Asus p5q-e and Q9550

Getting my Asus P5Q-E and Q9550

Has anyone got these combinations and what settings are you running your motherboard at?

Am also going to put in 2x2gb Kingston DDR2

Is your RAM rated at 800MHz or 1066MHz? And also do you plan to overclock?

Will be getting 1066Mhz Ram and yes I would like to overclock it

First try the following for a moderate overclock of 3.4GHz

In the Ai tweaker menu:

AI Overclock tuner: Manual
CPU ratio: Auto
FSB Frequency: 401MHz
PCI-E : 100
FSB Strap: Auto
Dram Frequency: 963MHz
Dram Timing: Auto for now

CPU Voltage: 1.25v
GTL: Auto
CPU PLL: 1.54
FSB Termination: 1.2v
Dram Voltage: (assuming its the kingston one) 2.3v (shows as purple)
NB: 1.26v
SB: 1.0v/auto
PCIE SATA: 1.5v/auto

Leave everythingelse untouched

Thanks for that.

I have no idea how to work out memory timings and voltages.
I can follow the multiplier to up the CPU frequency but thats as far as my tech skills go. How do you people know what settings to change and what to change them to? Its a mystery to me.

The timings and other settings are usually written in the manual. As for knowing what to change the to, It's all a matter of read up a bit and experimenting within safe limits.

Our hardware is almost identical; Q9650 vs Q9550, P5Q Pro Turbo vs P5Q-E and Kingston Ram is the same as mine. So the settings that work with mine should work with yours

Thanks for your help.
Will probably buid over the weekend.

If I reached a stable system on these settings, what do I need to change to push it up to 4ghz?

Got my Q9550 up to 4Ghz last night on my new P5Q Pro Turbo. Fantastic board and only needed minor tweaking to get stable. It is a good cpu as well (1.2625v vid) and does 3.7Ghz on stock volts.

Settings for 4Ghz are:-

8.5x 471 (not happy with this as the ram is only running at 963mhz so will probably end up losing the .5x and trying 8x500.

Vcore 1.27500v in bios
CPU PLL 1.56v
FSB Termination 1.26v
NB voltage 1.26v
SB voltage 1.10v (min)
PCIE Sata voltage 1.50 (min)
Load Line Calibration auto
Spread spectrums disabled.

All voltages are on minimum if not listed. I don't like leaving things on auto, especially on Asus boards as they used to have a tendency to overvolt.


***Edit*** Now testing at 4.2Ghz. just over 2Hours in and all is well so far. If it's stable i will post settings.

Looks good pastymuncher, your nb and fsb voltages are the same as i needed for the q9550 i had, found theese to be the main ones to play about with. I was using a p5q deluxe at the time, theese boards were known to seriously overvolt nb, fsb-term and pll if left on auto or lowest manual setting, same with ddr voltage, upto +0.08v, hence i always ran my ram kits at 2.02 vdimm (ocz reaper 6400 and 8500).

i have the Q9550 and P5Q Premium with 1066 OCZ Gold RAM. I did manage to get into windows at 4.1GHz when i got the CPU about a month ago but havnt had time to play with it since. Went straight in at 3.6GHz and that's where it's currently sitting until i get another afternoon to play with it pasty i'd be very interested to see all of ur settings including what's disabled + enabled even if u only get 2 hrs stable at 4.2. Can you upload some pictures? (saves u typing it all out). BIOSes are almost all the same on these P5Qs so will be transferable.

Still going at 4.2Ghz. Looking good so far.

Creed, do you just want to see the AI tweaker settings? I will post them up in the morning. Don't want to disturb it at the moment. I will take some screenies before i try for even more (that's if it passes 4.2Ghz). I have written the main ones down though and it took a bit of a bump on a couple of them:-

8.5x 495
Vcore 1.31v
CPU PLL 1.58v
FSB term 1.30v
NB Voltage 1.36v
SB voltage 1.10v (min)
Dram voltage 2.1v
PCIE sata 1.50v (min)

CPU GTL Ref, AI Clock Twister, AI transaction Booster, CPU & NB Clock Skews, Load Line Calibration are all on Auto.

