Anyone had troubles with overclocking?
#1
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I think I might not have enough information to put it into the bug reporting section, so I'm in General Discussion.

I have a C2Q9400, 4GB RAM, GeForce 9600GT, Windows 7 Final, and PCSX2 as of r1888 is running relatively nice (I don't have many games to test it for now), and so here it goes:

I was playing for example MGS3 (I have both the Snake Eater and Subsistence packages) and the speed in both are quite similar. In normal areas the game did get a good speed, but in the cutscenes there's a HUGE bottleneck - easily visible in the first scenes, in the airplane.

EE Sync just have to be at 1X as far as I tested it - 1.5X and 2X make the game somewhat slower. The other hacks just make a little difference in normal gameplay, the cutscenes are really painful to emulate. So I tried a little overclocking. (Beforehand, yes, I have enough cooling to do that safely...)

I put 3.4GHz on it (the stock speed of the 9400 is 2.66GHz), ran the usual benchmarks, and it got pretty stable. But the PCSX2 didn't like it. Seconds after I put any game, with or without speedhacks, the emulator freezes and there's a whole load of red messages at the debugging prompt.

Now I'm at 3.04GHz, the emulator works ok and the framerates got a overwhelming improvement for the percentage, like MGS3 is almost 100% smoothly even in those hard-to-make cutscenes (except when the Stealth item is on, the framerate goes really down, like 7-10fps), but it gives me a massive load of yellow warnings. After a few hours of playthrough, the emulation gets a little sloppy but just pressing ESC and going back to the game solves the problem.


So, do you guys think is there any way I could increase performance further?

(BTW, I'll search for unposted bugs in the games I have to report them, PCSX2 is a great project)
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#2
It's possible the processor lost some stability with that overclocking. Somethings to consider:
1) Did you give the CPU, RAM and North Bridge enough voltage?
2) After market cooler?
3) Beware of vdroop.
4) Decent airflow?
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#3
Even if the PC passes the usual burn in tests, it doesn't mean it is 100% stable. PCSX2 just proved it to you Wink You can get rid of the warnings by disabling console so it doesn't steal away speed for printing all that flood.
Oh and low speed is not considered a bug so you did well for not posting this in the bug reports section Tongue
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#4
(10-13-2009, 06:59 AM)cotti Wrote: I put 3.4GHz on it (the stock speed of the 9400 is 2.66GHz), ran the usual benchmarks, and it got pretty stable.

Ellaborate on 'usual benchmarks' and 'pretty stable'. With overclocking, it's best to run rigorous testing after you find a suitable speed before sticking with the overclock to avoid problems later.

Have you tried using an Intel Linpack-derived program? Something like LinX or IntelBurnTest (you can google them). It's proven to stress the system (mostly CPU and RAM) more than the previously well-regarded stress-testing applications such as Prime95, provided you use more than 2GB RAM.

Using LinX or IntelBurnTest, stress it for an hour or more and if it passes, you should be stable. Watch temperatures using CoreTemp or RealTemp (again, google), making sure not to exceed around 70 degrees depending on the specific CPU. Then you can run memtest to test RAM stability, typically leaving it to run for a few hours or overnight. Between these 2 tests, you should have a fairly rock solid overclock.
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#5
for stability OCCT for the win, it can test stability of everything and have HWmonitor also. no more 5 applications for testing.
Intel Dual Core E5200 @ 3,5ghz /gigabyte GF9500GT/2 GB RAM / ASRock P45XE/ Corsair CMPSU-400CXEU
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#6
In the past, OCCT has not been a reliable stress-testing program. It often passed where other tests failed. It does have handy tools such as various graphs for temperature and core voltage etc. though.

Linpack derivatives are still the most stressful. I'm not sure if the latest OCCT has an option to use Linpack; I've heard it does, but I haven't tried it myself since LinX works fine for me.
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#7
yep it does have linpack and its reliable, it fails quite often where orthos see no errors.
Intel Dual Core E5200 @ 3,5ghz /gigabyte GF9500GT/2 GB RAM / ASRock P45XE/ Corsair CMPSU-400CXEU
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#8
mgs3 have really bad framerates compared to mgs2 which has 60 framrrates all in all. you cant rely on that game.
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#9
dr_thrax, as I said in my first post, I have more than just a stock cooler. Got a Buffalo that even at 3.4 kept my processor cool, two extra fans for the whole cabinet. It features a good air overflow back and side as well. That answers 2 and 4. As for 1 and 3, for now I only increased the FSB, no voltage yet. I'm looking for a good option taking in consideration my mobo, a Gigabyte G31M-S2L, since this is the first PC I have that actually "can" be overclocked if it suits me.

Bositman, I'm not even "complaining" about the speed - for example from r1736 to r1888 I noticed there was a DRAMATIC increase in performance in DBZ Budoukai Tenkaichi 2 and 3. It was among the things I was going to report, also (the game almost freezed in r1736 and I suppose in earlier versions because of extreme computing when you're next to a rock formation so that the camera angle makes it look transparent to let you see beyond that platform, now the frame drop it much less noticeable), and since I wanted to check out in a more general way how the people here handle OCing to compare with my results, I just couldn't do it in the Bug Session.

boogerthe2nd, yeah, I used Prime95, increased to 3.4 and ran it for a day, practically no errors. Other heavy applications I use here ran fine too. Then I tried PCSX2, got the error, thought about a FSB change, downgraded to 3.04 and repeated the test, good result again, then PCSX2 ran fine. Gonna test the other two you mentioned. Temperature went really well here, didn't go even in the 60's when I stressed it, but maybe the results change indeed. I'll take a look.

Elwin, I will try OCCT too.

jordzkie, exactly why I'm testing the emulation of MGS3, since it's so heavy on processing. As for MGS2 I can play the PC version anyway.


Looking forward to hear more of you all.
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#10
putting quad on that mobo is bad idea and overclocking even worse,
Intel Dual Core E5200 @ 3,5ghz /gigabyte GF9500GT/2 GB RAM / ASRock P45XE/ Corsair CMPSU-400CXEU
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