Need help OCing an e6600

Fabregas

Junior Member
Dec 5, 2007
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These are my specs :
e6600
G.Skill - F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ
Asus Blitz Formula SE
Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme
8800 GTS 320mb
Corsair HX620W

The problem is that my highest stable oc (12 hrs orthos) is 3348 Mhz (9 x 372)

I was wondering if thats the limit of my chip or maybe some setting is wrong.

Here are the settings :

http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bios1yi6.jpg

http://img456.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bios2td3.jpg

(in case you couldnt read it clearly)
Cpu Voltage : 1.5 V
FSB Termination Voltage : 1.40 V
North Bridge Voltage : 1.55 V
South Bridge Voltage : 1.50 V
DRAM Voltage : 2.00 V
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Nice rig, welcome to AnandTech!

Motherboard
Ok, I am pretty sure you dont need to raise the Northbridge voltage that high to get just a 12% overclock on the FSB. CPU voltage seems high as well! Mine reaches 3.4ghz on just 1.375V in the BIOS (and that's for 4 cores). Adding too much voltage to the NB will only increase heat and can create instability.

You can isolate the amount of voltages needed for FSB, Southbridge and Northbridge by simply turning down the multiplier to 6 to get to the same FSB. Try going to 400 while you are at it (which allows you to overclock to 3.6ghz but 6x400 still keeps you at stock). This will tell you how much voltage you'll need to reach 400FSB. Just make sure when you are doing this, change the CPU voltage to Auto or lower it because you don't want to run your chip at 2400mhz and 1.5V :evil:

Memory
I have a different board than you but my FSB, Northbridge and Southbridge are all running at stock voltages and the board is at 378FSB. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that you are a bit optimistic with your 4-4-3-12 ram timings. Specs for your ram are CL4-4-4-12 at 2.0-2.1V. The problem is that at DDR2-744 you are very close to DDR2-800 and your motherboard might slightly undervolt at 2.0V. I would relax the timings to 5-5-5-15 until you find the maximum CPU speed. If changing them to CL5 doesn't allow you to increase the FSB further, it's quite possible you have reached your top stable overclock. Finally set the voltage to 2.1 if you believe ram is the issue. You can use MemTest86 on bootup to test the 10 loops to isolate ram as your issue.

CPU
Check your temperatures with Core Temp. At 1.5V, they can get pretty high. You can see Here with B3 Q6600 stepping that going from 3347mhz at 1.425V to 3456mhz at 1.500V resulted in a 10*C rise in temperature!! Checking temps with CoreTemp also lets you see the temperatures of the cores which can diagnose a problem with a heatsink installation. The Thermalright Ultra's from what I've read can have a concavity in the centre which can make some examples of this heatsink slightly uneven.

You also didn't specify whether or not you have a G0 stepping. If you have a B3 stepping (download CPU-Z to check that), then your overclock is actually really good.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Originally posted by: Fabregas
My e6600 has a B2 stepping.

Right that's what I meant. Forgot that B3 is for quads. Either way, you should still find the optimal FSB, northbridge and southbridge voltages as there is no need to create extra heat and stress the motherboard unnecessarily. Also, make sure you confirm that ram isnt limiting you.
 

Fabregas

Junior Member
Dec 5, 2007
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Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Originally posted by: Fabregas
My e6600 has a B2 stepping.

Right that's what I meant. Forgot that B3 is for quads. Either way, you should still find the optimal FSB, northbridge and southbridge voltages as there is no need to create extra heat and stress the motherboard unnecessarily. Also, make sure you confirm that ram isnt limiting you.

I didnt understand this : "If changing them to CL5 doesn't allow you to increase the FSB further"
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,615
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Russian may be right about the tRP setting. Those are the "HZ" G.SKILLs, supposedly with D9 parts, but not made by Crucial-Micron. I'm only guessing that you might be able to (eventually) lower tRAS to 10 close to 400 Mhz.

