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My E8400 Worklog(I think I got a dud)

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ou_phidelt

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2004
Location
Rockingham, NC
I decided to jump on the E8400 bandwagon and am disappointed so far. My goal was a relatively low volt 4.0Ghz. But I have yet to even hit 4.0. Here is a
google spreadsheet with what I have gotten so far. The super bowl was coming on so I went ahead and jumped to 450 which I tried up to 1.5Vcore and was rewarded with a full 7 seconds of orthos stability(hey and that was up from immediate lock-up) I down clocked my ram with dividers, even though they should not be an issue. The temps are getting a little high but still within spec. I also tried enabling voltage damper but that didn't make any difference. Anyone have any ideas on what to try next. This board is very similar as others in the P5 as far what is available in the BIOS.

It just seems that once I hit 400 the voltage need rose very quickly. Did I get unlucky on this round or am I missing something?
 
You tried adding some CPU vTT instead? I noticed my E8400 has a very notable FSB wall (as compared to my E6850) and actually required a small amount of vTT to be stable at FSB's of even 475. For comparison's sake, my 6850 would do FSB of 575 on stock voltage...
 
I'll give it a shot. I have gotten so used to my IP35-Pro this thing has been a bit of a culture shock. I went to give it some MCH and huh where is it. Just getting used to the different terminologies. For the sake of consistency as long as Vcore took care of the stability I kept moving on.
 
1.45v to get 4ghz stable on my board, this chip is quick no doubt but the temp monitor bugs and the not so low vcore needed are really pushing me towards the slacr q6600
 
Yeah, I haven't had a desktop for a while since I got this new E8400 rig. My last overclocking experience was with a P4... I got around 3.8ghz if I recall, back when the early Core architecture was just in laptops.

Anyway, it appears, like anything some chips are better than others.

I'm running stable now at 4.302ghz with a Vcore of 1.3875 and everything else pretty much at default settings. Honestly, beside the RAM voltage, I'm not sure what a lot of the other voltage setting do on this new fangled board (and there are like 8 other settings). I'm going to have to do some research when I try to find the upper limit of this chip. I really haven't tried yet figuring 4.2-.4.3ghz is plenty quick for now while I get some use out of the box.

I have no doubt this E8400 might be close to doing 4.5ghz on air around 1.5v...

You win some and you lose some... in fact my graphics card is a shiate overclocker. It's a Sapphire 3870 single slot, but I can only get a few dozen mhz out of it both core and memory. I'm just wondering how much an aftermarket cooler might help it OR if it's just a dud too?
 
I'm running stable now at 4.302ghz with a Vcore of 1.3875 and everything else pretty much at default settings. Honestly, beside the RAM voltage, I'm not sure what a lot of the other voltage setting do on this new fangled board (and there are like 8 other settings). I'm going to have to do some research when I try to find the upper limit of this chip. I really haven't tried yet figuring 4.2-.4.3ghz is plenty quick for now while I get some use out of the box.

Man thats a good o/c for that voltage. Im running 1.3875 on 4.0Ghz / 4.1Ghz.
I had to have higher voltage when i was using 4.2+

Look after that chip it seems a winner!

I would try for 4.4 with that chip after a time. ;)
 
1.45v to get 4ghz stable on my board, this chip is quick no doubt but the temp monitor bugs and the not so low vcore needed are really pushing me towards the slacr q6600

You had to go all the way to 1.45 to get 4ghz. Wow :p.
 
You had to go all the way to 1.45 to get 4ghz. Wow :p.

Wow, yeah, what kind of cooling are you using?

I have to say that's an unusually bad E8400...

*bad*... hehe... Imagine saying that a few years back about a 1000mhz overclock!
 
Wow, yeah, what kind of cooling are you using?

I have to say that's an unusually bad E8400...

*bad*... hehe... Imagine saying that a few years back about a 1000mhz overclock!


yeah srsly :)
 
Yeah, I haven't had a desktop for a while since I got this new E8400 rig. My last overclocking experience was with a P4... I got around 3.8ghz if I recall, back when the early Core architecture was just in laptops.

Anyway, it appears, like anything some chips are better than others.

