HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - A Guide v1.7

[roid450]

I was just thinking of that yesterday, Im planning on water cooling before the summer. It gets around 100F outside here and ~90ºs all the time. If we don't have the AC on in the house my room can get into the ~80ºs

If I wanna keep it at 3.4 in the summer I'd have to water cool, I dont like noise and dont plan to run my fan on max. It's around 34Db on max

 

[polarbear6]

wooooooooooow some really hot place where do u live .......

here in india its same
i have cheaper alternative i will underclock my processor
and come winter i will sell it off and buy a laptop cause i cant see a processor being burnt before my eyes

 

[roid450]

I live in San Diego, Southern California. Im pretty sure this year its gonna SUCKKKK! This winter has been all warm, I havent had to use any jackets and last yr at this time i was using a Jacket everyday.

Last summer we had says up to 108º and nights were in the ~70S

 

[oslama]

Originally posted by: oslama
is the FSB limited by cpu bus speed ? ie if cpus is 9x333 then fsb cant go over. does the ram spd need to be adjusted to match cpu fsb ?


running a qx6850 (9x333) 3.0ghz on a gigabyte EP45DS3r with F10 bios


Settings i have tried with no success
CPU multiplier 9x
FSB 350
CPU voltage 1.325
RAM 1gb x4, OCZ platinum 800 mhz at auto setting, voltage 1.8v

I am trying to get to 3.2ghz

thnks

Got 3.24 ghz on

CPU multiplier 9x
FSB 360mhz
CPU voltage 1.325v
MCH voltage 1.2v
RAM voltage 2.0v and ratio 2.6D at 400 mhz with timings at 5-5-5-15
Memory settings at NORMAL w/ RAM driving strength at 800 mhz

Changing some of the subsetting to "Normal" seems to do the trick.

 

[graysky]

@oslama - yeah, it's also unclear to me what effect those qualitative settings really have on performance. My DFI board has similar settings like, normal, fast turbo, or normal, aggressive, more aggressive. Might be interesting to run a set of benchmarks on a given setting, then repeat and look for changes.

 

[audiq7]

@graysky,

I've read your post and have particularly questions about the following 2 points :

PCI Express Frequency ? Set this to 100 MHz. If you don?t, I believe the PCIe bus speed will increase proportionally with your FSB which is something you DON?T want to do to your expensive video board.
- Should I set PCI-E frequency to 100Mhz when using a Radeon HD3850 which is PCI-Ex16 ?

PCI Clock Synchronization - Use 33.33 MHz here. Again, if you leave the setting on auto, the PCI clock will creep up proportionally with your FSB which can damage cards you may have there aren't designed to run at higher frequencies.
- My Asus P5K-E/Wifi-AP doesn't show anywhere a field to change the PCI Clock, as I have 2 TV cards using PCI slot, how could I be sure to fix the value to 33.33 MHz in order to not damage them.

My motherboard is ASUS P5K-E/Wifi-AP with BIOS 0906, proc is Q6600 G0, 2x1Gb G-Skill 6400

Thanks.

 

[graysky]

@audiq7 -
PCI-E frequency - my understanding is that you want to set it to 100 MHz for any PCI-E card.
PCI Clock Sync - different BIOS may call this option something else or may not have an option for it at all.

I'm unfamiliar with the P5K-E so I can't help. You might wanna start a new topic including the model of the MB so that folks who know might be drawn to it and help you further. Alternatively, you can try posting on the Asus MB forums as well.

 

[DeeRock]

Geez what a post. I must say I'm feeling a bit out of my league here. Hi I just joined this forum and I have a rather entry-level question. I have a Gateway MT6831 laptop. I do pro audio and the factory 1.73 GHz processor isn't going to cut it. I heard Tigerdirect.com is a good place to buy parts because the personnel are supposed to be trained well. I called them and I bought an Intel 2.6 GHz Quad Core processor for $199. That's 2.6 GHz PER Core. (Part# CP2-DUO-Q6700) I'm (fairly sure?) the processor will fit because it is the same socket (775). I know it's a little late to ask, but are you or anyone else aware of any issues I might encounter when putting a hi-performance processor in this laptop? I don't know much about this stuff... I'm more into music production than anything else.

Thank you very much!

Derek

 

[z1ggy]

I forget how i get my cpu to run at mult. 8 at all times. Under cpu-z it says 6x unless I am stress testing.

 

[graysky]

@DeeRock - You can't put a socket775 processor in a laptop; it's a desktop chip.
@z1ggy - that's speedstep... why would you want to disable it? There should be an option in your BIOS to do so.

 

[kextyn]

Stable or not?

Asus P5B, Q9400, Xigmatek Dark Knight HSF, 2x2GB OCZ Titanium DDR2-800, nVidia 8600GTS w/factory OC, Antec Truepower 2.0 430.
Multiplier: 8x, FSB: 400MHz
Vcore: 1.3125v reported by CPU-Z as 1.280v idle and 1.216v under load
FSB Term: 1.4v, NB: 1.25v, SB: 1.5v, ICH: 1.057v
RAM: 2.1v, 4-4-4-15 w/default settings for the rest
Core temps: 43-45C under load, 28-39C idle, 22C ambient

I ran Prime95 blend for 25 hours, 12 mins before it found an error on one core. Would you consider that stable? I was only going to run it for 24 hours but I didn't get home until 26.5 hours. It failed on core 3 (or the 4th one) which is also the core that always idles at 39C while the others are below 33C. What do you guys think?