CPU Margin Enhancement set to optimised.

Both Spread spectrums disabled.

PCI-e frequency set to 101.

The only ram timings i have set for the moment are the four main ones set to 5-5-5-15. I will tweak these when i am happy with the cpu.

I might give the Mbios a go as it's supposed to be able to give better clocks for lower volts and have better ram tables.

wow 4.2 that is inspiring.
Have ordered my 4gb kingston hyper x 1066 and megahalems cooler today.

pastymuncher said:

Still going at 4.2Ghz. Looking good so far.





CPU GTL Ref, AI Clock Twister, AI transaction Booster, CPU & NB Clock Skews, Load Line Calibration are all on Auto.

Click to expand...

Looks very nice, i always thought that manual CPU GTL tweaking was important with theese chips, particularly above 450fsb, only ever ran mine at 8.5x450 before i sold the kit, always regret not trying to push it a bit higher and keeping it as a second rig, chip was a nice low 1.200 vid EO stepping. 4.2ghz is very impressive, looks like a very nice cpu.

Still going. I will give it until 11 and call it stable. That will be 15 hours so good enough for me. Temps have maxxed out at 55 degrees!! I knew there was a reason i stuck my rad in a box on the windowsill. 120x38mm Yate Loons are only running at 900rpm as well. This is a excellent board. I did'nt expect this much out of it, especially given the low voltages. All of my older boards, Asus P5E X38, DFI LT X48 T2R and the hopeless MSI P45 Platinum needed loads more voltage to get the board stable even with a 45nm dual core.

55c at 4.2ghz is extremely good, at 3.8ghz on air (1.216 vcore, LLC enabled) mine was hitting 57c on the highest core. The p5q's are really good boards, i settled on the deluxe after reading a review by w3bbo where he tested it against an msi p45, id say its the best overclocking board ive ever had. 3.8ghz out of a q6600 as well.

Failed on error just before 9 last night. That was almost 13 hours of Prime so it's almost stable. Just need's a little tweaking of something. Overnight i let Prime run with the cpu at 4Ghz and have just stopped it so it's had 15.5 hours and is rock solid at the settings i posted further up. Going to flash to the Mbios at the weekend and retry that 4.2Ghz. It passes 20 runs of linx but with it failing Prime on a error it's going to be niggling at me if i don't sort it.

my P35 based P5K Deluxe relay shows up the FSB wall (see my sig) I and others seem to get with 45nm quads compared to the P45 like motherboard. See

pastymuncher said:

Failed on error just before 9 last night. That was almost 13 hours of Prime so it's almost stable. Just need's a little tweaking of something. Overnight i let Prime run with the cpu at 4Ghz and have just stopped it so it's had 15.5 hours and is rock solid at the settings i posted further up. Going to flash to the Mbios at the weekend and retry that 4.2Ghz. It passes 20 runs of linx but with it failing Prime on a error it's going to be niggling at me if i don't sort it.

Click to expand...

Good luck with the next 4.2 attempt mate, i hope you get there, i kinda wonder now wether it was worth "upgrading" from a 3.8ghz q9550 to i7, the only real benefit i got from i7 was sli and a very easy 4ghz.

That's why i stuck with 775. Little to be gained when gaming for the outlay, and i3/i5/i7 are all dead next year so would have been stuck on another dead end socket.

Aye, just seen lately that i7 will soon go end of line, on single card gaming with the i7, bfbc2 was a bit rubbish, had to go to sli gtx 275's to improve performance, my i7 is run daily at 4ghz, but i reckon i could have got away with the q9550 and a single decent gpu, but such is pc ownership, you always want to upgrade to the newest thing, bit of a habit ive got stuck in, but i gotta admit, the i7 is far more superior at video encoding than my 3.8ghz q9550 ever was.