DELL XPS 630 Overclocking

[poached]

... Repost from SSF, Notebook forum due to lack of responses.

I have a XPS 630 with Q6600 and 3 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 RAM. I want to overclock but I can't get anywhere. I have never owned a C2Q chip before and I have never overclocked Intel stuff, but I was under the impression that 3GHz for Q6600 is easy.

Can anyone share what settings they are using?

My memory dividers are 1:1, 4:3, 5:4, sync(?). There are also linked, unlinked modes for FSB and memory. With these divider settings at FSB 1333 in linked mode my memory goes above 800 and won't boot (btw, how do you clear the bios). So I tried sync which puts the memory at 666 but that doesn't work either. I had the most success with unlinked FSB=1333 and MEM=800, but vista chokes on boot up. I up the voltage of the CPU to 1.35 and also memory to 2. I also upped the other two voltages by 0.05 and still doesn't work.

If anyone can help I'd really appreciated it! This is one sweet system as it is, but for some applications having a faster single core helps.

 

[angry hampster]

You expect that much of an overclock with a prebuilt machine? They generally have subpar airflow (cooling) and use weaker chipsets.

Don't mean to thread crap, but you really shouldn't expect a whole llot.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, anything more than a couple hundred mhz is really pushing it on a dell/hp/etc. The people getting mammoth oc's on Q6600's are building them themselves, specifically with a strong focus on cpu cooling, good mobo, good mobo cooling, and good case airflow (or, better yet, on water).

 

[Tweakin]

On the bright side...you still have a really nice system!

 

[BrownMofo]

The XPS 630 actually overclocks very well. I'm running an E8400 on mine tho.

 

[poached]

also, extremetech's article clearly states that they could hit 3ghz. - DUH!

I just read the article again and it seems like the system they reviewed is using a dual core processor.

DUH!

 

[revolutn]

I would advise you to consider trying the BSEL mod since you won't have many Bios related options to tweak on a Dell.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=499340

 

[poached]

So I managed to go to CPU multiplier to 6x and FSB up to 1333!

I will try upping the multiplier to 9x like it should and see if I can get to 3.0GHz.

One thing I'm not sure about is the HT speed setting in the bios (see the bios picture on this page: http://www.extremetech.com/art...0,1697,2271797,00.asp)
When I had the HT speed at 5x like the default, it wouldn't boot over 1148 FSB. so I changed it to 1x and now I'm at 1333 FSB. So what is it and what does it do? I know there is a HT multi on AMD chips but this is Intel!! I'm confused.

 

[d0rkangle]

A friend mentioned this thread to me. hi.

Over at ars I posted a thread about my 3 Ghz overclock on my XPS 630. It's at http://episteme.arstechnica.co...7909585/m/221005381931

The photos of the BIOS screen are the stable settings. (Running the FSB at 1333 now instead of 1332).

Still trying to get it stable at 3.2, haven't managed yet, and have been actually using my PC so I haven't had time to experiment.

 

[poached]

Those volts are amazing.

My CPU voltage is at 1.3, FSB at 1.4, and it is still not Prime stable. I did also overclock the mem but that doesn't really add too much performance increase so I may just stick to stock settings. I had one game crash at stock memory but it was prime stable. What bios version are you using? I'm on 1.02. I don't think I'll even try going to 3.2.

Thanks for sharing your settings it did help me quite a bit.

 

[d0rkangle]

Have BIOS revision 1.0.1. I literally bought this thing as soon as they were available.

I'm bluescreening after a few days up, I tried bumping up the chipset voltage to see if that fixes it. If not, I may give me ram another bump and see what happens. I'm not OCing the memory, but I had to bump up the ram volts just to get it stable.