Anyone out there with a good overclock on an Asus P5Q?

[Renegade227]

I am trying really hard to get a Prime95 stable 4Ghz (Q9650 @ 445x9) setup on my Asus P5Q (non pro, non deluxe). I've tried countless configurations with nearly every setting in BIOS (latest version) only to get erratic results in Prime95.

I've gotten Prime95 (blend) to run for 3 hours stable at times, but most of the time it will fail between 10 min to 1 hr.

I have noticed that users are able to get Prime stable 4+Ghz overclocks by fine tuning their GTL values...which are severely limited on my P5Q (I can only choose from 0.62x, 0.63x, and 0.65x) on the CPU GTL ref voltage.

Is there anyone out there who has gotten a stable quad core 4+GHz overclock on a regular P5Q? Is there any way to congifure my GTL's via software? Thanks for any help!

 

[n7]

I really hate to say this, but you're basically in the same situation as the poster of this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...ght_key=y&keyword1=p5q

My response to you is basically the same as i posted there.

Notice how he solved his problem

 

[Renegade227]

Shoot! I used to think the basic model of a motherboard was every bit as overclockable as the "deluxe" or high end models. I used to think the more expensive motherboards simply had more ports, gigabit ethernet, more RAID options, etc.

Never again will I make this mistake. :-(

I guess my only question now is:
I've been doing heavy 2-5 hour gaming sessions (doom3, MS FSX, HL2, LOTRO) at 445x9 for the past few months and have never had any hard crashes requiring a hot restart. All I can remember are 3-4 random "soft" game crashes (the program stops responding where I'll have to cntrl-alt-delete out of it).

So are "soft" crashes always a result of an unstable overclock? Or are they just the usual fluke crash attributed to windows, video drivers, etc?

 

[Phew]

Yeah Renegade, I went through the EXACT same issue you did (as noted in n7's link). Anything below a Deluxe in the P5Q lineup just won't overclock quads well.

The upgrade to the Gigabyte cost me less than $50 net, and that was for the UD3P. The UD3R would have been even cheaper, just lose a PCIE x16 slot (which I will probably never need anyway, but can't hurt).

Of course, the overclocking potential of the Q9650 on a UD3P inspired me to dump like $700 on a water cooling setup (in process), so overall it was an expensive upgrade

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Renegade227
Shoot! I used to think the basic model of a motherboard was every bit as overclockable as the "deluxe" or high end models. I used to think the more expensive motherboards simply had more ports, gigabit ethernet, more RAID options, etc.

Never again will I make this mistake. :-(

I guess my only question now is:
I've been doing heavy 2-5 hour gaming sessions (doom3, MS FSX, HL2, LOTRO) at 445x9 for the past few months and have never had any hard crashes requiring a hot restart. All I can remember are 3-4 random "soft" game crashes (the program stops responding where I'll have to cntrl-alt-delete out of it).

So are "soft" crashes always a result of an unstable overclock? Or are they just the usual fluke crash attributed to windows, video drivers, etc?

Yep, it used to be that way

My ASUS P5e deluxe IS a Rampage MB - it's BIOS can even be flashed into Rampage although the layout is a little different. When it failed and i got a [cheap open box] Rampage as a temporary replacement, i found that my e8600 was now stable at 4.33Ghz whereas i could only get 4.25 on the P5e deluxe. However, my q9550s is pretty much stuck at 4 Ghz on both MBs

IF you only get 3 or 4 game issues over 3 or 4 months .. you have a pretty stable OC; you can have those same issues with a stocked clocked stable PC

if they happen more often, back off on your OC

depending on what graphics cards you are running; the CPU overclock past a certain point brings diminishing returna

 

[Renegade227]

Yeah I think my system's relatively solid game stability doesn't warrant the time and money of upgrading to a high end motherboard...at least for the next year or so.

At least from my perspective, it seems like Prime95 6-12 hour stability metric may be a bit overkill for real-world stability? Do you guys agree?

 

[KingstonU]

My Q9550 on P5Q Pro got to 3.6 with little difficulty, however 3.7 gave me a hard time so I didn't bother. I posted a full walkthrough of my steps if it might help you. My 3.6 settings would get you 3.81GHz with your 9 x multiplier. I think I could have gotten 3.7GHz with a bit more effort and stress on the system, which would give you 3.91 GHz.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Renegade227
Yeah I think my system's relatively solid game stability doesn't warrant the time and money of upgrading to a high end motherboard...at least for the next year or so.

At least from my perspective, it seems like Prime95 6-12 hour stability metric may be a bit overkill for real-world stability? Do you guys agree?

some of these guys swear by it

the rest of us, swear at it


i never bother with it .. unless i am testing something specific

"real world" testing .. overall PC stability over months is my goal

 

[Renegade227]

Sure, post your BIOS settings. I am curious.

 

[blackpanther26]

I got to 4Ghz with the Q9650 on the P5Q-Pro. 1.32v core and 1.3v FSB termination 1.28v NB.

 

[Renegade227]

blackpanther, is your setup Prime95 stable?

 

[blackpanther26]

I can say this. It is gaming stable and 3 instances of F@H stable. I really have not tested P95 for more than 40 minutes.

 

[Renegade227]

I know what you mean. My overclock tends to fail on 1 core after 1-3 hours of prime95. But it never hard crashes in games (requiring a restart). In the past 4 months, I only remember 3-4 hangs were I'd have to cntrl alt delete out of the game. I don't even know if those are OC-related crashes.

In my experience so far, you don't need to have 12 hour Prime95 stability to have real-world stability.

 

[KingstonU]

Originally posted by: Renegade227
In my experience so far, you don't need to have 12 hour Prime95 stability to have real-world stability.

I found the same, could not get 3.7GHz prime95 stable for more than 1 hour, but never had a problem in any real world use including games. I put it back to 3.6 because whenever I'm doing school work I don't want to take the chance to restart or lose any kind of data.