q9550 = poor overclocker?

[vian_siu]

i have got a q9550(e0 stepping as well) recent and i must say this thing is a poor overclocker.

i dont know how other people got this to 4ghz or similar under air cooling, because mine is already struggling at 3.4. i am using my titans fenrir cooler, evga 750i f.t.w mobo and a pair of 2gb 1066 mhz corsair ram with this so it should be no problem.

has anyone else got a poor overclocking q9550, or is it just me with a poor one

i must add as well my old e6750 (at 3.61ghz) feels better than this chip!

 

[Greebo]

evga 750i f.t.w mobo is your problem I supect.

My x38 top of the range mobo limited my q9650 to a miserly 3.7Ghz (fsb limit) yet the same cpu in my current mobo is prime stable at 4.6Ghz and will benchmark at 4.9Ghz.

I knew this already as my cpu had two previous owners who were prime stable at 4.5Ghz on low voltage so I knew it had to be my mobo.

Of the overclocking forums I am members off, the best 750i mobo result i have seen with a q9550 is 3.8ghz and I suspect that took him some time to get stable (it took me 3 months to get 4.6 stable at lowish volts and 4.9Ghz stable enough for benchmarking and I;m watercooled)

So either look into swapping mobos or unfortunately make the best of what you have. Look over on http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/ for hints and tips on getting the best out of your mobo.

 

[vian_siu]

well i have to wait until i get my striker ii extreme back from rma (that could be months...) then and see if the mobo is the problem. i must say asus mobo are not very stable (my striker died on the first day of use!) and their rma service is pretty awful...

another question is the p45 chipset the best chipset for overclocking for lga775 cpus?

 

[Greebo]

Certain p45 boards like my Gigabyte and the Asus p45 are the best overclockers for quad core lga775 cpus but not necessarily dual core ones.

 

[Rroff]

The EVGA 750i F.T.W. is deff. not the best board for clocking 45nm quads due to both vdroop and vdrop - however you should be able to get almost any Q9550 to 3.825 on it with sensible enough voltages aslong as your RAM is upto it.

I can get mine stable upto 4.5gig if I'm prepared to push the voltage - but its pushing it way too far - and I have a niggling feeling it nots actually 100% stable above ~494MHz FSB.

If your prepared to do the vdroop mod then you can probably get upto around 4.1gig stable on sensible voltages or about 3.825 if not.

For 3.825:

CPU Core: 1.4
CPU FSB: 1.3
nForce SPP 1.4
NF200: 1.2

GTLREF: Auto

With 1800 FSB and appropriate RAM settings - will almost guarantee 3.825 unless you have a really terrible clocker.

If you want to spend hours hand tweaking the GTLREF settings you can get that down to around 1.3625 or so for the vcore and 1.25 for the FSB maybe it took me well over 4 hours tho to find those lower numbers and I can't guarantee the same will work for you.

You are going to need good cooling tho.

 

[Nocky24]

Whats your chips vid? Mine is currently running at 3.8GHz with 1.2v after vdroop and max temps of 54c under load with a 22c room temp. To me they're great clockers, much better than my i7 which needs 1.264v after vdroop (with llc enabled) and hits 75c under load with a room temp of 23c, however thats probably just my chip :/

 

[mame]

I would either leave it as it is or sell the lot. I woudn't change the motherboard of anything else. You could sell the CPU, add £10-20 to it and get an i5-750. I just sold a GA-EP45-DS3R for just short of £60. I sold my DDR2 for more than I bought it for

 

[vian_siu]

i leave the vid on auto, apart from cpu core which i have on 1.4

and another thing i keep get the "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." bsod, do anyone know what am i doing wrong to get this bsod?

 

[Rroff]

Other than GTLREF don't leave any settings in the BIOS menu for voltages on auto - with 45nm quads it will usually end up over volting it and possibly damaging the NB or CPU.

 

[OzZie]

My Q9550 E0 requires just under 1.40v to get to 3.9ghz on a P5Q-Pro (1.250v VID).

