upgrading from a Q6600 to a QX9770 on a EVGA 780i SLI board

[vinnybear]

After being advised to do so i start my own thread then
So if it doesnt bore the crap out of everyone i plan to make a post about my advantures with upgrading my pc.
It started life as a Q6600 2.4ghz on an asus P5Q board with 4gb of ram and a 9600gt for graphics
I use this little lot to multibox 4 accounts on WoW. Then came the Cataclysm upgrade and my pc seemed to get slower
1st change was memeory upgrade to 8gb using 4x2gb OCZ2G8004GK DDR2 800MHZ PC2-6400 sticks
That was nice but no real change
No matter lets change the GPU then. So next up came a Gainward GTX460 GS-GLH 1024MB which runs as standard at 800Mhz GPU clockspeed and 2000Mhz memory speed.
Also nice and a little change but not what I was hoping for
So what now ?
Well ok lets go the full package then so :
Change of motherboard for a used EVGA 780i to be able to keep my memory and CPU but to be able to try out SLI.
Then we get a 2nd Gainward GTX460 GS-GLH and install that little lot in a new Cooler Master HAF-132 case cause got to look nice right
1st = windows re-install since it didn’t like the MB change it seems.
Then I start looking into overclocking ( ah he finally gets to the point - sorry if start was long ) so out goes the still standard intel cooler to be replaced by a Prolimatech Megahalems (dam that thing is big) with a noctua NF P12 fan.
And we overclock the Q6600 to a nice 3200 Mhz (see below).

Well that little lot runs ok but well now I’m still not 100% happy and I dont want to change everything for new stuff so I go on the hunt for the fastest CPU i can fit on my socket 775 EVA 780i sli.
A few dollars later comes a used QX9770 (thank god for the good euro – dollar rate )
So here we go finally. The QX9770 is fresh in the PC and we restart with the bios on default settings to see what is what.
1st no windows re-install as I had feared again but first 2000MHZ
Ok so bus speed at 333 and FSB at 1333 that cant be right so in the bios we go
And now the weirdness starts set Bus speed to 400Mhz set the FSB to 1600MHZ but the core voltage in the bios at 1.38ish set the mutliplier to 9.5 reboot and 2400 multiplier on 6 but once in a while CPU-Z tells me its runing at 3800Mhz using the 9.5 is set but that is only for a few seconds and CPU-Z goes back to the lame 2400Mhz.
The core voltage seems also low compared to what I set in the bios.

Whats up folks


When I get this thing stable the next plan on my OC adventures is water cooling the CPU and the MB in a 2 loop system but I want to understand what is going on 1st please.

 

[Janus67]

I'm guessing speedstep/etc is turned on so while the PC is idle it doesn't use as much power.

 

[EarthDog]

+1... screams C1E/Speedstep...

 

[Exempt]

+1 for speedstep, also there are two other options in BIOS, I forget what there called exactly but one is a power management option to scale CPU cores and speed when there not being used, and another is very similar

 

[vinnybear]

ok thanks gona have a look in bios again.

windows itself sees it as running at 3.8 ghz

under load i'm getting up 62 deg C max and at idle around the 45 deg mark thats with air cooling of course.

not sure what is good for this cpu as max temp so wont push until the water cooling is up and running next week.

 

[vinnybear]

ok slowly getting there

so speedstep was off but as correctly diagnozed the C1E was on

therefore we now have 3.4Ghz (took it down a notch) but now i see that the ram is not running at 800 but only 400 so gona have to look at that now.

wish there was a OC mode where the board turns all that crap off

 

[Supertrucker]

That ram is running at 400mhz which gets doubled to 800 mhz for being double data rate. It is in fact running at pc6400 speeds, which is what you have listed in your op. I dont think there is any ddr2 in existence that would run at 800mhz base speed.