P4 2.8c/P4P800 and AI overclock tuner

[jzinckgra]

well, as you'll see I'm new to Ocing and had a couple questions regarding my BIOS settings on my p4p800 MB. My P42.8c chip has a locked ratio value of 14. When I look at the "jumper freee config" tab under "advanced", I see what is called the "AI Overclock tuner". When I click on that I get three options: manual, standard, and "overclock" with percentages of 5,10,20,30%. So if I do the math right, it says my cpu external freq. is 200, which I assume is the bus freq. When multiplied by 14 gives me the 2.8mhz cpu speed of my current cpu. Now, if I wanted to OC the cpu, would I just change the bus freq. to something else? It says valid #'s for the bus freq are 200-400. So if I plug in 210 the new cpu speed should be 210x14=2940. Is this correct? So what is the difference between OCing the chip this way versus picking the overclock option of 5%, 10, 20, 30%? Finally, if I do decide to OC, how at what increments should i increase the bus freq? And, when would I have to start worrying about increasing the voltage? Sorry, I've done a lot of reading so far, but couldn't quite get all the answers. Thanks.

[natgun]

personally i would do it all manual. set the memory divider to 3:2, raise the core voltage to 1.65. and put in 250 for your bus speed. run some stability testing on it like prime95 or loop 3dmark, and see if it fails or reboots. depending if it is stable or not, raise or lower the bus speed untill it is. then you can start backing off of the voltage, and try the 5:4 mem divider, took me a week to find the sweet spot for my overclock. things have been smooth as pie so far.

[jzinckgra]

Thanks. This is another newb question, but how do I change the mem dividers in the BIOS? I looked around and didn't see anything for that. Would it be called something else? Also, the highest I can set my cpu voltage is 1.60v.

[natgun]

well thats part of the problem right there dude, you need to flash to the latest bios... version 1007, with the 1006 and later bios you can adjust vcore up to 1.95v thats what you need to do first and foremost. just make sure you follow the instructions on asus website and you will do fine. once youve done that, set the mem speed to 266, there should be 3 options 266, 333, 400. those are your dividers 3:2, 5:4, 1:1 respectively. set it to 266, raise the vcore to 1.65 or so, just dont go over 1.7. i would manually relax your memory timings to 2.5-3-3-7 also. then start raising the fsb a few mhz at a time. when you reach your max, you can then start backing off things like the voltage and tightening up the divider and latencies.