Just a quickie

arc@css · 4 Apr 2010 at 11:39

Hi,

My q6600 is a stepping B, revision GO. Am I right in saying that the stepping B ones are not so good clockers, just what I have read elsewhere.

Cheers.

Frozennova · 4 Apr 2010 at 13:22

The G0 (SLACR) clocks better than the B3 (SL9UM)

arc@css · 4 Apr 2010 at 13:45

CPU-Z reads that mine is a stepping B, revision GO, so I am not sure what to make of it.

Frozennova · 4 Apr 2010 at 13:52

That would make it G0 stepping as the Intel spec finder lists B3 or G0 as stepping options.

arc@css · 4 Apr 2010 at 14:09

Ok, thanks for that.

Well, for a GO revision it appears to clock poorly.

Redmint · 4 Apr 2010 at 14:34

You might just have been unlucky like me, mine's not the best clocker either.

arc@css · 4 Apr 2010 at 14:39

Aye, I have tried everything I can think of. I can get it to around 3.5 (tops) but it resets itself back to 2.4 anthing from a few hours or a few weeks later.
I upped the voltage, no difference. Changing the frequency to 101 helped a little I think though I can't be certain.

It's getting to the stage where I'll either book it in to a local computer shop to see what they can get out of it or I'll just eek out the 775 socket a while longer with a Q9650 or an 8600. Don't see the point of changing the motherboard at this point.

Frozennova · 4 Apr 2010 at 14:41

Wernt the X48 boards pretty poor for clocking though, I thought it was commonly accepted that P45 was the best chipset for overclocking?

arc@css · 4 Apr 2010 at 14:48

To be honest m8 I don't know. I 'thought' they were supposed to be good at overclocking or at least of a decent standard.

I expect you are right though, I am not experienced with overclocking.

Edit : I will add that I have noticed that a lot of other folk's core voltage seems to be much lower than mine, which might explain why it doesn't clock well. Keep reading 1.32 or less in nearly all cases where as mine is at 1.42, and that's just at 3.0!

Edit : Make that 1.552.

Pooh · 4 Apr 2010 at 23:39

arc@css said:
Aye, I have tried everything I can think of. I can get it to around 3.5 (tops) but it resets itself back to 2.4 anthing from a few hours or a few weeks later.
I upped the voltage, no difference. Changing the frequency to 101 helped a little I think though I can't be certain.

It's getting to the stage where I'll either book it in to a local computer shop to see what they can get out of it or I'll just eek out the 775 socket a while longer with a Q9650 or an 8600. Don't see the point of changing the motherboard at this point.

I could get my Q6600 G0 to 3.45 stable under water on a Gigabyte P35.

3.5 is not to shabby for a Q6600.

My Q9550 however is a different beast as it easily goes over 3.7

coupe69 · 5 Apr 2010 at 11:29

Are you sure it's your cpu that's letting you down and not your RAM? What do you have that set to?

As mentioned above 3.5GHz isn't bad for a Q6600, and you'd be unlikely to see much difference between that and a Q9650@4GHz apart from in benchmarks.

arc@css · 5 Apr 2010 at 11:50

coupe69 said:
Are you sure it's your cpu that's letting you down and not your RAM? What do you have that set to?

As mentioned above 3.5GHz isn't bad for a Q6600, and you'd be unlikely to see much difference between that and a Q9650@4GHz apart from in benchmarks.

I doubt it's the ram though. I have run memtest for quite a while the other day and that found nothing. Just seems to point to the cpu when it resets itself, regardless of settings. 3.0 to possibly 3.2 (maybe) is stable.

coupe69 · 5 Apr 2010 at 11:57

What RAM is it and what voltages are you chucking through it? Just because it passes memtest doesn't mean it won't fall over at some point. BTW you should ideally run memtest overnight giving it time to do several passes.

Just for your information, my Q6600 needed 1.4v to get to 3.6GHz and that was on a X38 board.