Some modules with D9's -- not necessarily yours -- can run at 400 Mhz (DDR2-800) with latencies 4,3,4,8/9, but you may have to up the voltage toward 2.2, and you'd save that tweaking exercise for later. As you tighten the latencies, you'll have more trouble reaching 400 without voltage increases, and you don't want to go beyond the voltage limit.

The E6600 (I have one -- waiting for a VISTA 64 build) seems to have an over-clocking range limit between 3.35 and 3.6 on air-cooling. So it wouldn't matter that you have a new-gen "Blitz" motherboard.

If the G.SKILLs have a warranty "recommended" limit of 2.2V, I would also say, like Russian, that your setting is a tad low for the bus-speed you're trying to attain.

All other advice here seems to be prudent.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,615
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Also -- and I assume Russian knows this too, the E6600 and Q6600 have different "profiles" for the memory settings, or so it would seem to me. I thought I observed that the thresholds -- for given voltage -- between latency settings at different FSB vary between the processors. What you've shown so far for E6600 doesn't differ much from what I've seen for myself or what others here have observed for that processor.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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If you mean to "start all over again," I'd say try 3 Ghz, 1333 FSB, 667 DDR at either "Auto," or the fixed voltage that BIOS voltage monitor reports as auto.

But you say you're stable at 3.348 Ghz and 9x372.

HOW - E-VER!! Looking at your voltages, those settings seem much too high. I think you should get to 3.33 Ghz with the Vcore closer to 1.42V. Read the BIOS monitor to see what the board is really reporting as the NB Vcore and FSB-VTT, because those settings also seem too high. And as Russian said, 2.0V for the memory at this speed seems low.

If you want to run the memory at a 1:1 divider at 372, you may have to drop the CPU multiplier to 8 and work from there. But that's not really an optimal setting in the opinion of quite a few here, although it's an option for getting the memory bus-speed "up there."

If I were to start this all over again, with either the Blitz or my current 680i Striker, I'd start with the memory at 2.1 (unless THAT's the warranty-recommended, but I'm guessing 2.2). I might actually start with VCore at 1.4V. I don't see that 1.3 or 1.35 VHT, 1.35 or 1.40V for NB and VHT are that excessive, but you would like to have settings that are only over-volted to produce results. Testing the effects of these other voltages when you run up against stress-failure after an hour or so is tedious, but probably the only way to do it -- one at a time -- keep notes.

You can also run on a divider <> 1:1, but the 1:1 approach tells you a lot. Really, your best over-clock is probably likely at multiplier 9, and before you start testing different divider ratios and memory speeds that do more justice to the memory's advertised spec, you might want to find a stable OC at 1:1, and then start tweaking the latencies downward.

You can get a lot of bandwidth improvement with lower latencies and good memory. Just boosting the FSB is a crude way to over-clock -- easier, but doesn't give you a full idea of what the system will do at more modest settings. Even so, it's a good idea to start with the memory's SPD latency specs, because you know at the lower speed they won't fail.

If, after you found a good over-clock at voltages not too far from the retail "maximum," you can try tightening tCL to 4 and then even to 3. tRCD is a good candidate: again, from 5, to 4, to possibly 3. If you can get there, tRP can go down to 4 and maybe 3, and tRAS can be tightened to some integer between 6 and 9. Once you have reduced basic latency settings that are rock stable, you can try setting the command rate to 1T, but whether 1T works at that CPU speed or you have to go to 2T, You can most certainly-- absolutely -- positively drop the "advanced" timing tRC down the tRP + tRAS, or that sum plus 1. This latter tweak gives enormous bandwidth improvement.

On the 680i board, with Crucial Micron DDR2-1000's (and 800's would've worked just as well), I think I had my E6600 at 3.3 Ghz, CPU_FSB 370 and DDR = 740 -- FSB=1480. I had the latencies tightened to 4,3,4,8. I was only running the voltage then at around 2.125V and skittish about pushing it higher. But the warranty limit is 2.2V, and there should be no need to be skittish, just "sensible" about incremental increases. And at that time, I hadn't even thought to drop the tRC latency setting from its default (between 21 and 30) to 9.

