"MP INIT" on Striker Extreme with Q6600

[gshau]

I'm running my Q6600 on my Striker Extreme board and I seem to be hitting an FSB wall at 350mhz (1400FSB), so I've tried various overclocks to get past this wall and all have been unsuccessful.

First a little bit of information,
I have a Thermalright 120 Extreme with AS5 and even on these high overclocks I haven't seen any temps over 35C.
I've got PC2-8500 RAM that I have underclocked so it won't hinder the CPU overclock.

I've lowered my CPU multiplier from 9 to 6 and changed my voltages to
CPU Vcore 1.4
RAM 2.2
HT 1.4
NB 1.4
SB 1.6
CPU VTT 1.35

All my spread sprectrums are disabled as well.

Now from the reviews I've seen I should be able to get 400mhz (1600FSB) on my system, but the maximum overclock I've gotten so far is 9x333mhz to get 3.0ghz with 1333FSB.

Any attempts to go past 350mhz with gets me a "MP INIT" message on my LCD debugger; to tell you the truth I'm not even sure what MP INIT means.

What am I doing wrong/does anyone have any suggestions here, I'd appreciate any advice.


Thanks

 

[BenchZowner]

Not every Striker Extreme reaches 400MHz FSB out of the box, and mainly most stuck way behind 400MHz FSB with stock Vgtl.

Try with the following voltages:
Vht = 1.55V
Vnb = 1.65V
Vsb = 1.6V
CPU VTT = 1.45V [ it's been long time since I played with my dead strikers, so I'm not sure if 1.45V is available in stock cond. )

Make sure you cool the NB & SB good.

To get high FSBs with the Striker and the Quad you need to perform a mod to alter the GTL voltage.

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: BenchZowner
Not every Striker Extreme reaches 400MHz FSB out of the box, and mainly most stuck way behind 400MHz FSB with stock Vgtl.

Try with the following voltages:
Vht = 1.55V
Vnb = 1.65V
Vsb = 1.6V
CPU VTT = 1.45V [ it's been long time since I played with my dead strikers, so I'm not sure if 1.45V is available in stock cond. )

Make sure you cool the NB & SB good.

To get high FSBs with the Striker and the Quad you need to perform a mod to alter the GTL voltage.

agreed!

the striker extreme is not a high fsb board for quads.

as benchzowner said, you need to do the GTL vmod for the board to get higher.

if you want a 680i board for quad overclocking the DFI 680i and eVGA 680i are both good for higher fsb's

 

[BonzaiDuck]

With the dual-core E6600, I was able to punch my Striker Extreme up to 370 Mhz, FSB 1,480 Mhz using the same "divider-ratio" strategy (1:1 -- QDR = 2 x DDR2).

With the Q6600, I believe there is a limit just above 360 Mhz, DDR2 720 and FSB 1,440 Mhz.

With the E6600, I may nevertheless underestimated the TRUE limit, because I left the CPU_VTT (FSB term voltage) at "Auto." With the Q6600, I was able to get a stable over-clock with multiplier = 8 at 360 Mhz by bumping up the CPU-VTT to 1.35V.

The my manually set voltages for 1.2HT, NBcore and SBcore are more conservative than some reported in this thread.

IMHO, the Striker Extreme board is well-worth it and a "Cadillac." But it is not a Ferrari, or even a Mustang. And getting the highest clock speeds is not the only reason to buy a board, nor might it necessarily be the most important reason. Of course, with other boards like the P5N32-SLI in the ASUS line [keep in mind also that the P5K board is out -- supporting the new Intel chipset] -- you can also get "8-cycle voltage regulation," "capless power design," and "Stack-Cool" technology.

Ah still luvs mah Striker Extreme, though.

 

[BenchZowner]

From my review of the P5K3 Deluxe

Take note that the max stable FSB ( with the same board ) with a Core 2 Quad series processor is lower than what you get with a Core 2 Duo series processor.
For example with a E6600 and the P5K3 Deluxe we've reached a max stable FSB of 602MHz while with a Q6600 we ended up at 493MHz FSB.
One thing's for sure, the Asus P5K Series boards ( P5K / P5K Deluxe / P5K-E / P5K3 Deluxe ) are the ideal motherboards for overclocking a Core 2 Quad series processor.The average retail FSB overclock with these boards & a Core 2 Quad processor is well over 450MHz ( with no modifications at all )
One more thing, there seems to be a motherboard/CPU combo limitation out there which limits the max stable FSB, meaning that while our P5K3 Deluxe reached 602MHz stable FSB with the E6600, with our X6800 it couldn't even pass 530MHz, even un-stable. Originally people believed that there's a FSB "wall" within each CPU, but it seems now that it's a CPU+Motherboard combo related wall.