Overclocking Giga Dual 1.33/133

[vaz]

What a journey i've had with this MDD.
I've spent days and days trying to find a stable over-clock speed on these cpu's.
Steve here from Aquamac helped me a great deal and i've learnt so much about the balance needed for this to work.

My MDD mac is super stable and doesn't get restarted in weeks and months sometimes. The system and software is all tuned and optimized to free up as much cpu as i can.

The bus is still 133Mhz, i figure if i can find a stable speed past 1.33Ghz then i'll try the bus mod to 167Mhz..or is this where my problem lies? Bus getting too flooded and supersaturated with anything higher than it is now?

I have 2gb of ram all pc2700 or higher. I have an exhaust fan beside the ram and cpu. All bays are full with 5 hard drives and 1 dvd burner. All pci slots are full too except the one above the ati 9800 to help dissipate heat out of the case with the pci plate open.

My current and stable voltage is 9x at dual 1.33Ghz.
I've tried every voltage from 9.5x to 12x for dual 1.4 and 1.47 configurations. Some were more stable than others, holding out encoding and gaming and 15+ apps open doing filesharing etc.
But each one of these jumper settings cause a panic sooner or later. The longest it stayed on was overnight but it froze when i touched it in the morning, yet still semi responsive.

I've eliminated a ram issue, experimenting with 1 stick at a time out of the 6 i have here. BUT it has crashed on me running Xbench memory tests and Rember more than 1 occasion. But i've ignored those crashes because like i said i can push this to the max for weeks straight without it coming down on me.
So that's when i installed that exhaust fan beside the ram and cpu.

Heat is most likely the culprit here not keeping anything stable past dual 1.33Ghz.
I still need to get ram sleeves in the near future.

This is the panic.log i get when it crashes:

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x000000000987C4FF PC=0x0000000048008490
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x2D39BA00)
PC=0x48008490; MSR=0x02003000; DAR=0x0987C4FF; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x000AC33C; R1=0x00040000; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x41A2001C
backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0x74090400

Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2D39BA00)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...

AND

panic(cpu 1 caller 0x000A4CC8): simple lock (0x0038E024) deadlock detection, pc=0x0003D894

Latest stack backtrace for cpu 1:
Backtrace:
0x000952D8 0x000957F0 0x00026898 0x000A4CC8 0x0003D894 0x000B4254 0x000AD9D4 0x000ABF48
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2D17D500)
PC=0x00208378; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0xE07FD000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00208454; R1=0xBFFFE6F0; XCP=0x00000024 (0x900 - Decrementer)

Also some other weird ones like

panic(cpu 0 caller 0x0021C8F4): btree_journal_modify_block_end: about to write corrupt node!

I think it actually caused some errors on 4 out of my 5 drive which were easily fixed with Disk Utility and all is good again back in dual 1.33 mode.
Things were acting strange when overclocked..like background and foreground apps quitting unexpectidly, a simple job locking up like reading on safari, mail crashing, dock crashing. It seemed to crash when the cpu's were idle and not working hard at all. I can tell because it freezes with my cpu monitor open always. My HD's never get hotter than 46deg Celsius next to the cpu. I'm also using the fan kext hack at 11deg sooner.

I'm really frustrated and about to give up here unless someone can suggest something else i haven't tried.

Please e-mail
Thanks
VaZ

[vaz]

UPDATE:

On my giga dual 1.33 with 133mhz bus with 5 hard drives and 2 additional fans, it runs stock stable at 9x voltage which is 1.6v.
10x is 1.7v and so on for those of you wondering.
I tried the dual 1.4 setting with voltage ranging from 9x to 12x. 11x or 1.8v seemed the most stable but would still freeze up on me every several hours.
I'm typing on dual 1.47 mode now with 10x voltage, or 1.7v. Seems more stable on this setting instead of dual 1.4. Strange

I wonder if when i bump the bus speed up to 167mhz in the near future if it'll be easier for the cpu to handle things and crash less often say on the dual 1.44 setting or dual 1.5 setting??
Either dual 1.4 or 1.47 aren't stable enough yet.

Gigadesign has been Horrible at replying to my e-mails, meanwhile i'm still under warranty..
They're so helpful to sell you their product but when you have questions/issues they turn the other way.

Can Anyone find some half voltage multipliers above 10x for this cpu upgrade??

[vaz]

So Nobody has any 10.5x, 11.5x, and 12.5x voltage jumper settings?? I want to try 1.75v, 1.85v, and 1.95v but not sure what they are.

[vaz]

UPDATE!

OMG I'm so amazed at how easy it was to overclock the bus speed from 133mhz to 167mhz for the 1st time!!!
It took me about 30min total to unplug everything from the motherboard, finding and removing the R676 resistor, pluging everything back in and Viola!

Make sure you use PC2700 dimms
I have no extra fans in the tower for now but all 4 dimms have ram sleeves and every major chip on the motherboard has a heat sink stuck on it. My warmest hard drive is in the low 50 degree range in the hot summers night with 5 hard drives in the tower and a superdrive.

I had to change the jumper settings on the gigadesign daughter card to stay at dual 1.33ghz, and in about a week i'll see if dual 1.42ghz and dual 1.5ghz are more stable with this higher bus speed. I plan to get 3 more fans for that journey.

Xbench shows everything is faster now, except hard drive remaining the same.
With dual 1.33/167, i get the same score as dual 1.4/133
Pretty cool!

[aquamac]

Congrats,

I told you it was a snap! Welcome to the hackers club.

[vaz]

Hey Thanks!!
I always knew i had the knack for modding since my 1st mac, LC 475, which i overclocked myself. This is my 4th mac now thats running faster than what it was sold as.

What really surprised me about this mod is how tiny the R676 resistor was..it looks so plump and large on the photos i used from the other thread to help me locate it. I wish i had a magnifying glass, and rest your arm on something with the hot gun or else you'll notice you're shaking just too much.
Aquamac helped me gain the confidence i needed to go ahead and do it finally, after years of reading and doing it in my mind.

MDD's RULE!!

[vaz]

Okay so i tried dual 1.42Ghz and dual 1.5Ghz and it seems worse at the 167mhz bus as far as stability goes..
Apparently my GigaDesign cpu's are 1.25Ghz so they're already overclocked to dual 1.33Ghz. So that's done!
Next speed boost will be raided raptors..hoping to hit 80's on Xbench. Currently at 65 with no raptors.

[vaz]

My total speed as of right now is 74 on Xbench!! Still on Tiger, i'll do tests again when i install Leopard.
If you do a search, i'm the fastest MDD at dual 1.33/167

What's your score on the dual 1.5/167 Aquamac?

[aquamac]

If I remember rightly, the most I got was 92 on x bench with a Gainward 7800. That was on the way to meeting a G5 2 GIG! It had raided raptors working on a Sonnet card.