Why can't I overclock my AMD 1.4 anymore?

It seems as though I might have tweaked something to make my processor mad. I got 2 60 IBM deskstar not too long ago and raided them together. Before that I had overclocking my processor (1.4 gig) to 1.6 with no problems, and now if I even try to overclock the FSB any my computer immediately freezes in Windows. I don't know if it has anything to do with the hard drives, just an odd coincedence I thought. Also, I tweak my machine alot so that might have something to do with it. I think I'm going to reformat my hard drives in FAT32 to see if there are any performance increases on big drives like I hear there are. Any thoughts on this?

I would recommend trying to increase the voltage to the CPU slowly. It could possibly be the hard drives because the Deskstar series of hard drives aren't very reliable...at least the old ones. Mine was made in April 2001, and I remember overclocking it a little bit far. Now it's not really an overclocking fault, but I tend to get errors or what not. Perhaps the hard drives also need adequate cooling. Hope this helps.

Oliver

Re: Got enough wattage?

SNGX1275 is correct. One thing I found out is even though I have a 431w PSU my Network Card will not work when I approach a 140mhz bus speed. Some PCI cards dont work well above 133mhz. Your raid controller may be one of these.

Also, even if something is integrated into the mobo, i.e. sound, it is still running on the PCI bus which can create issues when you start overclocking.

1.4Ghz ought to be fast enough

1.4Ghz ought to be fast enough. I'd set it back to normal & be happy. 7200 rpm HD's generate heat, so I'd consider a fan.

I have a 350 watt Enermax Whisper power supply. I've overclocked before so I don't think heat is the problem. I'm starting to think the raid controller is the issue. I'll do some testing next week and try to find out and let you guys know. Thanks for the advice, it will be taken into consideration.

Board experts, i can make a new post about this if u'd like, the question is this:
My sig is how i use my pc when benching, i can't seem to go any further than 156mhz fsb... would u say that is the limit of the cpu r that i might need more voltage?

CPU temperature depends on the room temp too. what is it's temp now? my CPU temp rose around 5C now that it's summer.

mine has too... darn hot summer!!

(* edited by mod)

Hmm where do you live ? If your CPU is starting to get hot now, what will it be in two months from now ?

Can be a number of things. My bet is that it's because of the raid setup, especially if you overclock by FSB. Raid cards tend to be particularly unstable if they run out of spec (i.e. at higher PCI speed). I do not find this surprising at all, as a matter of fact.

Of course, it could also be the added heat (2 7200rpm drives may generate a considerable amount of heat).

My suggestion is to try to revert to the old setup (put one drive on the onboard IDE) and see if it works. Then you can easily pinpoint the cause.

It is winter here in Georgia, so my CPU temp stay around anywhere from 87 degrees at no load to 115 at full load. Plus, I have one side of my case off, and a box fan blowing directly on the entire setup including hard drives. This tends to reduce temps by another 5 degrees. Room temp is fine around 70 degrees maybe. I'm being more and more convinced that it's my raid controller that's the main problem.

FAT32 is not a very good file system for partitions over 32 GB.

Really!?! I've heard that its supposedly better performance wise for larger file systems, whereas NTFS is better for security purposes. If you could elaborate on this I would be very grateful.

Argentina, it's summer now, fall is next

The cluster sizes become so huge that you will waste a LOT of hard disk space.

Incase you don't know, every time you create a new file, you start it on a new cluster, even if the last file written did not fully use up all of the space in the last cluster.

Therefore, the bigger your clusters, the more disk space you are wasting unless the size of each and every one of your files is totally divisible by your partition's cluster size. This is practically impossible.

Look here for FAT32 cluster sizes with respect to the partition size:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q192322

Partitions larger than 32 GB are most suitable for file systems such as NTFS and ext2 (linux) which have smaller cluster sizes with these sizes of partitions.

FAT was originally designed for floppies and FAT32, its revision, is still inherently unsuitable for really big partitions because of the larger cluster size problem.

On my home computer I have a 30 GB FAT 32 partition, which has the 16 KB cluster size, and in some directories with a lot of smaller files, it is ALREADY loosing a lot of space.

However, its been theorised that the greater the number of clusters on a partition, so your hard drive's performance can degrade. This is a bit of an iffy one, and it a matter for debate (i.e. its been proposed that small clusters mean less slack but worse performance, large clusters mean more slack but better performance....)

Thanks for the info Phantasm66! I knew about the cluster deal, but thanks for telling, for I still learned alot from your post. Right now I have 4K clusters in Windows, which is standard I believe. On my raid configuration I have 64K stripe blocks. For some reason I don't think these two numbers are right. I'm going to reformat next week and start from stratch. What cluster and block sizes would you recommend? I've read that the stripes should be either the same size or double what the cluster size is, but there are lots of opinion on this subject it seems. I think I might just try NTFS and FAT32 just to see for myself what the differences are. I have 120 gigs worth of space, so I have lots of movies, MP3's, TV shows, etc. In other words pretty large files. But I don't want to lose an excessive amount of space in my Windows partition so I guess I'll find out for myself next week. Thanks again for your in depth post.

Usually I start from the defaults and take it from there, remembering that a FAT32 partition of over 32 GB is kind of insane.

Lots of useful information on NTFS here:

http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=4875

That's more than enough rope to hang yourself with. You know, you'd get people out there who would format that whole 120 GB drive (if that is what you have) with FAT32 and leave it at that....

What I think you need to do, is make some serious thought about what you use the machine for. Smaller partitions means smaller clusters, but as I said there is some debate that smaller clusters causes some performance degradation..... Not that I have ever noticed, at any rate....

Some ideas for some seperate partitions:

-One of each operating system
-One for data alone, downloads, etc. Big.... Doesn't have to be FAT at all unless you want to access it with Linux with no problems, etc....
-A games partition (you fancy reinstall all of those the next time you decide to format your c: drive to nuke that messed up Windows XP?????)
-A media partition, for music videos and mp3s which you might already have a burn to CD of, but want on your HDD for convenience....

Post your requirements back and we will discuss them.

My setup is 2 60 gig IBM Deststars so yes I do have 120 gigs of space Right now I have a partition for Windows (5 gigs), one for my programs (20 gigs too big though), and one for all my downloads and media ( about 90 gigs). All of them are in NTFS. I don't really play games all too often for I'm in college, so I try not to distract myself too much

I have raided the two drives, but am not getting exeptionally great performance (one of the reasons I'm reformatting).