The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

BigDK, I have the same mobo as you and just purchased the q 6600 If you can give me some memory and cpu settings I would appricate it... Thanks!

 

Had the board running at 480x8 without any problems yesterday, still trying to find the best mix of cpu speed and memory bandwidth.
The memory dividers make cranking the memory up quite easy 'once you notice the a-b-c-d options' that part stopped me for ages when OC'ing this board, but I had also been locked in a marathon run of games I was playing so just left the tweaking for several weeks.
HL2 episode 2 'after replaying HL2 and EP1'
Then did a re-run of FEAR and Extraction Pt before playing perseus.
Lastly Bioshock trying out the DX10.
That lot kept me busy for a while.

Got this CPU to boot into Windows at 444x9 and ran SP32M once, then crashed, so not too far off getting it there.

Once I've finished with Q6600 on this setup it will go onto the Commando under the phase cooler 'when the weather's a bit warmer' I can see what it can do then.
My E6600 has been up to 4.2G stable on there, I love that CPU it's always been a great OC'er.

Just let me know what memory/bios you're using! I presume you bough a G0 chip?

 

baltekmi,
How have you been, my friend? Long time no hear from. Good to see you're still around!

Marsey99's P5N-E/E4300 and the one that Tom's Hardware tested are the only 3.6GHz rigs I know of for that MB/CPU combination. I'm sure there's more, but still very few and only the very earliest ones could do it. Most people got between 3.0 and 3.2 out of the E4300 with that MB. The P5N-E turned out to be a Horror Show for most of people that bought them. I know I went through hell with the one I built for a friend. The first MB was DOA, the second lasted only a short time. Finally the third allowed me to get to 3.0GHz, and it would go no higher. Why Asus never got the P5N-E near the same results results reported by Tom's Hardware remains a mystery. It's even been suggested to me on another forum that it was too good and too cheap with not enough profit for Asus. Whatever the problem was, it contributed to my ending my long relationship with Asus, and I haven't bought another one since.

I think what upset me the most was Asus's complete denial of there even being a problem, when all Asus had to do was go to their own forum where people were screaming about them, in droves! I know, I was one of them! Page after page of people complaining about BSODs and not being able to post at even stock speeds. I think the thing that infuriated me the most, was being charged $600 for the first replacement that lasted just about long enough to install XP-Pro, and then being charged another $600 for the second replacement. $1200 for 2 motherboards of that caliber and price range is outrageous! We got the money back, but it just shouldn't have happened in the first place. It actually wound up costing me about $80 out of my own pocket in phone calls, mostly due to the stupidity of the Customer Service Reps and Service Techs that work there. Needless to say I spent hours on the phone with them, getting almost nowhere at the time.

That's all behind me now and I'm very happy doing business with GigaByte. The few minor problems I've had have been taken care of in very short order, and without having to put up a ransom to get it. All they did was let me know that I had 30 days to return the old one to them and there would be no charge! When FedEx lost the motherboard, it took them from tuesday afternoon til early Thursday morning to get it taken care of. They provided and paid for the shipping both ways as well, including an overnight!

As for the P5N-E! I now have a pretty good idea as to what went wrong with them! I should have realized it months ago, but I'm getting old and slow! LOL!! I should have realized it when I set the FSB to 333 and the memory to 800MHz, linked 1:1 and wound up with 2.97GHz for the CPU and 797MHz for the memory that something wasn't right. It should have been 3.0GHz, and the memory should have been spot on at 800MHz. Instead, I had to raise the FSB to 338 to get 3.0GHz and 805MHz for the memory to run at 800MHz. In short, we were getting math errors on both the fSB and the memory buss. Remember, we are talking frequency here, not voltage, and the error between the two busses was big enough to light up the screen blue! I think both busses sort of fought one another, which lightened up enough to run properly when I un-linked the memory. Whatever it was, I was able to get 3.0GHz out of it and it finally passed OCCT for 12 hours. Aside from a memory related problem that caused a couple of BDODs a few months back, that was cured by new memory, it's been pretty much trouble free since! Next time I'll pay a bit more attention to the actual math! LOL!! Just my theory, but I know the problems developed in the I/O circuitry in the CPU and memory controller circuits, so it makes sense to me!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

