The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

You can Quad crossfire 3850 and 3870 cards. You can only crossfire two 3870X2 cards though.

 

Are you serious!! I just looked at the gigabyte site and is says crossfire ready. Thats a bit of false advertising heh..Well doesnt really hurt me but it would have been nice to be able to ugrade to it later on should i feel the need to..

 

beacuse you are Quad firing 4 GPUs thast why.

oh 3-4 GPU Xfire, is called crossfireX

 

I stand corrected. It says CrossfireX. So i guest that means 4 cards not 2. Dont understand it still as to why 4 and not 2 but oh well. Im sure by the time im ready to do something like that there will be better and cheaper cards out. For now though getting a good bang for the dollar

 

The real OC performance is gonna' be noted on users utilizing the mobo higher FSB and at lower multi. So even if we chose to keep the current 500x8 profile we will see great results but with less vcore and heat. But now let's say we have a X38 chipset capable of 600FSB, now we can aim our goals higher to maybe 525, 550 to gt higher DDR2 speeds at a nice 1:1 stability.

However, for those who wited this late in the DDR2 game may as well look to DDR3 as it is whee the market is going and prices are dropping nicely as better timings and speeds are coming.

The new Penryns will be better served with DDR3 in 1:2 for both CPU clock and FSB and RAM frequency. The same configuration of 500x8 with new Penryn with return 4GHz on CPU but now in 1:2 offer DDR2000. Or for the more relaxed, DDR1800 or 1600 in FSB 400x or 450x. The great thing is , 45nm will allow for more FSB out of these CPU's if we're willing to utilize it. I dont see 550FSB to out of reach for the duals and maybe 525FSB more obtainable for a quad if not, a least 500FSB much more with ease.

So many cool options to come with new Penryn if utilizing DDR3 on X38. I don't see X48 offering much to improve on X38 other then official FSB and RAM support (for thiose who will not OC if the box doesnt spell it out). I do notice that ECC support is locked out of X48 and early releases will not offer ICH10R yet.

"MY TWO CENTS"

 

Well many of us have 800mhz DDR2. I think higher multipliers help us a lot more because we can get to higher CPU speeds with using our RAM and keeping low latencies.

 

Well, in that case, up dividers certainly wont help, and not many P35 and no X38 mobos I used will offer any down dividers for such tweaking. But nonetheless, 1:1 will be just fine for all DDR800 to FSB400 (wich is pretty much stock now days) and better PC2-6400 RAM like some from OCZ and Corsair and Crucial will hit 900 with ease and some even climb to DDR1000 with a lil' tweaking. Just to note, the OCZ PC2-6400 4gb kit (2x2gb) hit DDR1000 easily on 2.2v and 5-5-5-15. So FSB 1000 is a snap for this RAM and some good DDR800 modulas out there. So if you got good mobo FSB and good CPU bus, then DDR1000 of cl5 will return as good scores as DDR800 of cl4.

But for those buying new recently, PC2-8500 is so afordable and very tweakable so no excuse to not get high FSB anymore, other then mobo or CPU. and for those leary of OC'n good RAM, or for mobos not capable, just use underclocked and take great advantage of thje tighter timings. The PC2-8500 Crucial Ballistics can tune down to DDR800 @ 3-3-3-8.

 

your spot on there nuck, not sure if the multis on ram will yeild much gains in performance thos as from what i have read even ddr3 1800 only gives a marginal increase in performance over ddr2 1066.

i was reading an article stating that the big ram makers intend to get ddr3 at 110% of the price of ddr2 by the end of the year so i would guess now isnt quite yet the time to rush out and buy it.

glad you have seen those reviews on the ocz stuff as that is waht im looking at getting this week, is 4gig enough or should i keep my doms and run 6?

2gb c4 pc6400 dominators, v 1.3 going on fleabay near you soon!!!

have ran 1050 c5 on 2.2v, goes higher but mobo gets flakey.

 

I should have quoted the entire post but this part interested me more and really pertains to my situation. lol. I have Crucial Ballistix Tracers (PC2-8500) RAM and they seem pretty good BUT I don't know exactly what I'm doing and as a couple of my friends on here know this is basically the first serious OC that I've done.

I can't get my computer past 3.78GHz.

Specs:
E6850
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P
RAM as stated above
CM-850 P/S
320GB SATA Seagates (X3)
8400GS GPU (waiting for new 3600 Series from ATi, maybe even a HD3850 if I can sell some more golf stuff....lol)
5 ODD's

Anyway there's the gist of the system.

This is the OC'in thread and I need help in more than one way but pushing this to about 4GHz on air is my goal. I really just want to run it at about 3.8GHz stable most of the time but you know us extremers. lol. Well one of my friends has me thinking that way anyway. hehehe.

Some advice on this situation would be great and if PM's are more appropriate then that's fine with me.

Thanks to those that have helped so far....

.....gm

edit:
Figured that I would rather have GHz en lue of MHz. rofl.... ;D

 

@ greensman,

The E6850 is good for over 4.1GHz but not much rom for bandwidth if doing it on highest multi. I found it best on the 8x for 500x8 on the P35C-DS3R and my X38 ASUS. I'm not sure how much higher the Gigabyte can go in terms of FSB but I got it stable to 515 easy on the 8x for 4.1GHz.

