Overclock or replace?

Korsun

Korsun

Korsun

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Joined
30 Aug 2009
Posts
289
Location
Redditch , Worcestershire
Gents, I hope I can take up a moment of your time for a bit of advice/help.
I have an Intel Core2 Extreme X6800 cpu build on a Gigabyte EP45- UD3LR board.
I notice while playing the latest titles i.e. BF3, I occasionally suffer from slowing down and stuttering during game play.

I have 2 questions;

1. Am I best replacing my system with something like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-063-OE or overclock my current setup?

2. If the answer is to overclock, could someone give me some help or point me in the right direction as looking through the forums and guides I am well confused and do not wish to blow my system :o
 
Hi James, as per my signature a Corsair HX620W modular PSU. Thanks for the basket info. Surely though the 4.6 ghz clocked package is a better option, or is it simple enough for a numpty like me to overclock it myself?
 
Korsun said:
Hi James, as per my signature a Corsair HX620W modular PSU. Thanks for the basket info. Surely though the 4.6 ghz clocked package is a better option, or is it simple enough for a numpty like me to overclock it myself?
Click to expand...

You might aswell buy the parts seperate.

It is really easy to overclock.

You may even get about 4.8GHz.
 
Was gonna say your feeling the lack of the extra 2 threads but IIRC BF3 was opptimised just before retail release so it works well on dual cores (or rather works just as badly on dualcores as quads).

You should be able to get both the GPU and CPU overclocked significantly on that system without having to touch the voltages, etc. but the CPU will need an aftermarket cooler if you don't already have one - a decent tower cooler would be ideal.

The 470 should hit 775MHz without any voltage adjustment and 800MHz with minor voltage adjustment (1.087v tops) which is a significant boost over stock and those core 2s were always good for clocking should manage around 3.6-3.8gig on that board atleast with only minor voltage increase tho stability testing, etc. on a CPU can be a bit of work.

The other option would be to look for 2nd hand Q9550s _if_ you can get one cheap it would be not that far behind an i5 setup in a lot of cases especially gaming but only do it if you can find one <£80 or so and they should overclock well on that board.

I'm still running a Q9550 @ 4gig w/ GTX470 SLI and if you look in the gaming benchmark threads except in a very small number of CPU heavy games (mostly RTS) I'm usually matching the heavily OC'd i7 powered GTX470 SLI setups.
 
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As for Resolution I leave it at stock, just improve the details, AA.

Thanks for the info Rroff, I feel overclocking is the way if I only know and trust what I am doing!
 
IIRC the X6800 has an unlocked multiplier so it makes overclocking much simpler on it - whack on a tower cooler, find what bus strap has the highest performance on that board (or even leave it at default) and set it so that the RAM is running at its normal speed (very little performance if any from overclocking the RAM and usually just shortens the RAM life significantly), then you can just up the multiplier 1 at a time until it fails linpack (intel burn test) or an hour of OCCT, then up the voltage one notch til it passes (or the voltage gets above 1.55 which is about the max you want to push it), if the vcore is still below 1.55 and its stable you can push the multiplier up another notch and repeat - once it seems stable running simple stress tests give it 8 hours or so of prime95/mprime or whatever prime stress test is the current favorite.
 
Rroff, had a look at your info and over the weekend tried to implement it to no avail. If up the multiplyer from 11x to 12x with the standard fsb setting which is 266, I should I think have an overclock of 3.192 yes?

As soon as I load OCCT to test it, it immediately shows an over clock of 1.597 a decrease by 45.5%! I am completely baffled now and have no clue on what to do, any ideas?
 
Korsun said:
Rroff, had a look at your info and over the weekend tried to implement it to no avail. If up the multiplyer from 11x to 12x with the standard fsb setting which is 266, I should I think have an overclock of 3.192 yes?

As soon as I load OCCT to test it, it immediately shows an over clock of 1.597 a decrease by 45.5%! I am completely baffled now and have no clue on what to do, any ideas?
Click to expand...

Attempt to turn speedstep off and see what it does.
 
Theres quite a few ok to decent guides on overclocking the X6800

Just linking to one of many not read it in depth but should give you a bit of an idea of whats what:

http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/a...Extreme-X6800-Overclocking-with-Air-Cooling/0

I'd probably say unless you have a monster chip your better off aiming for something like 11x333 tho it might be a bit more work fiddling with voltages as around 3.6gig seems to be the average attainable and the 333 FSB usually seems to produce the highest performance (other than 400).

Just make sure you know how to reset the CMOS on your board incase of an unstable setting and keep an eye no the RAM clock sync so you don't accidentally run the RAM out of spec.

EDIT: You probably want to make sure the PCI bus is locked to 100 (or 101) MHz as well not left on auto if you start increasing the FSB so it doesn't rise with the FSB - if its left in auto and goes above about 105 or so you do risk HDD data corruption should the controller become unstable.
 
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Thanks for help
smile.gif
 
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