Temps are more than great with a Titan Fenrir (78deg max on IBT/LinX)

If it were me, i'd up most of the settings and see if its stable for a short period of time. If it isnt, its most likely an FSB limit your hitting, which is only going to be resolved by a new motherboard. However, a decent 775 mobo is still going to cost you £80+, so you have to think if its really worth it.

 

[vian_siu]

ok i changed the vid to the following:

CPU Core: 1.4
CPU FSB: 1.3
nForce SPP 1.4
NF200: 1.2

GTLREF: Auto

but i am keep getting this bsod on 3.4 (even on 3.2) "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval."

i have the chip back to default for stability for the time being, but do anyone what that blue screen means? from what i can gather it has something to do with voltage, but surely 1.4 is ok for a q9550...i am using a corsair tx650v psu, but surely that not the problem.

 

[mrk]

It means the CPU is not able to use one or more cores fully due to a possible number of issues be it lack of voltage, too high a temp, too much voltage, not enough NB voltage, not enough RAM voltage, badly set RAM timings, etc the list could go on.

My Q9550 is now stable at 3.7 and hits 37 degrees idle 55 load with the fan at 645rpm and I am quite certain that 3.8GHz+ is entirely possible but more on that later.

It actually to me ages to find the best blend of timings, voltages and CPU settings to get it stable and I found an x8 multiplier to work best with a higher FSB - this is strange considering I have 8GB of RAM since one would expect that much RAM to max out around 450MHz FSB! (1:1).

 

[Rroff]

Make sure that speedstep and C1E function are disabled in the BIOS - for good measure disable LDT spread spectrum controls.

Lock PCIe Frequency to either 100 or 101 (I find the board clocks slightly better with 101).

Linked memory clocks (theres a lot of holes otherwise where just 1-2MHz is the difference between perfectly stable and boot failure)

Ensure your memory timings, frequency and voltage are within the tolerances of the RAM.

If in doubt disabled CPU Fast Read - otherwise set to auto.

Dropping LDT Frequency to x4 might help - but x5 is much better.

 

[vian_siu]

what settings do you guys run your ram on? i just want to know so i can use it as a template for my ram settings. i am using corsair cm2*2048-8500c5

 

[mrk]

Mine is 5-5-5-15-2T.

I've been playing today though as I had to restart due to gfx bsod during L4D - with a 1.35vcore I am on 475FSB with an x7 multi, 3.3GHz but an FSB increase is always better than MHz increase for bandwidth.

 

[Rroff]

what settings do you guys run your ram on? i just want to know so i can use it as a template for my ram settings. i am using corsair cm2*2048-8500c5

Its not good just dialing in someone elses RAM settings you have to test that your RAM is stable at that speed first before overclocking the CPU.

 

[vian_siu]

after tweaking the ram a bit last night, its finally stable at 3.4, it looks like the ram was part of the problem after all. might push it a bit further, anyway thanks to those who helped

 

[Shikyo]

It's not a bad chip to overclock really.
I'm running at 3.6ghz for almost a year now, with just 1.25v and I could push it further if my memory would allow me to.
It's a shame that you can't get at 3.4, get rid of that board!

 

[mrk]

My problem really is my memory is rated 1GHz (G Skill) but I have 8GB of the stuff so getting close to 1GHz is unstable unless I trim the timings to unwanted levels as I quite like 5-5-5-12-2T =]

I will see if anyone on MM sells ultra fast DDRII at some point and "sidegrade" to see if this chip can do 4GHz on 500fsb

 

[setter]

When i ran my p5q deluxe p45 q9550 combo, 3.8ghz came very easily, cpu had a 1.200 vid, 3.8ghz on 1.216 vcore, pretty easy clock, would have went higher if i had pushed it, got lazy and bought an i7. If you want good clocks from a 45nm quad, get a p45 board, x38/48/780i are no good for theese cpu's