It would've made a helluva difference, and I wouldn't have felt as much inclined to try different multipliers and higher FSBs, or even change over to the Q6600 quad.

Just remember that CAS or tCL of 3 will probably only work below DDR 730 or 720. tRCD should be more flexible downward. tRP should probably be set = tRCD or tRCD+1, and tRAS should = tCL + tRCD by conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom based on "DDR1." There is something in DDR2 called "additive latency" which may allow lower tRAS values. And of course, the bank-cycle-time tRC depends on row-precharge and row access strobe values -- with only moderate influence on stability but high influence on bandwidth.

When you start testing latency settings, a tool like Everest Ultimate's Memory and Cache benchtest is good for comparison to see how things improve. People swear by Sisoft Sandra, but you're interested in relative changes with a fairly simple presentation of bench results.
 

Fabregas

Junior Member
Dec 5, 2007
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I tried 3.3 ghz at 1.4240 (Vcore) and everything else on AUTO...

After 20 minutes of orthos i noticed that the Vcore dropped to 1.4160 o_O . within seconds after the change, it gave an error. (It was at 1.4240 for the first 20 minutes)
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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But NOT A BSOD!! 20 minutes tells me you're not far from a stable VCore (minimum) setting.

I never watched to see how VCore would droop under load and give errors, but that's interesting. And I think on "Auto," my ASUS board was reporting a monitored value of 1.44V. Keep in mind that the accuracy of "set" versus "monitored" improved with BIOS revisions on my board, and there has always been an issue in general with discrepancies between "set", "monitored" and "multi-tester-measured" voltages on a range of boards.

You can go back over everything I posted here, but keep in mind it's "all off the top of my head," and I haven't worked with the E6600 since late July.

I kept a Notepad log for both the E6600 settings and the Q6600 settings. I'll open that log and post some excerpts here once my OWN PRIME95 "shake-down" test has finished running.

I had pushed the Q6600 to 3.2, and to get 3,3,3,6,1T settings with tRC @ 9, I boosted the vDIMM to 2.2V. To eliminate error, it must be done with 2T and tRC=10, or I must back it down to 3.16 -- where I can get 1T with tRC=9. Reassessing the Vcore, I find that it's error-free dropping the Vcore a single notch to 1.4125V @ 3.16. NOW, I've dropped all the other voltages by two notches, and the vDIMM so far by one notch to 2.175V.

I can't get the Q6600 to go much over 3.2 without pushing the VCore toward 1.45 or beyond, anyway. If I want to run it full-bore to the 3.2 setting, I have to loosen timings to 2T and tRC to 10. If I want to edge beyond that, I have to loosen tCL to 4. So the bandwidth at 1:1 is a wash between 3.16 and 3.2+. The "sweet-spot" seems to be 3.16, 3,3,3,6,1T,tRC=9. Lower temperatures, same performance.

Make sure that you are methodical and patient with this stuff. I'll post my E6600 notes, but be mindful I'm using 680i chipset. I'm not sure whether the Blitz is Intel or nVidia. While I'm sitting here waiting, I'll check that, too . . . .
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,615
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You can go either way. But you might want to hold the CPU and bus speed, load CoreTemp, shut down your IS and AV program and other systray items that are "active" in the background, and load PRIME95 25.4 or two instances of ORTHOS after bumping up the VCORE one notch.

Watch the temperatures. If you're room ambient is maybe 71 to 75F and the highest core temperature stays below 65C throughout the first hour, you haven't pushed the VCORE too far. It's also useful to enable logging in CoreTemp so that a log entry is read and appended to file every 8 seconds. You can then review the log-file in notepad, and you have the entire temperature profile.