haha russ...... thast a brilliant story. get your math right next time grandad

turst me, the p5b nad p5k, aswell as the p5E have been superb. i have bought the p5b, but my mate bought the others. both have gotten the Q6600OC to 3.8 on AIR!

 

shaffaaf,

You missed the point, as I did back 9 months ago! The math didn't add up to begin with. 333x9=3.0, not 2.97. Same thing with the memory. I had to set the memory speed to 805MHz to get an actual 800MHz! I should have realized that this was where the problem was! It was like a bad calculator giving errors!

As far as the P5N-E goes, I'm sure some people got good ones, especially the older ones. Judging by the number of complaints at Newegg and Asus's forum I would bet the return rate was better than 60%. A friend of mine who works for UPS told me he was bringing in motherboards to them by the truck load, his own included (P5N-E)! Way more than usual right at the time we were having our nightmare! I seriously questioned my own abilities as did a few other people after the second MB quit! I'd never experienced more than 1 bad MB, ever! Sam had problems with his too and it finally crapped out, which is why he has the GigaByte now. I know he's much happier!

I just slowed mine down to 3.50GHz, played with some of the memory sub timings, and it got faster! LOL!! Whatever combination I hit on fattened up my memory bandwidth about 500MB/s! I wound up knocking 2:15 off a DVDRB/CCE job and the CPU was slowed down. Doesn't sound like a lot, but with a slower CPU speed, it's amazing! Take a look on the building thread and check the speeds. mostly 9s and 10s, with a 12 thrown in for good measure. Before I messed with the memory settings, the fastest speed I ever saw was a low 10, one time! I've never seen a 12! The links are direct so just click on any of them to open them.

 

BigDK: Awesome, hope you enjoyed that lot, funnily enough I replayed Perseus Mandate the other day on my 3870. It ran worse than on my X1900 believe it or not. Higher frame rate but ridiculous amounts of stutter because the drivers for the 3870 are so poor. Unless I can fix that I'm not recommending the cards any more.
Russ: As well you know, you weren't the only one with a horror story, although mine wasn't quite as bad. I too noticed the mismatch in the speeds. Is it really that hard to get something like that right? I don't exclusively tell people to buy Gigabyte boards, but I do steer everyone away from the P5N-E. I'm amazed they still have the cheek to sell it.

Up until the install of my 3870 card, my PC's been running brilliantly with the Gigabyte board, so I'm much happier. It is disappointing that your PC's much slower after having upgraded your graphics card though. Nvidia drivers are bad, but ATi's are worse, or at least they are for the current gen. I had almost no problem with the drivers for the X1900 but for the fact that 7 different versions all could not play anything related to the original source engine (HL2 and CS:S mainly, not the latter games) at 2560x1600 or you'd get a Direct3D error. That's gone with the 3870 even before I updated the driver!

 

When you finish Perseus and open up Bonus missions it gets very interesting especially playing Arena number 2 bonus on hard level 'almost impossible' but a good challenge.
Had my graphics and PC settings all maxed out at 2560x1600 and never had any issues thats on Vista and XP, frame rate test had everything 100% in the highest frame rate score section 'whatever that was its not on system any more'


Well a bit more tweaking and I can now boot and run test/games etc... at 4Ghz 444x9 with pretty good memory scores as well as seen.

Won't be running it at that speed 24/7 the plan is 3.6 24/7 just got to see how far down I can get the voltages and stay stable.

3 1/2 hrs Orthos is what I call proper stable, would have been longer but I got bored and wanted to carry on playing with the settings, will do a run overnight soon to get 10+hours no one can argue with the stabilty then.

