Please help with my new/used rig, need to game with my son.

[Kbird]

Hello,

Sitting in the office today (boss is in Houston) I have a little time to explain the background on my overclocking adventure.
I built an awesome new gaming rig $2K for my son and now he wants me to play online with him. (He lives with his Mom) I came across an Asus P5N-D and it had 4-gigs of ddr2 PNY 6400 ram in it so I purchased 4-gigs of the same brand from Amazon giving a total of 8 gigs running Windows 7 64 bit professional. I also acquired an Intel Q6600 SLACR with the G0 stepping for $26.17 from Amazon and bought a new MSI GTX 770. When I built my son's I bought a used case to fit his MSI GTX 980ti and the case came with a 980 watt power supply which I'm using for my MSI GTX 770. His card required two 8 pin PCI power inputs and the power supply that came with the used case only had an 8 and 6 pin PCI power inputs so I bought a new power supply for his rig and I'm using the old power supply since the MSI GTX 770 only needs the 8 and 6 pin power inputs. I forgot to look but I think the old power supply that I’m using is an OCZ brand. In the past I was able to overclock and remember all the settings but it’s been years since I have done any gaming or overclocking. Plus I’m broke $ after building my son’s machine.
So my question is how can I overclock my rig LOL? I watched a few You Tube videos but I wanted to see what the real Overclockers had to say about bottlenecks, voltage settings on processor, ram, NB, SB etc.

My used/new rig

Case, old Antec, I use Duct Tape to close it LOL
Windows 7 Professional 64bit (extra copy from the office)
Samsung 850 EVO SSD 250 GB (New)
Power Supply OCZ 980 watt (used but free$)
ASUS P5N-D (used but free$)
Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz SLACR (used but only cost $26.17 )
Antec kuhler h2o 650 water cooler (new) didn’t do my research just bought it
8 gigs of PNY DDR2 800 MHz PC2-6400 (used paid $44)
MSI GTX 770 video card (New) but I used my Citi thank you points and got a $150 off the price.
Asus SATA DVD Drive

I hope the Overclockers have the time for me, I ran 3dMark Skydiver and the physics test only produced 18 fps. The rest of the test I had 160 fps at 1080p.

Thanks in advance!

 

[don256us]

You may be able to overclock this. I use the work *may* because of the age of this CPU. When it was new, the G0 stepping was very good. As such they were sought out and used up. There is a good chance that it was used hard and put away wet. This could affect your outcome.

I believe that this unit runs a fsb oc 1066 (divided by 4) which will have a BIOS setting of about 267 MHz. You can adjust that up but know that each MHz up translates to 40 MHz as the end result for the RAM? I'm not sure how the fsb of 1066 MHz on the CPU relates to the 267 MHz you will find in the BIOS settings.

The multiplier for this chip will be 9. (9 * 267 = 2.4)

If you bump up the MHz, you will increase the speed of the CPU and RAM. If you increase the multiplier, you will only increase the CPU.

In typical fashion for me, I would bump of the multiplier first. Change it from 9 to 10 that will give you a 2.6 instead of 2.4. If that remains stable, try 11 which will give you 2.9 GHz Do this until it is no longer stable then go back down to the last stable setting.

Once you've established this, bump up the MHz. Only do this a few MHz at a time to start with. Go from 267 to 270 for example. If you got a multiplier of 11 times 270 MHz, you would have 2.97 GHz.

Here's where the fun comes in. Once you hit the top end setting in multiplier and/or MHz, you can up the voltage to the CPU in hopes of getting more stability. So maybe a 10 multiplier works but 11 doesn't. You up the voltage and maybe the 11 multiplier works great. The same with MHz.

Keep in mind that increasing the multiplier, MHz and voltage all increase heat so hopefully your cooler can keep up.

*edit* There are no settings for NB/SB. The RAM is tied to the fsb. It is possible to try to get all of your OC by increasing the fsb but your RAM may limit your stability. You can try to up the voltage for your RAM to counter that. DDR2 will be your bottle neck but I would stick with the combination of multiplier then fsb as described above.

 

[Conumdrum]

One question is what games do you plan to play?

 

[caddi daddi]

your 770 card is a good choice, I use one also and find driver 327.23 works best for me, best of luck.

