Q6600 G0 SLACR OC Adventure

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
If your apps are mostly multithreaded I suppose it is a good upgrade from an E8400. The Q6600's are just not clocking well enough for me though, since pretty much all I do is game an E8400 was better for me.

Best statement I've ever heard regarding Q6600 vs. E8400 arguments. I agree with Extelleron, however - Good luck with your new Q6600 Taltimir.

 

[taltamir]

thank you... I found ONE game that benefits from quad, and now I am a bit obsessed with benchmarking a ton of games with all 4 cores, with 1 core disabled, and with 2 cores disabled on the same machine and seeing how the two compare . Once I get things sorted out I intend to start benching a bunch of games and sharing results. I am very very curious as to what I will get, will that one game turn out to be an anomaly, will I find many such games... time will tell.

I also see an awesome boost for my multi threaded apps, so this isn't just for benching.

 

[Drsignguy]

Originally posted by: taltamir
thank you... I found ONE game that benefits from quad, and now I am a bit obsessed with benchmarking a ton of games with all 4 cores, with 1 core disabled, and with 2 cores disabled on the same machine and seeing how the two compare . Once I get things sorted out I intend to start benching a bunch of games and sharing results. I am very very curious as to what I will get, will that one game turn out to be an anomaly, will I find many such games... time will tell.

I also see an awesome boost for my multi threaded apps, so this isn't just for benching.

Uh oh, the obsessision has continued on over to this thread.............

This sounds interesting. Yes share the results when you can.

 

[taltamir]

I try to fight it, but I just can't. It is stronger then me...

 

[PolymerTim]

Originally posted by: John2777
I have a question on stability. When do you consider a OC setting stable and adequate? If Prime 95 runs for 15 minutes without errors, is that sufficient to delcare victory? Or do you have to continue doing this for several hours?

My next observation, and taking into acount that I am a newbie to this overclocking stuff, I am not having much luck with the methods outlined in the OC thread. I would get errors in Prime 95 on just about any setting when the BIOS has the STANDARD setting under performance.

So, I started doing things from a different perspective, and did the following:

Performance: Enabled EXTREME
EIST: Enabled
CE1; Enabled
9x375 (3375)/ divider 2.5 (950)
vCore+1.4

All other settings are pretty normal according to the guide. I had Core Temp and CPU Z open to watch whats going on and I ran Prime 95 for 20 minutes and all was Great!

So, I decided to move things up at bit. I left everything the same, except I changed the CPU settings to 9x390 (3510) and bumped up the vCore to 1.4125.

Everything looked good on Prime 95 for about 7 minutes, then one of the cores errored on a ROUNDING Error. Says that it returned 0.5 and was expecting 0.4 or less. Is that really a big error? I am letting the test run and the other 3 cores made it to level 10 and started over. Temps are pretty go, at 65 C on the most stressful moments of the testing, but doing well.

I noticed that the core that errored was basically the one running the coolest. Perhaps it didn't get enough voltage momentarily as it clearly is not accepting as much current at the others. So, perhaps the fix is to bump up the vCore temp another notch.

Anyway, this isn't according to the rules, but it's doing great.

P.S. Can you serf the net when prime is running inthe background?

I'm still a novice overclocker myself, but I've been reading quite a bit and can relay what I've read about stability.

There are different views on stability, but if you want a stable 24/7 OC for general use (or especially important work) than many would argue that there are only two states: stable and unstable. The problem is simply how to recognize what you have.

As Taltamir described, a stability test only tests a computer in specific ways and no one load test can check everything. And sometimes it takes a long time to discover an error. Does that mean you're almost stable. Probably you are very close, but if you go by the strict two categories then you are still unstable.

Most people end up picking one or two testing programs (I have seen Prime95, OOCT, Folding@Home, and LinPack mentioned as good ones) and will then do short (10-20 minute) runs while they are making adjustments. As Taltamir stated, this basically lets you know you aren't way past the stability limit with blue screens or immediate errors. But once you think you have found a stable OC, most will tell you to run it for at least 12-24 hours for the final check.

As for errors in P95, I don't think it really matters what the error is. Possibly someone might be able to give you a likelihood that it originated in a particular part, but an error is an error and it doesn't matter if it is big or small. If your computer is throwing errors periodically that you aren't aware of (because programs not designed for load testing often don't catch the errors) then the results can range from temporary bugs in your program to permanent ones if bad data is being saved and reused.

Good luck on your OC. It sounds like your getting there.

-Tim

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: taltamir
thank you... I found ONE game that benefits from quad, and now I am a bit obsessed with benchmarking a ton of games with all 4 cores, with 1 core disabled, and with 2 cores disabled on the same machine and seeing how the two compare .

How can one disable cores on the quad? I dont see any such option in my bios?

 

[taltamir]

well, not disable cores, but you can use thread affinity to limit a program to only specific cores of the CPU. yea, background processes will run on the other cores, but it will be close enough.

 

[Drsignguy]

Originally posted by: taltamir
well, not disable cores, but you can use thread affinity to limit a program to only specific cores of the CPU. yea, background processes will run on the other cores, but it will be close enough.

So, how is it working out, any results yet?

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: taltamir
yea. my BIOS shows the default voltage as 1.325v VID, but at 3.3ghz @1.45 on bios I am getting 1.33v load after droop, 1.39 idle.

What is load line calibration? there is no mention of it in the big OC guide in this forum.

Loadline calibration helps eliminate vdroop; so if you set 1.45V in BIOS with LLC you would be getting very close to 1.45V real voltage. Usually it isn't recommended because vdroop is actually part of Intel's specifications and is actually a good thing. But when you have 0.1V+ vdroop like you have, it can really get in the way of overclocking. Even though you have 1.45V set in BIOS, that is meaningless because under load when the voltage matters, you are only getting 1.33V. So without LLC what some oc'ers would just keep increasing BIOS voltage to compensate. So maybe they would set voltage to 1.6V and then real voltage under load may be 1.45V. But that is a dangerous thing to do and that is why some people will use LLC.

the ds3r's don't have load line calibration.

tal, you might try a bios update. I also had ~ .06 vdrop and another .06 vdroop when I first installed the x3350 in my ip35 pro, but a bios flash fixed that. now I've only got ~ .05 vdrop and vdroop combined!

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: taltamir
thank you... I found ONE game that benefits from quad, and now I am a bit obsessed with benchmarking a ton of games with all 4 cores, with 1 core disabled, and with 2 cores disabled on the same machine and seeing how the two compare .

How can one disable cores on the quad? I dont see any such option in my bios?

as taltamir mentioned, set thread affinity to "virtually" disable specific cores. iirc you set it up through task manager, though the only time I've ever done it was on my vista x32 lappy...

 

[taltamir]

@Drsignguy : I got a stable OC, but I am currently stuck with a 7900GS that I had lying around (I sold my 4850) until the 30th when the GTX260 I ordered arrives. When it arrives I will perform tests.

@bryan : Interestingly I had a very low vdroop on the E8400, yet a significant one on the Q6600.
Also, it seems that a new bios version came out literally 10 days ago. I already had a beta version of it. It adds DES advanced, and with this new release support for E0 stepping of 45nm chips. but I am getting it anyways.