Not happy with Vista OEM, as just moving my GPU from one slot to another caused it to de-activate and then require a phone call to get it back on line, slight overkill on the anti-piracy from MS.

Latest screeny from system: all super-pi times are at this setting.

 

Sounds about right for MS...
Perseus Mandate Performance is nice, if that's with full shadows on I grossly underestimated the comparative performance of the 8800GTX compared to the HD3870. My frame rate currently drops to the mid teens on occasions if I use those settings...
Haha Bonus 2:Arena is ace, god that took me a long time to complete on Hard. I think I eventually pulled it off though...

 

I can get a 8800GT for 200. Hows that for a deal?

 

Heres the superpi times I thought I had posted in the last screenshot, all done at 4GHz.
Still haven't got under 12sec on this board yet, I think I'll be trying a 2 core CPU instead of this quad to see how far I can then take the FSB.

 

I would wait until end of Feb, apparently the 9800 cards are coming this month that should give a drop in price.

 

abuzar1,

Which one?

Russ

 

Well I would never even consider the 256MB version. lol you should know that after that rant I went on about it. So, yeah, I mean the 512MB version.

 

abuzar1,

I figured that but I've learned to assume nothing! LOL!! What brand, and which memory?

BigDK,
What's your 1M SuperPi look like?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Hi,

It's currently at 12.704 on this CPU. I havn't pushed the system for pure speed to see what I can get on that test, I wanted to get it working and stable for 32M, Orthos, PC & 3DMark.

I'm sure I can shave a little bit off if I just get the system partly stable 'enough to run that test only'

Its back down to 3.6 GHz for now.

Maybe I'll try running Ubuntu on here to see how that drops the times down.

My times below, let me know what you've managed to get and at what settings!

These times are all done at 4Ghz




This is a run at 3.6 running Vista I've just done, but I also have a load of other stuff running at the moment as I'm currently installing software and updates, but it's still pretty good, I'll have another go later when everything else is turned off.

 

I realize my opinion isn't much in this "circle" (click) but I have to agree.

This is a 1 yo part and the same certainly goes goes for buying a new Q6600 (even a GO). These are old in PC world. I would also wait the same for a new Q9300 or any Penryn quad apposed to an old Conroe Q6600. Unless you got it for under $200.00 then it's not really worth it today.

The same is even more so for the old E6600 and near old E6850 or E6750. The new Penryn base model E8200 and E8400 will outperform those old cores with little effort and with better temps and volts.

Now the new Penryn quads do not look to OC much easier then a Conroe quad but they are newer and bring better power management and less heat to do the same OC. The same 4GHz may be obtainable but with less heat on air and on the right mobo of corse.

Also, unless you are just plain out an nVidia "Fan-Boy" or must or plan to utiize SLI, I'd also stay clear of bVidia for Intel chipset for high overclocks on any quad today untill they (nVidai) improve.

Not to be confused with thinking I do not like nVidia, but they just do not meet my needs for high FSB and stability of quad OC's. stick to X38 or P35 for that.

MY TWO CENTS

 

Me? I've been recommending ATI left and right for the most part It was just a good deal. A friend wanted to buy the 3850 for 180.

 

Here's the thing, the "Fan Boys" have been trying to compare old "good" tech with newer medium tech. If ou really research enoug, you will find that ATI and it's Cross Fires has the potential to out perform current SLI by a long shot. However, since the merger of ATI + AMD, we may not get to see those results anymore so soon since it is not in AMD's best interest to give us something that will make Intel look even better then it is already. AMD is still recovering from the birth of core 2. AMD will see it's day again soon, and when it does, I'll be over there for a while. I'm not married to either, just where the technology is. That's what's in my best interest. Lol!

I have always liked both. I dont like that nVidia and AMD are controlling what we get to use and how

"MY TWO CENTS"