EVGA 680i - Overclock Questions & Compatibility

[Ridesy]

Sorry if these questions are a bit noobie, but I have only played with AMD overclocks so far and want to check out how far I can push OC using C2D on this 680i board before investing!?

Am not going for Quad Core yet, so will be looking at E6600 or possibly E6700 (if you guys can put up a good argument for it).

Looking at the EVGA 680i A1 motherboard and 2Gb Corsair Dominator PC8500 RAM.

Question is how this lot links together in the very overclock freindly BIOS and what can I expect to push the E6600 or E6700 to with watercooling (and come to it what waterblock would you recommend too)?

I get the basics that the CPU frequency base is 266Mhz so the E6600 has a max multiplier of x9 and the E6700 at x10, but with the FSB limit of 1333Mhz even on this EVGA 680i board, how do you make the most of the PC8500 RAM and the CPU without overloading the board FSB?

Any links to guides on overclocking C2D's would be great.

Thanks

Ridesy

 

[BoboKatt]

Hey there,
Ok let me give you a rundown of what I have:
eVga 680i
e6600
Ballixtic PC2-6400 (4-4-4-12) 2.2V 4 X 1024
eVGA 8800GTX
OCZ 700 PSU
a few HD and yada yada.

For cooling I use air tunic tower 120 and the 4 case fans in my Antec 900.

Currently I am running at 1.39V at 3200Mhz (9X 355). My RAM is undervolted to 2.075 and the other voltage settings are at their lowest I could enter.

The beauty of your 680i is that there are boatloads of options for RAM speed. In fact you could never get fast enough RAM to match to that board since you can link the RAM to run 1:1 (true). In other words my CPU is running at 355 quad pumped or what the 680i calls 1420 QFSB. This is the number you play with. You can run your RAM at 1:1 synched to this which is impossible as I am not aware of any RAM that runs at 1420 MHz.

There is another option for your RAM, which is Linked and Synched, which essentially halves the QFSB to the true double pumped speed of the RAM (so for me 710Mhz which is actually lower than my PC2-6400 is rated at -- 800mhz). Then there is yet another option where you can run your ram completely independent of the FSB -- which many do. Thus you can dial in whatever you want. I could in theory just slap in 800Mhz however at 710Mhz I can lower my timings substantially and it ends up giving me faster performance than 800 MHz and I can keep my RAM voltage low.

Complete walkthrough explaining everything you need to know about OC?ing this board from Nvidia:
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/45121/nforce_680i_sli_overclocking.pdf

EDIT: In regards to what you can expect.... well I was so hoping for 3600MHz (9x400 instead of 9X266). I really thought that pretty much any e6600 could do this. Wrong. Well I mean I can do it and it will run but I need to practically raise my Vcore to 1.6 and on air it's too much for my likes. What you might find like many others is that there is a sweet spot for your particular CPU. Mine at 3200Mhz runs COOL and quiet and on 1.39 V and actually I have been able to lower the voltage even more at times. However if I for some reason want to run say 50 MHz more or 100mhz I practically have to bump my voltage to 1.5V. It does not make any sense and I am still playing with it but honestly it?s not worth the extra few MHz to get all that heat and need to make my fans run higher which increases the noise etc.

On water cooling and maybe you will have a better CPU... you might hit 3600Mhz easy and beyond. Anyhow I would stick as 3600Mhz as my goal... period. That is one HELL of an overclock in anyone's book.

 

[Ridesy]

Bobokat

Thanks for that and will read the guide tonight in full, but from what you are explaining this gives another major question:

With all that flexibility does PC8500 memory make sense???

I thought the reason C2D owners were going for these very expensive DDRII RAM modules was expressly to be able to squeeze the most out of the OC on the C2D processors.

But if the EVGA board allows you to dial in a CPU OC and the totally independant of that a speed for RAM, do I need to invest in Dominator PC8500 RAM!?

Ridesy

 

[BoboKatt]

Ridesy,

Honestly... NO. When all this insanity started about RAM and what it could overclock to and its speed it was all intended for the e6300 and e6400 processors. Those had locked multipliers at 7x and 8x.

