The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

You'll need more than 1.40V to get to 3.325Ghz stable. My E4300 only made 3.20Ghz and that used 1.45V.

 

MaccerM
as Sam stated you will need a little more Vcore than the 1.40v your useing now. plus your more than doubleing your OC on that CPU. so you might have to give it the 1.5v it max's out at to get it stable at 3.325ghz. but i would be careful about going that high.. hate to see a melt down on ya...

it is truel hard to say which is better. i have had the dominator series in my system and they didnt work to well so i took them back. since ive had the mushkin stuff in here ive had nothing but praise for them. i beleive i heard Russ say this once... it is luck of the draw to get all these different parts to work together smoothly. thats why if you look at all of our RIGs they are pretty much along the same lines of parts. a different mobo here,different GPU there....its luck of the draw i think. in general we all know the good stuff and try to get it. and we know the bad stuff and stay away.then there is the middle of the road stuff that we get and playwith and see how it works with what we as a individual has at the time.

i think i have found some good memory that works well with my GA-EP45-DS3R MOBO. i know i will never try and use crucial memory on a gigabyte board. yes i know a few guys here that has crucial mem on gigabyte boards, but the luck i have had with them not me. not again...lol

 

MaccerM

update to the latest stable bios, clear CMOS, and hit up 1.45 on the CPU, 1.4 on the NB and 1.6 on the PLL

underclock the RAM to 667MHz (should be in the the first or last strap), set it to 2.1V DRAM and letencies to 555 15.

once you get the CPU clock, then work on the RAM clock, then lowering the voltages. and latencies.

also set the PCIE frequency to 100MHz and PCI frequency to 33.33 MHz

 

Update, but don't download Beta BIOSes, they're not nice.

 

(yeah, i know, which is why i said latest stable)

 

I thought I might be able to get away with 1.4v since only 125mhz lower is stable at 1.3875!
I've not fiddled with PCIe frequency or anything like that. I'll give it a little more juice and see if that stabilises it. Quite impressed with what this CPU has to give to be honest. It's probably been the best chip I've ever had, and I suppose even 3.2 is not too shabby for a 1.86Ghz part! I'll update later! Thx guys

 

i was even more happy with my E2140 (At 1.6 stock) hitting 3.4 stable

 

Yeah Shaff, I forgot you had mentioned that the difference is crossfire = quad.

So now that nehalem is out I've updated my new build wishlist - the 920 is pretty cheap at $220, but all the deluxe overclocking boards are closer to $400 up from $200 on the p45 boards.

I'm gonna hold off a bit until the 5870x2 comes out this coming summer, by then the nahelem boards will be cheaper, and maybe the 940 chip will also have dropped by then.

The whole idea is to have a decent chance of running Crysis maxed at 2560x1600, (although sam doesn't think the 5870x2 will do that - he thinks it will take the 6870x2.) LOL

By the way, now that you're on water, what do you think of the cooler that Russ is planning to pick up:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835108105

Mike is back! - (maccerm) - haven't heard from you for about a year since our lovely gecube days! I see you're over with the green guys on your 8800 - what kind of 3dmark6 scores are you getting these days!

Well that's interesting, Rob, how some memory doesn't seem to work with some mobos. I know over on the graphics thread, estuansis loves his mushkins, and some of the newegg reviews were also really raving about them. "Luck of the draw." Hmmmm. So what's the best way to test the mem out quick while you can still RMA it back to newegg - run some of the mem stress tests overnight? Or is that not relevant, because that won't tell you how they will perform in overclocking situations?
-Rich

 

Hi harv. Still not upgraded from your P4 then!? You'll be there for years I swear! Just about to buy an i7 then you'll hear about the next big thing! lol.
I'm getting about 15k on 3dmark (15,183 my best so far) and am able to play Crysis in VHQ with 2xAA at 1280x1024 with the GTs in SLi. Want a E8400 for 4Ghz+ and a new 1650x1080 monitor now.
- On that point what is this talk about having a quad core for multi gpu setups? From my current understanding I'll be better off for gaming with a fast dual core (for the next 12 months perhaps.) Is someone recommending using a quad with SLi?

 

Dual cores are better for single graphics cards, quads are better for dual graphics. It's something along these lines:

HD4870 with Dual core: 30fps, HD4870 with Quad core; 32fps
HD4870X2 with Dual core: 35fps, HD4870X2 with Quad core: 55fps

 

The 3870 does better then a 4870?

 

Lol whoops...

 

So what are you saying? A quad core is better with dual GPUs clock for clock, with xfire only, with a dual gpu card only, better than a faster clocked dual core?
Surely if you have a 4-4.5Ghz E8x00 you are still going to get faster fps in 90% of games than with a 3-3.5Ghz clocked quad and a dual card setup.

 

That's true for most games for now but newer games are coming out optimized for Quad cores and will continue to do so since it allows for creative graphics designs that could bury a dual core. If you want to be future proof for a while longer than I recommend going quad core for any current build. The best of both worlds of course is if your quad core can match a dual core on any given two cores. What do you think about a Q9650 at 4Ghz?

 

I'll be honest, I haven't seen much in the way of real world gains with quad cores using single cards yet. It'll happen, but we've been saying this for years...

 

I think a 4Ghz Q9xx0 would be fantastic. I also know that it'll cost at least £100 more than hitting 4.5Ghz with a dual. For a stepped upgrade I don't think the current quads are a better choice for playing games... for the next X months. And when everyone is buying i7s I'll get a Q9xx0 when they cost £100 not £250!
However with the exchange rates as they are I might not be buying anything for a while! UK has been hit with 25% extra on anything priced in dollars (

 

I don't think that you're going to see the Q9650s' going down for some time. Even though i7 has been released the costs for a motherboard are still quite high and you will also have to get a trio of DDR3. For a dual core to come close to matching a 4 GHz quad it would have to hit about 9GHz stable which we both know will never happen even with liquid nitrogen. I have no intentions of building an i7 setup until the 35nm chips arrive.




Had it to 4.15 before my memory crapped out but since I have no intentions of running at that speed it's a moot point.

 

soph, just remember thats IF a program ustilizes a quad core fully

and psshhhhtt.... (its 32nm next not 35 )

 

The consideration for me is price. An E8400 should work out under £100 once I Ebay the E6320, give me another 1Ghz+ of clock speed and leave some cash spare for a new monitor. It'd either be that or a Q6600, and there's no guarantee I'd even hit 3.4 with one of those, plus every Q6600/E8400 comparison I've seen has said get the E8400 because once you factor in the OC its much quicker. Need to try and find a Q6600 vs E8400 with Sli comparison to see what this quad/dual core & dual cpu difference is (if any) - anyone know of a link?

 

Ok, I managed to turn up this little link;
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/19
That compares a stock 3Ghz E8400 and a Q9770 stock at 3.2Ghz and the top increase in fps over the 8400 is 35% in FC2 and 25% in crysis warhead, with two extra cores, another 200mhz on the clock and triple SLi!
The Q9770 is 5% faster clocked, and assuming that you'd be able to get the E8400 clocked 10-15% higher than the Quad or maybe more, also remove the overhead of one of the graphics cards then I reckon (by my finger in the air maths) they're gonna be about the same (and I'll save £100-200).
Looks like the i7 is a bit of a beast… just have to wait for the rest of the hardware to catch up!