q9550 OC revisit after populating all 4 ram slots

I found another 2x2GB sticks for my main rig and have had to do some tweaking to retain the OC that had been stable with 2 sticks.
The details:
q9550 EO, originally ran stable at 425x8.5, all voltages on 'auto'. Mobo is P5evm-hdmi. CPU has a Scyte Ninja, NB has a thermalright hr-05 heatpipe cooler too. First 2 sticks are Crucial ddr800 SPD:5/6/6/18/24 at 1.8. I recall getting the board and 2 sticks of ram stable at 445fsb (testing with cpu multi x5.5) with memtest and prime but the vdroop limited me on the cpu side to 425x8.5 (droops to 1.22v at load set to 'auto', 1.20 at 1.35). Setting Vcore to 1.4 in bios droops to 1.26 in Prime.

I recently picked up 2 extra sticks of ram, Patriot ddr800 SPD:4/4/4/12 2.2v
All 4 sticks will pass memtest at ddr400 Vmem auto. So far I've gotten it memtest stable at 420 5/6/6/15/ 2v. I haven't tried higher on Vmem.
The board won't post at CL6 at all. This bios wont go over 15 for tRAS, so I'm already out of spec for the Crucial sticks even at ddr400.
I've played with the different straps and ddr speed settings and the lowest I can get it to in this range is FSB 1:1

I'm currently priming stable with the following settings:
420x8.5, Vcore auto, cpu core temps ranging between mid 50's to low 60's
FSB Term 1.3v, NB 1.4V, PLL 1.6v


Any suggestions to get it higher? I'm guessing I'm limited by the ram (the crucial sticks for one and having all slots populated for another) and perhaps the cooling. Am I being too conservative with the voltages?

The only way this will work is if the sticks had the same timings/voltages no matter the brand. Mixing brands with different timings/voltages is going to give you problems. You're trying to play a guessing game with 4 sticks that are not the same for them to be able to run in your system.

First set: Crucial ddr800 SPD:5/6/6/18/24 at 1.8v
Second atriot ddr800 SPD:4/4/4/12 at 2.2v

Another thing to consider is you'll need alot more PLL voltage as the mem controller is working twice as hard with all 4 slots populated.

I'm forseeing data corruption in your future.

I went in expecting having to do some tweaking, given the odd set I scrounged up (not really going to splurge on an old platform and ddr2 prices are high). How high on the PLL do you suggest?
Am I still at risk of corruption if it passes prime and memtest at the speeds I'm running?
The board defaults to 5/6/6/18 with all 4 sticks.
BTW, CPUz shows SPD for the patriot at ddr400 5/5/5/12 at 1.8v, still tighter than the crucial at the same voltage.

I would be happy if the board is running all 4 sticks @ 5/6/6/18 with zero issues, then that's the best you gonna get unless you buy matched sticks.

I was stable with 5 GB of DDR2 at 333 Mhz, (666) when using mixed modules with a VDIMM bump on my Asus P5QL Pro.

Well, hell.
Memtest and Prime95 Blend aside, fire up CS:GO and it hard locks within a couple of minutes.
Back to 400 it is.

Ruiner said:

Well, hell.
Memtest and Prime95 Blend aside, fire up CS:GO and it hard locks within a couple of minutes.
Back to 400 it is.

Click to expand...

Hard lock can mean you reached a core limit brick wall.

(Had a 2004 T'bred B 2400+ KIXJB do that at roughly 2415 Mhz.)

Have you tried 3.8 Ghz or 3.7 Ghz yet? You may have a hard wall around there.

Lock up in game may be the PCI-E clock.

I've got the pci-e set to auto, which I assumed stayed at 100 for this chipset regardless of fsb.
I haven't tried 3.7 or higher since the ram won't pass memtest higher than 420 at 2v. I don't want to run the 1.8 crucial higher than that.

I swear I posted in here already... weird.


Anyway, You need to add NB voltage with more sticks added, not PLL. PLL doesnt have anything to do with ram AFAIK.

PCIe should be set to 100. NOt sure if auto allows for changes.

I cant imagine that CPU hitting a wall that low.. It HAS to be your mismatched ram causing the issue. You need to loosen your tighter sticks to match the loose ones in timings and voltage, and even then, its not a good idea. If I was you, Id buy all new and scrap what you have...

Ruiner said:

I've got the pci-e set to auto, which I assumed stayed at 100 for this chipset regardless of fsb.
I haven't tried 3.7 or higher since the ram won't pass memtest higher than 420 at 2v.

Click to expand...

I'm getting reports that a wall at 420 Mhz or around there is typical with P43. That's why I planned to get a P45.

EarthDog said:

I swear I posted in here already... weird.


Anyway, You need to add NB voltage with more sticks added, not PLL. PLL doesnt have anything to do with ram AFAIK.

PCIe should be set to 100. NOt sure if auto allows for changes.

I cant imagine that CPU hitting a wall that low.. It HAS to be your mismatched ram causing the issue. You need to loosen your tighter sticks to match the loose ones in timings and voltage, and even then, its not a good idea. If I was you, Id buy all new and scrap what you have...

Click to expand...

That's as loose as I can get them. For some reason it won't post dropping from CL5 to 6. I have no real problem losing a ~200MHz OC for the extra ram. These sticks were used from the forum. I'll upgrade to a IB at some point, but damn, everything still runs great on this old thing.

I'll give it a shot locking pcie to 100 or 101 and upping the NB a tad. (edit: recall I was running 425 for years with 2 sticks, so I doubt it's the pcie bus)