Intel D975XBX OC difficulties

As some of you may know, this board is pretty old and pretty much near the first generation of core2duo boards. I got it about a year ago and so far it has performed nicely. However, after doing the OC mod and unlocking all of the overclock features, I can only overclock 30% even though I can change the burn-in to 50%. CPUID shows only a 30% oc to 3120mhz with 346fsb even with 50% burn-ing selected. I've run 30% stable for a long while now. I've tried upping the voltage to try and get this to stick but with no luck. Also, changing the fsb strap to 1336 doesn't work, but that really isn't a big issue.

My questions are:

1) Is my processor really overclocked 50% but for some reason only shows up as 30%? If so, how would I know this?
**Windows XP and CrystalCPUID show 3100, so this seems pretty unlikely.
*** CPUZ Only shows a 6x multiplier even though it is 9x shows 2100mhz(6x346), I'm really not sure why this is.

2) If no to #1, then why can't I overclock it to 50%?

**As far as I know, after modding the board to unlock the oc settings I should be able to set the burn-in to 50% no problem, but unfortunately this isn't the case. I've looked online but I couldn't find any concrete reasons or things to try regarding this issue.

Surely someone has some knowledge of this, I remember this board being pretty popular for some reason whenever it came out. Any suggestions would be great, thanks.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I just updated to the newest bios in hopes of solving the problem with no dice.

Before I carry on, are you using a BIOS utility to overclock?

You should be manually selecting the FSB to overclock, not some utility - they never work

EDIT: your board is not that old. Many people here, including myself, are using 975X based boards

Yes I am using the bios. The % burn-in is how this motherboard/processor overclocks and you are unable to change the multiplier with conroes. There is no way to change the fsb to a specific number.

The link below shows all of the necessary BIOS screens needed to overclock.


http://www.planetx64.com/index.php?...sk=view&id=368&Itemid=50&limit=1&limitstart=4

Edit: As you can see from the screenshots, the options to oc are fairly limited. This can be good or bad I guess, but It does simplify overclocking in a way. I actually like what they did with this board, even though the oc options aren't as robust as some others in its class. The only real things you can change are the fsb strap, vcore, and burn-in percentage, which just increases your fsb by whatever percentage you set it to.

I downloaded CoreTemp and it shows my fsb at 520 with a 6x multiplier. So I have 3 programs all with different fsb and mhz readings

Coretemp - 520fsb x 6 = 3120mhz - Reads at 37C
CPUZ - 346mhz x 6 = 2000 mhz
CrystalCPUID - 346 x 9 = 3120mhz. This is the only one that actually shows 30% a 30% overclock in the overclock window below the multiplier window.

For temperatures - coretemp
For CPU speed - CPUz or everest

Your CPU will automatically drop to a 6X multi when idle. Run it under load, by using orthos or prime95 to raise the multi to 9 again.

As far as I know you will always get a 6x multi reading as long as speed step is enabled in the bios. There is a sticky about the 6x multi in the Intel CPU section. But it will go back to 9x as soon as it is under load.

I had a look at the BIOS shots and I am not sure about why it won't do 50%.

Maybe try ease up on RAM timings or increase the RAM voltage a bit and see if that helps

Tried both but the increase still doesn't stick. I ran the ram at automatic speeds a while ago and still couldn't break this 3120 barrier. Pretty frustrating, considering my cpu runs so cool and I'm losing this extra 20% of performance. I also noticed that the heatspreaders on my ram are starting to peel off. So thats bad, but it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal atm

So when you set it to 50%, what is your RAM running at?

According to CPUZ, the same as it is at 30%. The ram speed doesn't increase as you would expect. Even still, the ram speed is still under its max of 800. The "limit" to this ram would be at the 50% mark exactly, making it run at 800mhz 1:1.

Edit: I haven't fooled around alot with the ram voltage since I am not near the max speed yet. I guess technically since the ram isn't running at its max I can tighten the timings and not increase the voltage. This is all i've done so far

I've tried upping the MCH voltage to 1.6 and really loosed the ram timings by a lot and its still stuck at 30%. I read that upping the MCH voltage may be necessary to reach the higher fsb speeds, but apparently not on my motherboard.

Upped fsb voltage to 1.4, upped cpu voltage to 1.4, mch voltage to 1.6 - no luck. Cant even get 31%. Don't really know where to go from here.

Which clock generator does your board have...the ICS or IDT PLL? I believe that this might be the root of your troubles.

In a nutshell, the IDT chip limits the overclock to 30%, whereas the ICS allows up to 50%. Discussion of this can be found around post #361 in the linked thread (main Badaxe modding thread over at XS).

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=99298&page=15

More directly on point (thread specific to the change in chips), with pics of both chips:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108863

Thanks for providing some clarity on this issue - I couldn't understand what was going on here...

That's what seniors are for

Thanks for the kind words, but let's wait to see if in fact he does have the IDT clock generator before we get too exited.

Then the props go to all those guys that figured it out...I'm just passing along all their good work.

It's the IDT. Super

Then youre more or less screwed, maybe you will have to clockgen up from where youre at. What you could do is to try some old bios' to see if you can get the 1333 strap to work, i seem to recall something like 1880 or around there working with my ICS-xbx1 allowing me to take an E6300 up to 454MHz FSB, if it works on IDT boards i dont know.

Edit: I probably didnt mean 1880, more like 1181 and older =)

Well, at least you now know why you were having the problems.

ClockGen or SetFSB are about your only choices for higher clocks...but hardly the way you would want to go for day-to-day usage.

Guess I will just stop at 30%, I can run it stable no problem on air with about 47c on max load. Unlucky about that clock generator

You could always sell that board and pick up an Asus P5K (Vanilla) or Abit IP35-E or similar.