EDIT: Might be an idea to post your BIOS settings in here (vcore, ram voltages and timings, northbridge voltages etc etc), there might be somebody else who's running the same board that may be able to help.

arc@css · 5 Apr 2010 at 12:13

Thanks for reply.

I have OCZ 4gb PC12800 / 1600. The voltages will be at auto / stock for the ram. The changes I make when attempting an overclock on the cpu are : pci frequency to 101, fsb change (333 atm), tend to leave the multiplier alone as it doesn't seem to like being altered, cpu voltages at auto, and I think that's about it. (Might have missed something out, hard to say without seeing the right screen).

I have tried changing the cpu voltage to x, y, or z but it hasn't yielded any decent results. At auto it reads 'normal', whatever that reading is.

coupe69 · 5 Apr 2010 at 12:22

You'll need to manually set your vcore and your ram voltages for starters, you're never going to get a decent oc on auto.

You could start at 1.4v for the vcore the older 65nm cpus are fine with that, not sure about the voltages on the RAM, is it newer 1.65v or the older 1.8-1.9v stuff? Whatever it is, set it to the maximum voltages it's rated to. You don't need to mess with the multiplier so leave that at 9. You might also want to turn any power saving features off ie speedstep, c1 state etc as these can hamper a good oc.

Are you running 4x1GB sticks or 2x2GB? Also what are the timings for it and what are they set to in the BIOS?

arc@css · 5 Apr 2010 at 12:27

4 x 1gb sticks, I'll have a look in the bios to see what the ram voltage is set to.

The model is ocz platinum pc12800 ddr3 1600. I bought it when ddr3 more or less first came out and I wasn't on the forums at the time so my knowledge of ram was even less than it is now, and that's saying something, lol.

I wouldn't dare admit how much I paid for it, it was about the best you could buy at the time.

coupe69 · 5 Apr 2010 at 12:41

Now we're getting somewhere

You may possibly need to up the northbridge (probably be mch in bios) voltage a touch, as you're running with 4 sticks of memory.

If you can find out the exact model of memory (OCZ have done several versions of ddr3 platinum memory) and then find out the maximum rated voltage it can take along with the timings, that would be a bonus.

arc@css · 5 Apr 2010 at 13:00

Ok, I had look in the bios but found nothing about ram voltages. I did see this though :

System Voltage Control : (atm manual)
Cpu voltage control : normal
Normal Cpu vcore 1.32500 v
System memory multiplier = auto
Dram timing selectable = auto
Memory frequency = 1333 - So does this mean that my ram, (which is capable to go beyond 1600), downclocks to a 1:1 ratio with the cpu?

I'll have a tinker with one or two settings now, I'll look for mch and then have a gander for the ram model.

Edit : cpu-z reads : core voltage (that is vcore right?) = 1.552v ... yet above I wrote the normal cpu vcore @ 1.32500v?? Is that what it would have been at stock, 2.4ghz?

Ty.

Here is CPU-Z reading, sorry for the amateurish method used, still new to me this.

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arc@css · 6 Apr 2010 at 18:38

coupe69 said:
What RAM is it and what voltages are you chucking through it? Just because it passes memtest doesn't mean it won't fall over at some point. BTW you should ideally run memtest overnight giving it time to do several passes.

Just for your information, my Q6600 needed 1.4v to get to 3.6GHz and that was on a X38 board.

EDIT: Might be an idea to post your BIOS settings in here (vcore, ram voltages and timings, northbridge voltages etc etc), there might be somebody else who's running the same board that may be able to help.

I think (not certain but very close if not) I have found my ram timings : either 9-9-9-30 - which I thought they weren't from my recollection. Alternatively if they are not that then they must be this : 7-7-7-24. The volts listed on the website are 1.8 and 1.7 respectively.

I have upped the system voltage to 1.4
Am going to have another experimental dabble now.