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Newbie to Overclocking, First Attempt - Opinions?

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Aeonus

New Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2008
Hi there! Newbie to both the forums and overclocking in general, and looking for some advice on what settings to tweak.

My system consists of a Q6600 G0, 4GB OCZ PC2-6400 2x2GB, a BFG 8800GT OC2, and an ASUS P5N32-E 680i SLI motherboard.

Here is a screencapture of my settings. I had to set the Vcore at 1.275 to get this thing stable, and am having difficulty pushing it to 3.0Ghz. Everytime I attempt to do so, I hang at boot and have to reset the BIOS through the jumper pins. Also, I'm overclocking in "unlinked" mode, as I've heard it's the best way to do this.

compqk8.jpg
 
You're setting the vcore to 1.275v in the BIOS, but as you can see from CPU-Z only 1.13v is showing up. You may need to adjust the BIOS setting to compensate.

Also, how much voltage are you giving the DRAM, and what is it spec'd for?

The 680i has FSB hole as well, so you might have to actually try higher speeds.

The Asus 680i isn't known for it's OCability w/ quads. Only the eVGA 680i board can OC Quads w/ authority, and if you aren't using SLI then you should ideally be on a P35/X38/X48 board.
 
You're setting the vcore to 1.275v in the BIOS, but as you can see from CPU-Z only 1.13v is showing up. You may need to adjust the BIOS setting to compensate.

Also, how much voltage are you giving the DRAM, and what is it spec'd for?

The 680i has FSB hole as well, so you might have to actually try higher speeds.

The Asus 680i isn't known for it's OCability w/ quads. Only the eVGA 680i board can OC Quads w/ authority, and if you aren't using SLI then you should ideally be on a P35/X38/X48 board.

Yeah, it's really weird how my BIOS settings are different than what they are putting out. For example, I set my FSB to 1250 and I get an overclock of 2.8Ghz, where 250x9= 2250? Also, my Vcore I have set to 1.275, and it actually reads around there in my BIOS voltage monitor. Do you think maybe CPU-Z isn't compatible with Vista 64-bit in that regard?

I have the voltage for my memory set at 2.0, which is recommended by OCZ for their memory. I borrowed their RAM timings and settings from http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28818.

Also, yeah, I'm a big time Chrono Trigger fan. Definitely my favorite game ever....I still remember playing it back in 1995 when it was released! =D
 
Yeah, it's really weird how my BIOS settings are different than what they are putting out. For example, I set my FSB to 1250 and I get an overclock of 2.8Ghz, where 250x9= 2250? Also, my Vcore I have set to 1.275, and it actually reads around there in my BIOS voltage monitor. Do you think maybe CPU-Z isn't compatible with Vista 64-bit in that regard?

I have the voltage for my memory set at 2.0, which is recommended by OCZ for their memory. I borrowed their RAM timings and settings from http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28818.

Also, yeah, I'm a big time Chrono Trigger fan. Definitely my favorite game ever....I still remember playing it back in 1995 when it was released! =D

i ad dual boot set up with vista and xp. even after overclocking was stable i read all the settings for cpu-z in xp, and it was different in vista. not sure why. i am still new to this myself. however i just did all my overclock testing in xp. and it all seemed to work fine for me
 
i ad dual boot set up with vista and xp. even after overclocking was stable i read all the settings for cpu-z in xp, and it was different in vista. not sure why. i am still new to this myself. however i just did all my overclock testing in xp. and it all seemed to work fine for me

The FSB and stuff is correct, it reads that way in the BIOS. The voltage isn't, however.
 
Yeah, it's really weird how my BIOS settings are different than what they are putting out. For example, I set my FSB to 1250 and I get an overclock of 2.8Ghz, where 250x9= 2250? Also, my Vcore I have set to 1.275, and it actually reads around there in my BIOS voltage monitor. Do you think maybe CPU-Z isn't compatible with Vista 64-bit in that regard?

I have the voltage for my memory set at 2.0, which is recommended by OCZ for their memory. I borrowed their RAM timings and settings from http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28818.

Also, yeah, I'm a big time Chrono Trigger fan. Definitely my favorite game ever....I still remember playing it back in 1995 when it was released! =D

1250FSB-quad-pumped = 312.5FSB x 9 = 2.81GHz That part is fine.

I never noticed if CPU-Z reads differently in VISTA. I dual-boot, and do all my overclocking from XP as well.

I'd still give it more voltage, though, as long as temps are good.
 
The difference in voltage from the bios setting and what oyu get in windows is vdroop and vdrop. It's normal on intel boards.

Personally, I'm oc'ing in linked/synced mode, after reading this:

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=61146

To quote the part of that oc'ing guide pertaining to linked/synced:

#3 Linked and Synced baby. In every single over-clocking guide I have seen the first thing they say to do is unlink the FSB and Ram. I strongly disagree. This was a common over-clocking practice during the P4 days of the past, when the FSB was 800Mhz and anything faster than DDR 400 was tough to come by. By today’s standards that would be 1066 and DDR2 533, are any of you running DDR2 533? I didn’t think so. Even I managed to scrounge up some DDR2 800.
So linked and synced your FSB to Ram ratio will be like this…

QDR 1066 =DDR2 533
QDR 1333 =DDR2 667
QDR 1500 =DDR2 750
QDR 1600 =DDR2 800
QDR 1800 =DDR2 900
QDR 2133 =DDR2 1066

This provides what I consider a true 1:1 FSB/Ram ratio, see images below. I know this is going to upset a lot of people that bought uber fast Ram. Hear me out (or write your own guide, lol). You should be able to run your Ram at whatever speeds you want, but as many have noticed this (speeds above 1000Mhz (this may be better now that p25 is out, I'm testing)) seems to be an issue with the 680i at this time. For the sake of stability I have found this to be a better option, without sacrificing much, if any, performance. Proof is further down.

Good luck pusing your cpu farther ;)
 
Ok, thanks guys. I'll give it another go with more voltage, and this time I might try it in linked mode just to fool around with it.
 
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