EDIT:
I just ran a small FFU test for a few hours and the same core (#4) failed at 2 hours, 43 mins. I also seem to have an issue with the vcore voltage in the BIOS. Every time I look at the BIOS it goes back to Auto and I can't change it unless I hit enter, choose auto, save changes and exit, and enter the BIOS again. When I can't change it the text is yellow as well. I'm worried that if I just restart it without changing it back to what I had it set to it'll go back to auto. The last time I booted it up on auto at 3.2GHz I saw it over 1.5v in Windows.

 

[graysky]

@kextyn - not stable as you discovered in your edit. Dunno why the settings for vcore aren't getting saved after a reboot. Have you checked to see if you have the most recent BIOS revision? Perhaps this is a known issue w/ the P5B and your CPU? My opinion of the P5B having owned the Deluxe model is pretty low in retrospect. Plus, Asus has a pretty shitty rep of actually supporting older boards since they want you to spend $$$ on their new ones. What BIOS are you running?

 

[MikeShunt]

I'm gonna give credit where its dure and say that this guide rocks.

I used it to overclock 3 pc's in the last 4 months

thanks again

 

[Digitman0101]

:thumbsup:

Nice guide, makes me want to go out and purchase a quad core processor from Intel. I've have been an AMD boy for too long.

 

[maali]

I am getting tempted to overclock my i7 after reading this guide but then I think, it's already fast enough. Why bother?

 

[RaiderJ]

Awesome thread! Just picked up a Q6600 from a forum member and interested in doing a bit of overclocking! You should consider writing for a tech website semi-professionally.

 

[Theguynextdoor]

Thank you for the awesome guide!

 

[jrjiri]

Great guide! I'm looking for something even more detailed for the eVGA Classified X58 (760) and/or i7 920

The basics are all here but these newer boards are so riddled with features it'd take a decade for me to learn each one and I'm hoping if someone's done a break down/explore like this they have posted it someplace?

 

[bob009]

Hello.

I read in your guide that to OC a q6600 you have to change the 266 FSB, but what if my BIOS doesn't have that option, when I go into bios>cell menu I get the following options:

D.O.T. CONTROL: DISABLED
INTEL EIST: DISABLED
ADJUST CPU RATIO: [9]
SYSTEM CLOCK MODE with 3 options: AUTO, LINKED and MANUAL (default is set to AUTO)

When setting it to MANUAL I get 2 editable fields:
FSB CLOCK (MHz): 1066
MEMORY CLOCK (MHz): 533.

If I wanted to let's say get from 2.4GHz to 2.8 what should I change exactly ? Is it the 1066 number ?

My motherboard is a MSI MS-7346.

 

[Gillbot]

Hello.

I read in your guide that to OC a q6600 you have to change the 266 FSB, but what if my BIOS doesn't have that option, when I go into bios>cell menu I get the following options:

D.O.T. CONTROL: DISABLED
INTEL EIST: DISABLED
ADJUST CPU RATIO: [9]
SYSTEM CLOCK MODE with 3 options: AUTO, LINKED and MANUAL (default is set to AUTO)

When setting it to MANUAL I get 2 editable fields:
FSB CLOCK (MHz): 1066
MEMORY CLOCK (MHz): 533.

If I wanted to let's say get from 2.4GHz to 2.8 what should I change exactly ? Is it the 1066 number ?

My motherboard is a MSI MS-7346.

Yes, the C2D uses a "quad pumped" FSB so if you divide 1066 by 4 you get.... 266!!! Default speed is 266 with a 9 multiplier for 2.4GHz so to get to 2.8GHz, you would need 312 or FSB CLOCK (MHz): 1248 for your FSB which would yield 2808MHz.

 

[bob009]

Yes, the C2D uses a "quad pumped" FSB so if you divide 1066 by 4 you get.... 266!!! Default speed is 266 with a 9 multiplier for 2.4GHz so to get to 2.8GHz, you would need 312 or FSB CLOCK (MHz): 1248 for your FSB which would yield 2808MHz.

I increased the clock from 1066 to 1100 yesterday and computer stopped booting up, I shut it down and removed the PSU cables and plugged them back in and it booted back again but I was too scared to leave it at 1100 so I set it back to 1066. Why did that happen?

 

[Gillbot]

I increased the clock from 1066 to 1100 yesterday and computer stopped booting up, I shut it down and removed the PSU cables and plugged them back in and it booted back again but I was too scared to leave it at 1100 so I set it back to 1066. Why did that happen?

If you just changed the FSB without adjusting voltages or other settings such as memory timings, it's likely your system couldn't handle the overclock and wasn't stable enough to boot.

 

[ShadowVVL]

srry posted in the wrong thread