GA-965P-DS4 newbie

[neildo]

Having made the leap from Athlon XP/AGP/DDR to the 965P-DS4 with a Conroe E6600, 2gb 4-4-4-12 DDR800 (GeiL) Radeon X1900GT etc...

First issue I had was the Zalman 9500 not seated properly and getting 50c+ in bios. Reseated and now hovering around 25c in bios.

I've flashed the bios to f7e.

I can't make any changes to the FSB without the system rebooting until it recovers in its safe mode - ie. no POSTing.

I've set the memory timings manually to the ram spec: 4-4-4-12.

Am I missing something?

If there a definitive guide for overclocking this board (or its variant)?

Thanks for any help guys

neildo.

 

[myocardia]

Core 2 Duo's are the hardest to overclock processors ever. It's definitely worth it, but they make overclocking with a Skt. 754 or 939 processor seem like candy. Of course, once you've turned off the 10 or so things in the BIOS that have to be turned off, it will be as easy to OC as a P4 or an Athlon XP. Try reading these two guides: Yoxxy's C2D guide, and Tom's hardware C2D guide. And welcome to Anandtech.

 

[Yarek]

neildo, core2duo is one of the easiest processors to overclock. As myocardia mentioned you have to turn off some things in the Bios but you can easily find a guide. Look for the DS3 guides as essentially DS4 is the same motherboard.
Your problem is with bios.
First - change the bios to f7c.I had similar problems with f7e.
Second -type Ctrl +F1 in bios menu to see and change memory timings.
I also have DS4 and Geil 800Mhz@952 -5-5-5-15, E6300@3,33 GHz so with E6600 you have even better overclockability.
I am sure that changing the bios will help you.

 

[neildo]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Turns out that f7e bios was causing the problem. Flashed f5 and started tweaking the settings and whey-hey, now running @ 3.6ghz on 400mhz fsb. Rock solid. Something like 5096 scored in 3d Mark 06

Should the Geil ram be able to go beyond 800mhz? (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-058-GL)

 

[Yarek]

You could try to overclock your e6600 even more but don't expect much, you have already maxed out you system.
You RAM and motherboard are not holding you back so if the processor allows try higher. Check if the DS4 properly sets the RAM voltage you should set it in the higher bounds that are allowed.
I wish I had bought e6600 instead of e6300 I can't go past 3.4 GHz.
With your RAM you could probably near 1 GHz 5-5-5-15, just lower the processor's multiplier. I think it is not worthwhile though. You are lucky to have got 3,6 Mhz especially if it is on air cooling.