New E6400/680i/8800GTX System, what can I expect?

[Boldar Blood]

Hello!

I recently purchased all new parts for a new PC for myself and am wondering what kind of overlocking/tweaks I should expect with the setup. What should my targets be for each? Positives/negatives/or any other comments are welcome as I hope to get some great performance out of this setup. Thanks ahead of time! Here are the parts (all purchased from Newegg):

GIGABYTE 3D AURORA GZ-FSCA1-ANS Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail
eVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR Socket T (LGA 775) NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6400 - Retail
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply - Retail
CORSAIR XMS2 DOMINATOR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4D - Retail
Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
SAMSUNG 225BW Black 22" 5 ms (GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor with Height Adjustments - Retail
Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler - Retail
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM

I'm hoping to hit around 3.1ghz or higher on the E6400 and to keep the 4-4-4-12 timings on the RAM. What bus speed, multiplier, voltage, etc. should I aim for? How about on the 8800GTX? I'd love to hear from anyone who has/had a similar combo. Again thanks for your help!

 

[The-Noid]

Bus: 1600 mhz
Multiplier: 8x
Voltage: 1.375
Timings: 4-4-4-12.
Ram Voltage: 2.1

 

[Boldar Blood]

Thanks Yoxxy, so 3.2ghz is feasible with that build then? I was hoping but was not sure after reading varying results on these forums. Since my build is slightly different I wanted to get some thoughts.

Has anyone done any gaming on this or a similar build? I'm interested to hear what kind of FPS you're getting in various, current games so that I can benchmark against them. Thanks again!

 

[The-Noid]

You wll get full fps in any game you play.

 

[Boldar Blood]

Thanks again Yoxxy. What about the whole 1:1 vs. 4:5 argument? Would it be better to go for a higher FSB and lower the multiplier? If so what can this RAM handle? Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Boldar Blood
Thanks again Yoxxy. What about the whole 1:1 vs. 4:5 argument? Would it be better to go for a higher FSB and lower the multiplier? If so what can this RAM handle? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Unless you got the 1.1 revision Dominators, you got scammed with the Promos stuff which won't overclock much.

On 680i, the key is running 1T instead of 2T.

1T usually doesn't get past DDR2-800-900 frequencies before you have to switch to 2T, but that's more than you need to get 3200-3400 MHz.

 

[Boldar Blood]

Ok sounds good. It appears it should work exactly as I had hoped.

Not sure on the memory version. I had heard of the revision problems but as you said I shouldn't have problems with my overclocking goals . The parts arrive tomorrow so I'll know for sure then.

Here's a related question: is EPP and/or nTune smart enough to reach the best settings on its own or should I go ahead and set them myself to what we've discussed here?

 

[n7]

Never trust bios or software auto/default settings.

Manually setting the RAM frequency/timings/vdimm is usually imperative when OCing.

 

[nyker96]

You can definitely expect really good things with this setup. Probably 3.2+ if lucky higher, although cooling at 3.5/6 on air is tougher even with your freezer 7. i6xx chipset runs RAM async so you can push it to whatever level your RAM can handle.

 

[Boldar Blood]

Thanks n7/nyker96. This is the first time I've upgraded in ~5 years since the Socket A/NF7-S/Athlon XP days so I wanted to make sure my old OCing processes were still relevant (I OC'd my Athlon XP 1800+ to 2.25GHz on that board). I actually had an old account on this board but couldn't remember the login/pass and it was on an old email account :-/ .

Anyway, I'll be more than happy to hit 3.2GHz if I can. I'd love to not have to raise the core voltage much so I can ensure no long term damage to the CPU. It may be another ~5 years until I can upgrade but I hope not ;-) . All the parts I picked out seemed to get pretty good reviews so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an easy setup/install, OCing, and gaming experience.

What's everyone been able to OC their 8800GTX's to in this or a similar setup? With the Linkboost technology increasing the performance of the card by default I wanted to make sure it didn't affect the OCing potential. Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

[The-Noid]

600/950 is pretty easy. 610/970 can be 24/7 stable if you are lucky. 630-650/1000 for benching.

 

[Boldar Blood]

I see AnandTech itself was able to get 659/1013 with the EVGA w/ACS3, so I was hoping to get around 625/1000 stable but you've not been successful with that? I guess I'll gun for the 610/970 and hope for the best. Thanks yoxxy!

 

[swtethan]

you can expect the guy with SLI 8800gtx's to beat you in games

 

[Boldar Blood]

Actually with these new drivers that's not even true in all games swtethan. Hopefully they'll work that out soon. I'm actually building my wife almost the exactly same PC so eventually one of us will have SLI but right now it seems like a waste as no game can really test the 8800GTX at the 1680x1050 or 1600x1200 resolutions we play at.