video cards, monitors w/ overclocked FSB

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PIII 800EB
Abit BE6II (440bx chipset) mobo
Seagate 7200 30 gb drive
Logic Platinum
Delta 1010 sound card

I HAD a Voodoo3 3000 AGP video card. I'm running the front side bus speed at 133mhz so the card was running a bit faster than it's supposed to. Built the entire system last year and it's worked flawlessly 'till now. I have it in a closet with the door open and it got down to around 80 F last night, I left the computer on and came down this morning to a FREAKED out screen. Don't know exactly what caused it to go- overclocked so had to go sooner or later, got hotter than usual last night, or some combination of both.

Had to get up and running ASAP so I just bought a fairly inexpensive card: Cardexpert TNT2 M64 w/ 64 mb memory, NVIDIA TNT@ Model 64 chip. I have 14 days to return it if for any reason I don't like it. It seems to be working fine for now but haven't tried recording yet. (1) Does this mean it should continue to work for some time? In other words, if it couldn't handle overclocking, would it be immediately obvious? (2) Is there a recommended board? I bought the Voodoo3 3000 last summer on advice from this board but I found out today they were bought out by ATI.

Also, I am looking into dual monitors. The ATI Radeon VE Dual Display card plugs into a single AGP slot and has 2 monitor outs. The guy at the store says it should work with any system with a AGP slot. (3) Assuming it works with my system, would it cause significant loss of track count/plug-ins? (4) Would it be at increased risk of overheating with a high FSB? I was told something about the card allowing you to "crack"? the setup and tell it to accept the higher speed but didn't quite comprehend.

(5) Also, do larger monitors require more resources resulting in less tracks/plugins? (6) How about higher resolutions? I'm thinking about a 19" now that they're reasonably priced. The higher resolutions would be nice to allow more windows visible at the same time.

Of course, any additional related comments/advice are welcome.
 
I run dual monitors, and I use a 8mb AGP and an ancient 4MB PCI card. If oyu do thigns besides recording (games, other things, which i'd think you do having a voodoo3) you have to get your better card as a PCI. Win98/95 and I think 2000 all use the PCI card as yoru primary. Sucks, but oh well, I like my 21" and 17" both runnign at once. Plus it freaks people out when they see the mouse jump over between monitors.

I don't know anything about overclocking, sorry.

Also don't know anything about the video card with 2 outs, but I do know that having 2 video cards works good. Windows immediately recognizes them and you just click the little "Extend My Windows Desktop Onto This Monitor" and baboom, big ass screen.

Bigger monitors don't take more rsources, just more power. Don't know about the resolution question, but I don't think so.

Jake
 

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Most recomended AGP video card for audio and for duel as well is a Matrox G-400 series.
I use a Matrox G-450 32mb duel head card. It was about $ 147.00 so its not that expensive either.
 
On the motherboards I've used, you can choose either card as your primary. I always make the agp card the primary.

If you dont know how to do it, look in the bios setup. There should be an option on which video card to initialize first, agp or pci.

Personally, I prefer a dual-head agp card over 2 separate cards; but both ways work fine. There are at least a couple of different ones out there that aren't too expensive.

Seems kind of funny to me that you're overclocking a Piii800. That's a pretty decent system already. :-)
I personally value my music to much to take that chance, although I've done it on my game machines before.

Also, if you're really gonna try to overclock your video card, be VERY careful! You can mess up your monitor that way.

I assume higher resolutions do use more resources, although it's not that noticeable on my systems. What definitely does make a difference is when you use a higher color bit depth like 24 or 32 bit.

Romeo
 
MrBoogie said:


I assume higher resolutions do use more resources, although it's not that noticeable on my systems. What definitely does make a difference is when you use a higher color bit depth like 24 or 32 bit.

Romeo
Click to expand...

Go read here. http://www.rme-audio.com/english/index.htm . Click on Reference PC Update. On the next screen, click on Tuning Tips for Low Latency operation.

The recommendations there would seem to support MrBoogie's assessment.

