Overclock mysteriously disappeared after 2 years

[PCJake]

I built and overclocked my system almost 2 years ago, and I have been running it 24/7 without a problem since. Tonight I was playing Bad Company 2 and I noticed that my FPS was unusually low, so I checked in Core Temp and I discovered that my Q6600, which had always been running at 3.33Ghz (9x370Mhz), was suddenly back down to the default speed of 2.4Ghz (9x266Mhz). I went into the bios of my GA-EP35-DS3L and reset everything to optimal defaults, rebooted, and then redid the overclock. The bios keeps my overclock values and displays them as they should be, but as soon as the system posts it shows that the CPU is still only running at 2.4Ghz.

I don't know what could have triggered this (no crashes lately) and it's frustrating because the bios shows that I have the CPU overclocked, but it is actually running at default speed. Any ideas?

 

[yottabit]

Is Gigabyte still using that "DUAL BIOS" crap they were using years ago? Where they had a backup bios incase the main one failed?

I remember throwing my old gigabyte athlon 64 motherboard in the trash after the bios failed. I fed it some ram timings it didnt like it and reverted back to its "second" bios, which was an outdated firmware that didnt support my cpu.

 

[PCJake]

Is Gigabyte still using that "DUAL BIOS" crap they were using years ago? Where they had a backup bios incase the main one failed?

Hmm, this is from the overview of the GA-EP35-DS3L on the Gigabyte website:

"Safe is the key feature of GIGABYTE S-series motherboards with the following elements: Excellent hardware design reinforced BIOS protection through GIGABYTE Virtual Dual BIOS Technology and GIGABYTE BIOS Setting Recovery Technology."

Is that what you are talking about? Honestly, this is the first time I have read about that particular feature.

 

[yottabit]

Yes to be honest I have no clue what "Virtual" Dual Bios is... Back on my old A64 motherboard it had an actual physical second Bios chip and this seems to be more of a software implementation. but it sounds like this could be something you might want to look into to see if its "auto recovering" or defaulting back to its original settings for some reason, although it could just be a wild tangent

That's honestly the only thing I can think of that could cause this problem... let me know if you figure it out!

So if you restart and go back into the bios after it posts you still have your overclock settings right? Otherwise I would say just change your CMOS battery

 

[PCJake]

I'm going to try removing the battery to clear the CMOS first thing tomorrow. I knew I was forgetting to try something! I'll let you know if it works.

 

[masterbm]

what I would do to be sure is run prime 95 and cpu-z that should bring your cpu to max frequancy. Certian screen in the os on mine report the default speed but it diffenet still overclocked

 

[PCJake]

Clearing the CMOS did the trick. Who knows what triggered the problem in the first place, I'm just glad it's working again. Thanks guys!

 

[Anubis]

Clearing the CMOS did the trick. Who knows what triggered the problem in the first place, I'm just glad it's working again. Thanks guys!

The Cmos battery coudl be on its way out

happened to me once many years ago, they are easy to replace

 

[PCJake]

The Cmos battery coudl be on its way out

happened to me once many years ago, they are easy to replace

Perhaps, perhaps...I vaguely remember having a similar problem a few months back, so if I have any problems like this in the future the battery is the first thing I'll check. Thanks!