I'm running stable now at 4.302ghz with a Vcore of 1.3875 and everything else pretty much at default settings. Honestly, beside the RAM voltage, I'm not sure what a lot of the other voltage setting do on this new fangled board (and there are like 8 other settings). I'm going to have to do some research when I try to find the upper limit of this chip. I really haven't tried yet figuring 4.2-.4.3ghz is plenty quick for now while I get some use out of the box.

I have no doubt this E8400 might be close to doing 4.5ghz on air around 1.5v...

You win some and you lose some... in fact my graphics card is a shiate overclocker. It's a Sapphire 3870 single slot, but I can only get a few dozen mhz out of it both core and memory. I'm just wondering how much an aftermarket cooler might help it OR if it's just a dud too?


You got any Orthos screenshots? I'm finding it very hard to believe you're 8hours Orthos stable at that voltage on air. I'd certainly like to see some screenshots.
 
I think I am on the right track. I only had a few minutes last night but I made a little progress. I upped the north bridge voltage a couple notches and got about a half hour of orthos. Hopefully another notch or two will cure my ills. Also my bios does not have CPU vTT as an option. I do have several reference voltages(i.e. .63x, .50x) I will have to do some research and see what those are. With 1.5 in BIOS I am gettting an actual under load of 1.384 with the voltage damper enabled which is within my goal of 1.4. We will see tonight.
 
ou_phidelt: so how did it go?

I'm in the exact same situation as yours. I registered in this forum just to follow up on your case. e8400, p5e-vm hdmi, 4x1GB corsair xms2 pc6400, thermalright ultima-90 with scythe kama 92mm pwm fan (fixed at max speed). I like your Google Spreadsheet!

Successful (up to now!) attempts:

1. I managed to run my e8400 at 445fsb x 9 with 1.5 Vcore at bios (1.46v idle, 1.38v orthos-smp load), but the voltage is scaring me off keeping this setup 24/7. CoreTemp 78C 8|, if it can be trusted (0.96.1). Speedfan 4.34 beta is always about 5C lower (core temp.). Though this setup is not stable enough yet.

2. I also could get a stable system with 1.47v bios at 440fsb, not any faster though with this vcore.

Failed Attempts:

1. 470fsb x 8.5 = ~4GHz. Failed after ~36min. of orthos.

450fsb seems impossible to me :(

I have to go down all the way to 433fsb to lower my vcore to something like 1.425v in bios.

How is yours coming up?
 
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I'm having problems getting to 4GHz with my E8400 compared to other users. Can get Orthos Blend stable 3.8GHz (9 x 423) with Vcore 1.344 (1.328 on load) for about 8hrs.

When I try 9 x 445, Orthos (even small FFts) it dies within 10 sec. Tried Vcore of up to 1.376 but still no good (don't really want to go too far from than the recommended max just yet). I have DDR800 ram so I tried relaxing ram settings from 4-4-4-12 to 5-5-5-18 (even though ram is not supposed to be involved with the small FFT tests too much I've heard). Tried increasing FSB and Northbridge voltage (a bit), all no go.

I know that every CPU is different, but when people say they get to 4GHz easlily with Vcores of 1.3v (or sometimes even lower), I am extremely jealous.
 
I know that every CPU is different, but when people say they get to 4GHz easlily with Vcores of 1.3v (or sometimes even lower), I am extremely jealous.
Maybe you could try hitting 4GHz a different way, like 8 x 500.
My Gigabyte DS4 really had a problem with FSB around 440 and up but runs the 500FSB with no problem at all...
39d3b8e9.jpg


vCore is 1.275v in BIOS, memory set to 2.0v and all other voltages are left on "Auto".
This seems to be this combo's sweet spot.
I can boot much higher (so far, 4.4GHZ) but cannot achieve stability with my self-imposed core voltage cap of 1.35v.
I see people running much higher voltages but don't feel comfortable and I'm too lazy (at least so far) to explore all the extra voltage boosts I could add.

Coming off an Opteron/NF4 system, a full gig OC seems like a miracle already and the temps (even with a lesser waterloop) are equally miraculous.
 
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