Ed
 
I should clarify that I'm not technically overclocking the CPU, just the FSB. The 800EB runs normally at 133mhz. I just figured 133mhz FSB would be significantly faster than 100. Of course, I could have just used a board designed for 133 in the first place, but I wanted the 440bx chipset, which I think only is meant to be 100. Everything I saw says there are plenty of boards stable in this situation and the Abit BE6II came highly recommended. Like I said, mine's worked great... till now!

Thanks for the responses. Any opinions about the other questions? I'm esp. concerned with questions (1) and (6).
 
As far as question #1, it can go either way. I've tried overclocking a couple of different Epox boards, and they wouldnt even boot up. And I tried every setting I thought would work, slightly higher core voltage, etc...

BUT, I also had a Pentium 166 a while ago that I overclocked to 250. It lasted for several months without ANY problems. Then one day it started having problems - lockups, spontaneous re-boots, etc... I put it back to 166 and worked fine again.

You've got to figure that even though a system can run overclocked, it must be harder on it and I would EXPECT it to not last as long. I realize that many components are over-designed - especially intel - but that's no guarantee it'll last at any setting other than what's specified.

As for #6, like I said, I can't tell a difference on my computers. I run them at the highest resolution my monitors allow. This is an EASY thing to test since you can probably change the resolution on the fly...at least I can. No need to re-boot. Try setting resolution to max. Record a bunch of tracks and throw in some dx-fx until you start maxing out your computer. Then switch to a lower resolution and see if there's a difference. "IF" there is, you should have a bit more (processing)power available. I stress if 'cause I wouldn't expect a noticeable difference.

I hardly ever see it mentioned here, but if you're really so starved for power that you're overclocking, you should definitely check out Win98Lite if you're using Win98. Even the trial version makes a big difference.

Romeo
 
A couple notes here:

Higher resolutions shouldn't make too much of a difference in your recording. Your video card will be working harder, not really your CPU or system memory. I just got a 21" monitor that I'm running at 1600x1200 and it made no difference in my recording.

MrBoogie, do you have some technical explanation for how your monitor could possibly be damaged by overclocking your video card? AFAIK the output of the video card will be no different as far as monitor is concerned, it will just be internally running faster than intended by the manufacturer. The scan rate and everything else coming out to the monitor will be the same.

ap - it's not necessarily true that if you can overclock something (video card, CPU) now it will continue to work well that way. Overclocking a component makes it run hotter causing a greater chance of overheating and failing, as well as decreasing the life of the component. it's a risk I stopped taking once I got up to a PIII 800.
 
Yeah, I kinda wish I had just gone with a regular PIII800, not the EB. I thought having the RAM and all run at 133mhz would be significant, but it seems noone else is doing it so maybe it's not much/any better? I can't clock-down now cuz then my CPU wouldn't run at 800(since it only runs 800 at 133mhz). This shouldn't put any extra stress on the CPU, should it? - since it's supposed to run at 133 in the first place. Only the video card and MOBO components right? What about PCI cards? Are they affected by the FSB speed?
 
Certainly running at 133 should give you greater performance than 100, but you might not even notice in practical use because an 800 on a 100MHz bus is pretty damned fast already. And if the CPU is meant to be run at 133 then you're right, there should be no trouble with it. The only component that I would expect any trouble from is the video card and maybe memory if it's not designed for that speed (like cheap, generic PC100).

Newer motherboards that officially support a 133MHz bus usually offer an option for 1:2 ratio AGP frequency, keeping the AGP video card as close as possible to 66MHz. I've never had trouble overlocking a Celeron with a 75MHz FSB and using a 1:1 AGP ratio, but having that AGP frequency up in the 80's as you do (133 * 2/3 = 88MHz) may cause problems.

I just peeked at a review of the original BE6 and it looks like the PCI frequency shouldn't be a problem. It says "the BE6 supports 105 / 110 / 112 / 115 / 120 / 140 / 150, with 124 and above supporting a 1/4 PCI ratio to keep the PCI frequency as close to the specified 33MHz setting as possible...".

By the way, the core assets of 3dfx were sold to NVidia, not ATI (I just re-read your first post).
 
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