 

[Kbird]

so far I've passed the 3.6 overclock following your instructions. I only have a 5-9 multiplier on this board. My ram seems to be holding me back so I'll stick with the 3.6 Ghz for now. Any suggestions on the P5N-D voltage I have to have it at 1.50 voltage for this to be stable. My motherboard has voltage settings for the NB SB should I leave at auto or increase for stability? I am using a 9 multiplier at 1600 and my ram shows 800. So this is probably as high as I can go? I can't stand that the physics test on 3dmark is so bad. Would overclocking the MSI GTX 770 fix this problem?

- - - Updated - - -

One question is what games do you plan to play?

not sure yet. probably a battlefield 4 or day z game.

also should I change the timings on the ram on the website it says 4-4-4-12 should I loosen up the timings?

My highest temp is 60c is that too high using Prime 95?

I have some ddr3 I don't think that will work with my P5N-D?

 

[Kbird]

it just crashed at 3.6 on prime95 I guess I'm stuck with 3.4GHz any suggestions?

 

[tachi1247]

You may be able to overclock this. I use the work *may* because of the age of this CPU. When it was new, the G0 stepping was very good. As such they were sought out and used up. There is a good chance that it was used hard and put away wet. This could affect your outcome.

I believe that this unit runs a fsb oc 1066 (divided by 4) which will have a BIOS setting of about 267 MHz. You can adjust that up but know that each MHz up translates to 40 MHz as the end result for the RAM? I'm not sure how the fsb of 1066 MHz on the CPU relates to the 267 MHz you will find in the BIOS settings.

The multiplier for this chip will be 9. (9 * 267 = 2.4)

If you bump up the MHz, you will increase the speed of the CPU and RAM. If you increase the multiplier, you will only increase the CPU.

In typical fashion for me, I would bump of the multiplier first. Change it from 9 to 10 that will give you a 2.6 instead of 2.4. If that remains stable, try 11 which will give you 2.9 GHz Do this until it is no longer stable then go back down to the last stable setting.

Once you've established this, bump up the MHz. Only do this a few MHz at a time to start with. Go from 267 to 270 for example. If you got a multiplier of 11 times 270 MHz, you would have 2.97 GHz.

Here's where the fun comes in. Once you hit the top end setting in multiplier and/or MHz, you can up the voltage to the CPU in hopes of getting more stability. So maybe a 10 multiplier works but 11 doesn't. You up the voltage and maybe the 11 multiplier works great. The same with MHz.

Keep in mind that increasing the multiplier, MHz and voltage all increase heat so hopefully your cooler can keep up.

*edit* There are no settings for NB/SB. The RAM is tied to the fsb. It is possible to try to get all of your OC by increasing the fsb but your RAM may limit your stability. You can try to up the voltage for your RAM to counter that. DDR2 will be your bottle neck but I would stick with the combination of multiplier then fsb as described above.

The multiplier on those chips is locked. He can only move it down....
The ram won't limit the OC because he can change the ratio of the FSB to RAM to a lower one to keep the RAM within its rated specification. The limiting factor is going to be something on the NB more than likely.



OP, check out the guide on how to OC your processor here.

I have the same chip in an old rig and I was never able to get past 3.0.

Obviously you're not going to even get close to touching performance of the new computer you built for your son, but you probably knew that already.

 

[Kbird]

Thank you all so very much. I will keep this post alive until we are all satisfied that I've reached my goal! And yes I know I'll never be able to compete with my son's machine, it's a BEAST! But he's a great kid and saved $600 for the purchase of the video card. I told him you buy the card and I'll take care of the rest, what a mistake $$$ LOL. He's only 12 and I didn't think he could save that much money in such a short time. But he mowed lawns and made good grades (I think his grandma helped him out)

tachi1247 thank you for that link!

 

[Dlaw]

Wait, did you just say that your 12Y/O saved enough money to buy a 980TI? My kids need lessons! Heck, I do too!

The biggest thing holding that system back is the CPU/MOBO. However, I think it'd do just fine on Day-Z and BF4 at 1080p, though you may need to turn down settings. I don't think I'd even overclock it until I knew how it performed in game, TBH.

 

[Kbird]

Well I finally tried it all and I'm stable at 3.48 GHz and the ram is at 870. This is all with prime95 with errors enabled. Now lets see if I need to overclock the MSI GTX 770.