I remember talking to others who were using the E6600, and timid people were saying they "didn't want to go over 1.44 or 1.45V." I think I'd tried 1.46+, and dropped it back to 1.45 or below. I'd seen others go as high as 1.5, but you couldn't trust for sure what their "true" voltages were. I was watching my temperatures, and so when the temperatures began to edge up more noticeably and I needed to go up two notches on the VCORE just to increase the speed a few Mhz CPU_FSB, I figured that I was at the limit.

Also -- with my board and chipset and BIOS revision, a "set" value of 1.44 would show a monitored value more like 1.42V. Unfortunately, it was about that time that I did a careless BIOS flash and had to order a PLCC chip from BIOSMan.com. I even had an RMA from ASUS set up. But that was around July 28, and I ordered the Q6600 when prices came down. I later found that the E6600 was just fine -- no damage -- the trouble I had was typical for a bad "flash." replacing the PLCC chip solved everything. I told ASUS to "fahget about-it."

But I stopped tweaking the E6600, and started with the Q6600. The later BIOS revisions cleared up some of the discrepancy between "set" and monitored voltages. With the E6600, if the monitored value was 1.42 or 1.43, the VDroop under load would bring it down to maybe 1.39+V.

I still need to consult my Notepad file of experimental settings, and I'm still running PRIME95. Let me see where we are on that in a couple hours.

I DO remember that I was getting to 3.4 Ghz, but beyond about 3.33, I had to loosen the timings on the memory. I think that's where I was with the E6600 before the swap. Like I said -- looser timings, higher Mhz -- a wash as far as bandwidth was concerned.

I also remember that with IC Diamond paste and the TR Ultra-120-Extreme (lapped), my TCase temperature (not the cores) was somewhere around 45C at load and room-ambient of 73F (more or less). That CPU is supposed to throttle when TCase gets to 62C if I recall. There was a lot of "wiggle-room" left.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Did it terminate with an error, or did you terminate it yourself?

If latter, I think "yur gud to go." Otherwise, you're right on the edge, probably only needing one more notch adjustment in Vcore.

If that doesn't work, it may be the memory voltage is a tad weak.

If you're well within the warranty-recommended voltage on the memory, you could probably just bump it up a notch, anyway, without going through two or more ten-hour marathons. So I'd suggest bumping up the VCORE and VDIMM each one notch (probably thousands of a volt each). Most over-clocking wisdom suggests getting to voltage and speed settings that "work" without error for a half-day's testing, then backing off the CPU_FSB a few Mhz. For instance, if you're FSB is 1,440, DDR 720 and CPU_FSB 360, you might change FSB and DDR to 1436 and 718 -- whatever next-lower pairs of values at 1:1 give you nice integer values.

Some here would say that you need to certify "error-free" for anywhere from 8, 16 -- to 24 hours. If you get to 8 or 10 hours, the odds of failure in the next hour are lower . . . and lower. But since you found an error after 10 (unless you terminated manually), you might as well make the incremental correction to assure that it won't happen.

I checked my logs. My mobo "set" values were biassed upward by the BIOS. So I had settings that were 1.45+V showing BIOS monitor values of 1.42V. This was for an over-clock of 3.33 Ghz, FSB 1,480, DDR 740, multiplier 9, mem-timings 3,4,4,8,2T. The timings could have been made a little tighter without loss of stability, but I knew less about them last summer. That is, I could've gone to 3,3,3,6 and possibly 1T.

The fact is, I had another setting at 1.4625V and 3.35 Ghz, 1488 FSB, DDR 744, which also passed. Keep in mind the discrepancy between "set" and "monitor" values with my mobo and BIOS.

