Overclocking 8500 (first timer)

[spidy]

Antec 900
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
Intel C2D 8500 (air cooled w/ XIGMATEK HDT-S1283)
Crucial Ballistix ddr2-800 (CL4)
Sapphire 4870 1GB

Alright, so i've got everything installed and updated. i've downloaded CoreTemp, RealTemp, HWMonitor, Speedfan and Everest.

i would like to hit at least 3.8GHz (9.5 x 400), and from what i've read that should be very easy, so i'll push on from there once i know what i'm doing.

my only concern before i start is that one of my cores is 7° C warmer than the other (31° and 38° when Tjmax is 100°C). is something wrong? shouldn't they be practically the same?

 

[w2richwood]

mine stops reading temps any lower the 36 on one of my core's but read's right at load temp's so all's well.that should clock up read well eo. stepping even better 4.0 easy
Rich

 

[spidy]

Yeah, it's the E0, i was happy to find that out since Newegg is luck of the draw as to what you'll get.

 

[w2richwood]

well get to pushing it lets see some clock's
Rich

 

[FBPerformance]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=585572

Take a look, I was having similar concerns myself, but all is good

 

[spidy]

so just go into bios, crank the FSB to 400 and that should be good for now?

 

[spidy]

in the gigabyte bios, is "CPU host clock control" the same as FSB? (that i need to crank to 400?)

 

[karkas]

in the gigabyte bios, is "CPU host clock control" the same as FSB? (that i need to crank to 400?)

I'm unfamiliar with the gigabyte BIOS, if "cpu host clock control" is at 333, then yes.... turn it up to 400. If you fail to POST after that reset CMOS and just turn it up 30 mhz or so instead.

 

[spidy]

that's the strange part, because it's at 266, and the mobo instructions says "for a 800MHz FSB CPU, set this item to 200MHz, for 1066 FSB, set to 266, for 1333MHz, set to 333, and a 1600FSB set to 400". the total range of values it can be is 100MHz to 1200MHz... i wish they just called it what it was!

anyone with a gigabyte mobo know for sure?

 

[hokiealumnus]

Photos of the BIOS screen may be helpful for those unfamiliar with Gigabyte. It sounds like that could either be the FSB setting (if it has a variable value) or the strap setting (if it only has the four values that you mention as selections in a menu).

Bear in mind that you will need to make sure your RAM can make it to the speed you'll be overclocking it to by raising FSB to 400. You'll probably need to set it manually to a 1:1 ratio, meaning it'll run the rated 400MHz / DDR2-800.

 

[spidy]

you type in the value you want it to be, from 100 to 1200, so it is probably the FSB?
i have ddr2-800, so 400 will be 1:1

 

[UnrealAlex]

I think I had that problem with my board too, did you update your bios yet? Gigabyte has a Windows bios update program called @BioS which is pretty easy to use. You just download the new bios for your board from their site, run @BioS, the select the file and update.

 

[slb785]

My E8500 hit 4.5ghz 500x9 easy right out of the box with a minimal voltage increase. I maybe just got lucky but im sure you should be able to hit your mark of 3.8 with no sweat. 4.0 is almost a guarantee with that thing

 

[spidy]

can't believe i missed that. updating that now, will update soon.

 

[spidy]

alright, so i'm going to do this. so far i've OC'd a little leaving the settings on auto, and they've not failed me or gotten too hot.

i'm gonna try someone elses stable settings, although they probably have the C0, so it'll be overkill, but it's a first try.

450 x 9 Vcore @ 1.3625

EDIT:

FAIL! after a couple attempts at starting, it reverted to 9 x 333MHz, so i'll have to take it slower, i guess.
right now everything is on auto except for the FSB and the Vcore, is there more that i should have manually adjusted?

So right now i seem to be stable at 3.8GHz (400x9.5), Vcore at 1.248. temps are ~50C
(after 9 minutes core 1 failed due to rounding being .5 instead of < .4, don't know what that means...)

the mobo auto adjusted my memory (ddr2-800 @ 4-4-4-12) to 480MHz @ 5-5-5-18 (5:6 ratio), but i think i could make that better, agreed?
i've got crucial ballistix, and i can use EPP, anyone know how?

 

[hokiealumnus]

So right now i seem to be stable at 3.8GHz (400x9.5), Vcore at 1.248. temps are ~50C
(after 9 minutes core 1 failed due to rounding being .5 instead of < .4, don't know what that means...)

Sorry to say that simply means you're not stable yet.

the mobo auto adjusted my memory (ddr2-800 @ 4-4-4-12) to 480MHz @ 5-5-5-18 (5:6 ratio), but i think i could make that better, agreed?
i've got crucial ballistix, and i can use EPP, anyone know how?

Unless something has changed recently, I believe only nVidia chipsets can read EPP. Intel chipsets require good old manual settings. Your OC could be failing from any number of things, but this is a likely culprit. Drop your ratio to 1:1 to keep it closer to specs. You can worry about overclocking that later (if you choose) after you get your CPU where you want it.

 

[spidy]

i was going to force the memory to run at 4-4-4-12 @ 2.0 since that's what they're rated at, but i got too tired and fell asleep. once i get back to my computer tonight i will set the memory timings and then try the OC to 3.8GHz.

 

[Sunburn74]

hey, i honestly suggest setting your ram timings manually but not the 444-12. way too tight. go 555-15 or 555-18 on a 333 strap w 2.00b as the multiplier.

just so you know ocing in easy tune is ok. just remember that easy tune doesn't save anything to your bios so you have to manually go in and enter the bios settings yourself. however beware!!! the bios cpu ref valueand the bios cpu mch ref values don't correspond exactly to the easy tune value. everything else is a direct reading, but for some reason the ga-p45s don't want to show you actual mch refs or cpu refs.

IE easy tune my show a cpu ref of 0.76 and in the bios the value is set to 0.836. Relax. they are the same thing. Even more so, as long as you don't directly change the cou ref or the mch ref, it'll always read the same thing despite the slight automatic altering the bios will do to that value when you change cpu vtts.

For example, if at 1.2 cpu vtt, my manually inputted bios cpu ref is 0.736 and in easytune is shown as 0.7

and i change my cpu vtt to say 1.26 and only change that value,

the bios will automatically alter my manually inputted bios cpu ref value (to maybe 0.786) without you doing anything. However, its not changing the actual red value by easy tune which will still be 0.7. Do you you understand? it means despite the values seemingly changing before your eyes, they really aren't. Easy tune is always right. Always.

Anyway I suggest dropping your multiplier to 6x and finding the highest possible ram/mch/fsb settings that you can run at 6x. In other words you are pushing your board and ram to the max and ensuring that they are stable at that high speed you want to run and that any failures after this point will not be because of board or ram voltages.

Once you've found that super high fsb you like, simply increase the multiplier and adjust cpu voltages.

 

[spidy]

using easy tune's automatic green/yellow/red OC settings go in such uneven intervals, and doesn't go as high as i know this can go. or are you talking about the manual settings through easy tune?

i'm not totally understanding what you're saying about the automatic changes between easytune and the bios.

 

[spidy]

what does the memory multiplier mean? where can i figure out what they all mean? it says i should use x.xxA for 266MHz, B for 333, C for 200 and D for 400. so confused!!!