 2500+. Not
considering that it may actually damage my hardware. I hope I havn't
damaged anything cause I was running at 190/11x for almost 2 days
stright. After some playing around I figure out how to change the
multipler on my K7VM4 and was actually jumper setting for each
multipler.

I tried different multipler settings up to like 12.5x and keeping the
FSB conservative. I finally found 176/12x (with CPU core voltage
raised 5%) to be the most stable combination without raising FSB too
much. Now the Barton 2500+ 1.83GHz is running at 2800+ 2.11GHz while
keeping everything pretty close to normal settings (352FSB, 35.2 PCI,
70.4 AGP). If I raise the CPU clock near 2.2GHz, WinXP just won't
boot, I guess thats close to the limit of my Barton 2500+.

With this overclock setting, I've been able to play all my games just
fine and been recording hour long TV program without any problem. The
CPU usage is now running at about 75-85 % during TV recording, and CPU
temperature only goes up to about 52C or so. I guess I'll stick with
this setting for the time being and make sure everything run good for
a while.

I'm still wondering if I would benefit greatly using an AGP 8x card
(i.e. a basic GF4 MX440 w/ 64 MB DDR AGP 8x) verse the onboard video
as far as TV recording performance goes. Can anyone give me some input
on this one?

Thanks
Bill

I tried different multipler settings up to like 12.5x and keeping the
FSB conservative. I finally found 176/12x (with CPU core voltage
raised 5%) to be the most stable combination without raising FSB too
much. Now the Barton 2500+ 1.83GHz is running at 2800+ 2.11GHz while
keeping everything pretty close to normal settings (352FSB, 35.2 PCI,
70.4 AGP). If I raise the CPU clock near 2.2GHz, WinXP just won't
boot, I guess thats close to


Well actually the 176/12x still had some glitch every now and then. so
I decided to try 172/12.5x running as a 3000+ at 2.15G and still only
using the original 2500+ heatsink and fan. I went to sleep last night
leaving my TV recording on and got up today and it was still recording
without a glitch. It recorded 3GB worth of video for more than 8 hours
and CPU was only running at 52C. So I'm pretty happy with this
overclock setting right now.

Thanks you all
Bill

the limit of my Barton 2500+.