Basically what you're telling me with your settings, if monitored value is not too far off from what you set for VCORE, is that this range of 1.42 to 1.44 is probably near average for the E6600 getting to that speed between 3.3 and 3.4+ Ghz. Consider that if the "retail maximum" is only 1.35V (could be a bit higher -- I don't know) -- you're looking at must over 5% above that maximum for an IDLE voltage, and under load with the usual voltage droop, the measured voltage probably varies little from the maximum spec.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,615
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Well, then it's "up to you." You can try pushing it above that speed limit, then, or stand pat with what you've got. It depends on your sense of how voltage is increasing temperature, and how far above 5% over the retail-box maximum-spec you're willing to go. You can see here in this forum that someone has OC'd a Q6600 quad to around 3.5 Ghz -- I'm guessing he had a G0 stepping.

On the other hand, it becomes clear that choosing to go full-bore also depends on how you can configure RAM at the chosen speed. Tighter latencies within the RAM voltage recommended maximum may require a slight drop in bus speed, but this may reap bandwidth advantages.

You've got several OC'ing choices about how you configure memory, and you would need to "re-test."

The G.SKILLs are supposedly made with Micron D9 parts. There might be some good chance that the latencies can be tightened. Candidates for incremental "tightening" would be tCL or CAS latency, tRCD or RAS-to-CAS-Delay -- in terms of immediate bandwidth score improvement. If these two can be tightened a notch, you should also be able to drop tRAS to = (tCL + tRCD). You may also be able to lower tRP (the third number of basic timings) a notch. Whether or not latter is true, you can then look at "Advanced Timings" for tRC -- the bank-cycle-time -- and you should be able to lower it either to tRP+tRAS or tRP+tRAS+1.

This would give you serious bandwidth improvement using the simple 1:1 ratio.

Tightening these latencies -- especially (I think) tCL / CAS -- could require small increases in memory voltage. To a lesser extent -- tRCD. Probably little or no voltage boost needed for tRP, tRAS and tRC.

I've gone through the SiSoft Sandra tests on my system with tightened latencies running at DDR2-700+, and it confirms what I found using the Everest Ultimate benchmarks. Some results are just a bit shy of those for Q6600 with DDR2-1000 RAM at their stock timings. And synthetic benchmarks really don't tell the whole story, either. With neck-and-neck results, it may really be a breakeven or win-situation at the lower DDR speed.
 

Fabregas

Junior Member
Dec 5, 2007
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I know i have several choices but what would be best for games ? I know that an e6600 even at stock speeds can handle crysis very nicely but WiC takes advantage of a faster clock speed.
 

TC91

Golden Member
Jul 9, 2007
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if you are gaming, then try oc'ing that gts if you havent already done so. for most games, the graphics card will be more of a limiting factor than the cpu. imo for the moment being, any c2d @ 3ghz+ is fine. if you really want to push the overclock, then you will risk the life of the component. i had my e6600 @ 3.6ghz, 1.5ish volts, and that was pretty hot (~65-67c full load small fft's 24hr p95), but i decided to back it to 3.4ghz as it took much less voltage, and the performance difference is negligible at best with those 200mhz lost (much lower temps too, 57c full load small fft's p95). it depends on how long you want to keep the cpu, or if you are willing to get another one quickly in case yours dies out. if you can get another cpu in no time, then go ahead and oc it like crazy, but if you cant really get another cpu too soon, then i would keep the cpu at around 3-3.4 ghz.
 

Fabregas

Junior Member
Dec 5, 2007
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i see...

I dont know exactly when i'll upgrade my cpu... a game that i really like, needs to laugh at it first :evil:

Im planning on upgrading my graphics card in march/april (hopefully something that can reach 20K in 3dMark06) so i was wondering if the e6600 would be a bottleneck.
 

TC91

Golden Member
Jul 9, 2007
1,164
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the e6600 @ 3ghz+ would not be much of a bottleneck for newer cards imo, especially within the next year or 2. most people in the world do not even have extremely fast dual core cpu's let alone quad cores, so i dont think there will be a game too soon that will be too much for a really fast c2d. i plan on keeping my e6600 as long as i can, so thats why i lowered the oc on it.