For the RAM, this mobo and many X38 and other P35's are picky with updividers so stick with 1:1 and up the FSB as much as you can to get the CPU at or near it's 4GHz mark. I found this a butter zone for that CPU. Maybe some other Gigabyte usrs will confirm if the RAM slots for wich we utilize matter for the RAM spd over 1000 like on ASUS (placing RAM in 2nd slots is required for >1066).

@ marsey99, Overclocking with more then 2GBs of RAM is not gonna' benifit the OC but mostly the apps that need more of it. But overall speed will take a hit this way, so I'd only go over 3GBs if you run apps that truely need it or your OC will be limited. This kind of RAM populating puts a tole (more stress) on the mobo MCH and chipset and takes from your OC performance profile.

It's OK to use the 2x1gb for MAX OC test to say you did it, then put the rest in and relax OC profile for daily use if you need the RAM. I will say that dispite the read/write score drop, I was impressed to see the 4x2gb OCZ OC to DDR1000 on the X38. They did need to be relaxed to 5-5-5-18 to work together. I was able to get XP x64 to use all 8gbs but RAM bench scores were less then if I let XP use 7.37gb with memory remap enabled. It also apeared that SLI and audio ran better like this (ASUS CROSSHAIR on nV590).

 

i think i know what the limits are now on this setup so once they turn up later this week i will just swap out the 2x1gb for the 2x2gb and leave it running 3.2ghz.

some interesting reading for the 38x2 lovers;

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33 GHz
(Conroe, 2x 2048 KB Cache)
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
Intel P35
Memory: 2x 1024MB A.DATA DDR2 1066+ CL4
Harddisk: WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB
Power Supply: OCZ GameXStream 700W
Software: Windows XP SP2
Drivers: NVIDIA: 169.04
ATI: Catalyst 7.11
3870 X2 tested with Catalyst 8.12 v8.451.2




















and to bring us back on topic



so...it kicks asre at high res, much like sli/xfire and is just above at the more common res than some single ard setups.

if it comes in around £300 they will have a winner on their hands.

edit

seems they will be $450/500 so what £350/400 in the uk?

 

Lol don't do that to me marsey. Just because I ordered two HD3870s doesn't mean I intended to keep both of them!
Besides, I can only do crossfire with my AMD board. Keep that up and I'll end up swapping my DS3R for a DS3P as well!
HD3870X2s are £330 in the UK - single HD3870s are only £140. You're paying £50 on top of buying two normal 3870s for something, not quite sure what...
Funny to think that pre-VAT I paid $235 for my 3870, what are they in the US, $250?

 

found out what the northbridge problem was on my mobo, i took it off, it didnt have a thermal pad, but thermal paste, much like artic silver but it was almost dry and had a crack in it, so as a temporary fix i have put some artic silver on, and have just ordered this as a replacement as I think nvidia chipsets do better with active cooling.

 

Almost certainly, based on how hot my 650i board got with the biggest chipset heatsink I've ever seen. The entire sink got to about 80-90C during gaming.

 

yeh mine reaches 60ºc after 4 hours of COD4, under normal use its about 32-36ºc. as the 3870's cooler would get in the way of alot of the bigger passive coolers I went for the enzotech, now i just have to find the right material to use to pad the outside around the chipset and sink to stop any rocking and dampen some of the vibration, although ill be running it at 7v so only about 2000rpm instead of the 5000rpm @12v.

 

sam what coolers are you going to use on your 3870's?

 

Well, the one I intend to keep has the stock cooler on it, after I've thoroughly tested the card, I'm going to stick a Thermalright HR-03GT on it. The Powercolor one has its own passive cooler on it, the SCS3. I'm probably going to sell that as is. I'd love to keep both cards, but realistically, I can't use both in my gaming PC unless I get a new motherboard, and Crossfire's often a bit of a joke with regard to reliability, from the comments I'm reading it's still a bit of a trial to get it working properly in games. Given the solid performance from the rest of my PC (and indeed the card that preceded the 3870s) I have no real reason to keep them, other than to go benchmark racing, if you know what I mean.
edit: Just spotted the Supreme commander benches. Since that's one of my favourite games, I definitely won't be keeping crossfire!

Do you think an A8R-MVP will work with 3870s off the bat, or will it need a BIOS flash etc? The board's not that old, but it is for a rather aging socket (939)...


I see you have the Sapphire HD3870, in fact i never really noticed how awesome your spec list is... What do you think of your card so far?

 

ck5134,

Where did you find those heatsinks? the finish on them is absolutely beautiful. I wonder how many people looked at them a minute before they realized that the one on the left shows a really good reflection of the one on the right!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

yeh I know what you mean about the benching thing lol, as i said in the post a few days ago, unless the code is reliant on the drivers/ OpenGl and not on implimentaion of dx9 / 10 its always a bit of a farce.

expect the stock cooler to run in the high 80's without a bios flash on the card, the fan ramping in the bios is far too relaxed as standard, plus if you want to go for a high core speed youll have to flash it to a newer bios as its very limited with the stock bios. mind you flashing them is easy as pie with winflash(ati's version)
I have a more agressive fan profile in my bios which keeps my card under 65ºc when gaming and it idles around 40ºc with very little noise, so i have the best of both worlds for gaming / music writting )