HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - A Guide v1.1

[Durbybard]

Can i ask a question to anyone who may have the answer and not just aimed at Graysky?

Why has the Prime 95 test been set a 24 hours???

Is it cos it takes about 8 hours to do 1 complete cycle of FFT Length 8k-64k meaning that if you can successfully do 3 cycles 8k-64k, then that would deem your system as pretty stable?

Just wondering

Also, nearly 13 hours Stable on prime 95, watch, will fail at around 23 hours 30mins or so

Going to run Prime 95 for around 36 hours just to make sure, and if all is well, Graysky, as we say in England, next time you are around i will buy you a pint (beer/lager) hehe.

Durbybard

 

[Q6600FIEND]

What do you change when you run 23 hours stable ?
That would seriously tick me off - I got 13 hours stable on Prime but will do the 24 hour stress and let you know. Thanks

 

[Durbybard]

Hehe Q6600fiend, i am not sure what you would change if you failed at 23 hours.

Ok, do i feel a fool or what, why????, well i have been using the wrong stress test in prime 95, i have been using Small FFT's test .

So i am re-running my stress test again using large FFT's test, had a fail so far, think it may have been the MCH set too low, now at Grayskys suggested 1.33v start point, and so far after 30 mins, seems to be holding.

CPU Vcore @ 1.2650v @ FSB 400 x 7.5 @ 3.0Ghz
DDR2 Volts @ 2.20v @ 800mhz @ Cas 4/4/4/12
MCH @ 1.33v (NB Setting)
ICHIO @ 1.50v (SB IO Settting)
ICH @ 1.07v (SB Setting)
VTT @ 1.12v
Core Temp showing @ 68/70/70/68 with same piece of **** Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (nothing Pro about this cooler) @ 2260rpm fan (livable noise)
Above stopped after 1.15 hours, adjusted Vcore down to 1.2550v and MCH to Auto and retesting

CPU Vcore @ 1.2550v @ FSB 400 x 7.5 @ 3.0Ghz
DDR2 Volts @ 2.20v @ 800mhz @ Cas 4/4/4/12
MCH @ 1.27v (auto bios setting)
ICHIO @ 1.50v
ICH @ 1.07v
VTT @ 1.12v
Core Temp showing @ 67/70/70/67 @ 2260rpm fan (livable noise)

{Above stopped after about 15.5 hours no errors}

OK, i have now downed my settings to stock core default settings and running Prime 95 for last 3 hours with no problems as yet.

This is starting to worry me, why???, because so far i have not had to adjust any other settings other than the FSB to 400 and my DDR2 Ballistix memory to 2.2v Cas 4/4/4/12, so either the motherboard is a really easy board to overclock with or my Abit IP35 Pro motherboard/Q9300 cpu and 2 x 1Gb Ballistix Tracer 1066 memory is really happy at stock volts, either way, it is causing me so much concern that it is proving to be too easy, that i am thinking of ripping my system apart and installing it all on my Asus P5K-E wifi ap board just to see if i would get the same or similar results just for fun (i am keeping the Abit IP35 Pro board)

So i am going to monitor these settings some more and hope that i complete a 24hr period.

I have deleted my other messages as they are all bo*****s and would just throw any new overclocker with a simillar setup for six.

So i will probably be back for more advice i guess sometime soon.

Durbybard aka The Overclocking Idiot That Can't Read....

 

[Q6600FIEND]

Go hard Durbybard ! Best of luck

 

[graysky]

Edited on 08-Jun-2008: Guide is now version 1.7 – added a 2nd example minimizing the vcores on my system.

 

[smee]

Hi, just like to say a big thank you to graysky as you see I am a newbie but even newer to ocing your article is brilliant got my Q6850 running @ 3.82ghz did get to 3.91 and chickened out.
thank's smee.

 

[graysky]

@smee - great man, glad it helped you out. 3.82 GHz is great... air or water?

 

[smee]

Thanks graysky, water cooled, only thing I have to sort is norht bridge temp have not connected water owing to different sized connections but have been told how to overcome that, just a matter of getting round to it. To busy playing that's the trouble
Cheers smee.

 

[smee]

I meant north bridge :-(

 

[omni]

I have found your guide to be a good read, and I am considering overclocking my Q9300. I decided to move my post to a new thread, thanks for the help

 

[graysky]

I have found your guide to be a good read, and I am considering overclocking my Q9300. I decided to move my post to a new thread, thanks for the help

Which thread?

 

[omni]

Which thread?

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=567227

 

[nockawa]

OC a Q6600 with P5Q-E

Hi all,

I'm trying to go beyond the 350Mhz for my FSB without much success.

The factory VID is 1.305.

I mainly tweaked the CPU Voltage (1.45), and reduce the memory settings to 5-6-6 @ 800Mhz, I barely passed the POST.

I don't really know what to set for the voltage of FSB, NB and SB, so I let it auto (except the FSB which I set to 1.3V).

I didn't play with the CPU ratio, I'd like to keep it as high as possible...

You guys have clues about what is the bottleneck or how to find it (and hopefully fix it) ?

Thanks!

 

[PortCitySlim]

Q6700/P5Q Deluxe

Graysky, do you think you could add a section that shows how to use the FSB Strap to NB setting? I am having tons of trouble with my Q6700(VID 1.3250) and P5Q Deluxe. Right now I am at 333x10 struggling to get stable at 1.3875vcore. I have left all my voltages on auto except my Memory/CPU-vcore and I am using the new Mem. OC Charger feature in the P5Q. I need to find out what the best settings would be to use for...