If you do the math, in order to overclock say a e6300 to very high speeds you were stuck with a 7x multiplier and in order to get say to 3400Mhz you had to have a FSB of 485Mhz. If folks INSISTED on running 1:1 then these crazy expensive sets of DDR2 RAM would make sense as for instance my PC2-6400 RAM maxed at 800mhz would have trouble doing that. If you have the e6400 CPU the situation was not as bad but again to keep RAM at 1:1 and with its multiplier of 8X folks were shooting for the stars and you would still need decent RAM. Dividers on many boards (not sure of newer revisions or bios updates) were VERY limited and did not have the flexibility you see now on the 680i or other boards. Some boards had really restrictive divider options... certainly not 20 to chose from.

Also keep in mind that a while back boards (of all types for the C2D) were not as stable as they are now with all the revisions and bios updates etc. Hence everyone thought that the best and fastest and most expensive sets of RAM provide possible or better compatibility.

I never understood the concept of paying so much for RAM if you were then going to buy such a ?cheapish? CPU. If you bought the e6600 then with its multiplier of X9 all you had to do was buy stock PC2-6400 that can run at 800Mhz (400FSB) natively and be done with it. Heck this is even if you got to 3600 MHz (9X400)? if you were lucky to get further chances are that your 800Mhz cheapish ram could stretch a bit still.

One thing I did not mention about our eVGA boards is that there were HUGE issues with the Dominator DDR2 RAM due to it?s voltage and native speed. If I remember correctly in the older bioses you COULD NOT run at its fastest speed so the best folks got was PC2-6400 MHZ speed. The board simply was not stable past 800MHz on RAM for many. Later bios fixes addressed some concerns but man there are still many that are pissed at how they are limited.

If you go to the forums of eVGA (under community) and look at the motherboard section you will see many folks found it completely useless to have that particular RAM. Not only would the board originally NOT let you run at the RAM's maximum speed but in many cases resulted in dead RAM. I never read much into it, as I never intended to ever buy that RAM or ever hope to reach those speeds 1:1.

However with that said, in theory with our boards as you can set your RAM to run independently of your FSB and not worry about dividers or 1:1 if you don?t want? you could OC your CPU to the most it can handle and then dial in the insane speeds that your RAM can handle. Effectively you would then have the best of both worlds. The jury is still out really on just how much ?perceivable? performance gain you would get from the RAM alone. My own tests have told me time and time again that the actual speed of the RAM is not as important as the latency you are able to set it at.

One last thing? our boards will allow you to run 1T speed for most RAM types ? unless you populate all 4 slots and then it forces me to go to 2T.

 

[Ridesy]

Bobokatt,

Thanks for the very useful background info!

One last question - what PC2-6400 RAM would you recommend as matched 2 x 1Gb kits (i.e. which is going to give the lowest latency and tightest times at stock 800Mhz)?

Ridesy

 

[Munkaz]

I also have my eye on this motherboard and I just found an incredible deal on a Patriot memory kit:

Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB 2X1GB PC2-8500 DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-9

Anyone know if this stuff will work with the board or not? I have heard about the compatibility issues with the 680i BIOS. Does anyone knwo if it's een cleared up yet?

I'd be pairing the modules\board with an e6600.

Thanks

 

[BoboKatt]

Ok well I tried both crucial Ballistix (PC2-6400 the 4-4-4-12 800mhz 2.2v) using both 2 X 1024 and 4 X 1024 and those work flawlessly. Not the greatest at oc?ing them but you can actually run quite faster on their latency 4-3-3-9 is as good as it's going to get and they react nicely to under voltage.

I also LOL have 2 different sets of Patriot ram... again PC2-6400 4-4-4-12 800mhz 2.2 and those work beautifully as well. In fact I tried mixing them in with the Ballistix and had no problem at all. It helps thought that they are essentially the same chip.

The other ones are the ones you mentioned Munkaz. I never ran them at their rated 1066 speeds as I always kept my speeds on that board for the ram to Linked and synched but again I had NO issues with them and i was able to really set them on much lower voltages and latencies.

The other RAM I would recommend is the TEAM ram 4-4-4-10 800Mhz
http://www.tankguys.biz/ddr2-44410-800m...sCsid=b5735184c1eb428e5234722a17fedcf5

Love that RAM and it works really nice.

I have not tested any other RAM modules but honestly any of the ones I mentioned at least on my board have been great.