FSB Strap to NB
NB Vcore
FSB termination voltage
SB Vcore

Right now I am at a FSB of 333 but if I try for a higher overclock I have to increase my FSB up to 340-400mhz so I might need some help with setting voltages for those levels too. For now if I can get my Q6700 stable at 3.33 and under 1.38vore I would be very happy.

 

[@crilicM@n]

Nice guide for recicle

Well, man, thanks for the guide... Im an "retired" senior member... Away for some time from the oc world after changed my pc for a laptop becouse of mobility... And now I´m doing the reverse path... Mobility is what i found in my htc Tytn... At home I want to use a really really powerfull desktop... I found no extreme power on laps Want to build a system with 4gb+ of ram and a quad core oc processor, 10000+ rpm hd, and i think this is the starting place for me to recilce my info... The OC is still on my veins, since the pentium1 era, i just don´t know the names of the best performers of today... But now i found the trail... The rest of the stuff and details will be asked somewhere... In the next 2 months i´ll start asking help to the guys here!

Thanks again... Got a lot to read... The @crilicM@n is back from the laptop slowmotion world! Tired of these tiny hot things...

 

[hajalie24]

Nice, maybe I can overclock my q6600 with this tut, right now all I can get it too is 2.9 ghz without increasing voltage.

 

[golfking222]

This is a great guide and it has really got me thinking about the E8400, X38, DDR2-1066 build which is to arrive at my doorstep in a couple of days.

So specifically I've got an E8400, DFI DK X38-T2RB, G.Skill 2x2GB DDR2-1066, and a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 HSF coming. I've been reading a bit and was wondering if it would be realistic to run a 533FSBx8 while keeping the vcore below that 1.36 running 24/7. I'm kind of getting the feeling that that whole scenario isn't going to happen with "safe" voltages.

I'm probably not going anywhere near 1.4v, so mainly my question is should I set up something like a 4:5 divider with a 426FSBx9=3834 keeping the RAM at 1066. Or should I try to keep a 1:1 with something like 500x8 and underclocking the RAM to 1000 while trying to lower the timings (probably very little).

If I took the first route would a vcore below 1.36 reach 3.8GHz?
If I took the second route, same question as above but, in addition, what kind of timings do you think I could produce?

I'm kind of excited

 

[Ancient_1]

This is a great guide and it has really got me thinking about the E8400, X38, DDR2-1066 build which is to arrive at my doorstep in a couple of days.

So specifically I've got an E8400, DFI DK X38-T2RB, G.Skill 2x2GB DDR2-1066, and a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 HSF coming. I've been reading a bit and was wondering if it would be realistic to run a 533FSBx8 while keeping the vcore below that 1.36 running 24/7. I'm kind of getting the feeling that that whole scenario isn't going to happen with "safe" voltages.

I'm probably not going anywhere near 1.4v, so mainly my question is should I set up something like a 4:5 divider with a 426FSBx9=3834 keeping the RAM at 1066. Or should I try to keep a 1:1 with something like 500x8 and underclocking the RAM to 1000 while trying to lower the timings (probably very little).

If I took the first route would a vcore below 1.36 reach 3.8GHz?
If I took the second route, same question as above but, in addition, what kind of timings do you think I could produce?

I'm kind of excited

I think running 533x8 is a little optimistic for 24/7 operation but may be doable with you setup. I ran mine the 1st couple months at 467x9 with vcore of 1.38 and vdimm of 2.15 (4-4-4-12) everything else auto and VCore Droop Control set to disable (basicly eliminates vdrop&vdroop and mine ends up with a load vcore of abot.01 higher than set in bios).

That shot was of occt (can't find any of the prime tests I did) which was fine with 1.325 in bios, but to be completely stable 24/7 and 24hrs of prime it needs 1.365 in bios which is 1.38 load.

But now I am running 3.87 (430x9) with vcore set to auto and 3% special add VCore Droop Control set to enable vdimm 1.95 (4-4-4-10) which gives me idle of 1.13 and load of 1.23 on my cpu. Which is the way I prefer since it is cooler and much easier on the components. I do a lot of encoding TV HD to xvid and many nights I will do 8~9 1-hour (40~43mins actual) long shows to 343meg xvid for archiving and at 4.2 will take aprox 8hrs and at 3.87 it will add about an hour to that, but since I do while sleeping the extra hour makes no difference.
As far as your memory goes I would keep it at 1:1 (there is only a small gain by running it faster than 1:1 and with the extra speed it adds heat and will affect durability a lil) and adjust timings and/or voltage down depending on what fsb you end up with.

Load

Idle

 

[_D4VE_]

Quick question....
Im running a ASUS P5Q Deluxe, and in the BIOS settings theres a setting called "Intel Virtualization Tech" is this the same as Vanderpool Technology?

 

[basso4735]

Right now my q6600 is at 378x9, 3.4ghz. My vcore is 1.35 load read by cpu-z. My load temps have not gone above 62c, the hottest core ranges from 59-62 while priming. I have a xigmatek s1283, I was wondering if anyone thinks a TRUE will bring the temps down at all. Also, how it the o/c for a 1.3vid q6600?

Oh yeah, I resat the heatsink tonight so hopefully i'll drop a few degrees in the next few days.