E6400 & Gigabyte DS3 failure

Misiowiec · 17 Mar 2007 at 17:02

I've just assembled a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, E6400 and 2 x 1Gb PC6400 Geil RAM system but the CPU does not want to clock. Any FSB higher than 280 and it won't pass the POST.

I've tried following the various guides such as this, this and this and all the BIOS setting are correct. Raising the voltage of the CPU, RAM and motherboard makes no difference. I've also tried clocking back the memory, but again it makes no difference.

Any ideas? It's a bit of an anticlimax otherwise; my old X2 3800+ @ 2.5GHz probably had better performance. Hell, even my old Celeron 300A @ 450Mhz had more bang for the buck

Any creative suggestions are much appreciated.

danoliver1 · 17 Mar 2007 at 17:28

Have u memtested the ram my first set of geil had problems rma'd it and now all is good.

Misiowiec · 18 Mar 2007 at 11:45

danoliver1 said:
Have u memtested the ram my first set of geil had problems rma'd it and now all is good.

Can you recommend a good mem test app? And what kind of problems did you have with your memory?

Goody_GTI · 18 Mar 2007 at 12:34

do'h should read post properly before posting !

As mentioned check your ram using memtest, and make sure you have +0.3v on the vdimm voltage

Goody_GTI · 18 Mar 2007 at 12:36

Here:

Memtest

Misiowiec · 18 Mar 2007 at 13:14

goody_106 said:
Here:

Memtest

Thanks for that; ran two loops and no memory errors.

Also tried to take the CPU / RAM of the equation by lowering the multipliers so they ran lower than stock, together and on their own. System still refuses to POST above 275 MHz FSB. Also upped the voltage on everything and reflashed the F10 BIOS to no avail.

What a royal pain - can I conclude the motherboard is tp blame or is there anything else I can test?

Participant · 18 Mar 2007 at 14:11

There will be something you've overlooked, this is just unheard of in normal scenarios. BTW I seriously doubt your AMD had better performance!

Misiowiec · 18 Mar 2007 at 14:18

Robbie G said:
There will be something you've overlooked, this is just unheard of in normal scenarios. BTW I seriously doubt your AMD had better performance!

Fair enough, I probably missed something - but what? I've overclocked many times in the past and just can't understand what went wrong.

And performance of the two processors is probably quite similar; the X2 is not much slower than the C2D clock-for-clock. It's the scailing capabilities of the C2D that hand it the crown hands down. So running a C2D at 2.13Ghz vs X2 at 2.5Ghz is really not a big difference, and certainly not money well spent.

VeNT · 18 Mar 2007 at 16:41

Misiowiec said:
Fair enough, I probably missed something - but what? I've overclocked many times in the past and just can't understand what went wrong.

And performance of the two processors is probably quite similar; the X2 is not much slower than the C2D clock-for-clock. It's the scailing capabilities of the C2D that hand it the crown hands down. So running a C2D at 2.13Ghz vs X2 at 2.5Ghz is really not a big difference, and certainly not money well spent.

the core 2 should do 3.2+ on that board easily.
even clock for clock its going to be much faster than the AMD from what I've seen.

Misiowiec · 18 Mar 2007 at 16:57

VeNT said:
the core 2 should do 3.2+ on that board easily.
even clock for clock its going to be much faster than the AMD from what I've seen.

Yes, I agree - it should :-)

So how do I make it? Or rather, what in my setup has gone wrong?

Goody_GTI · 18 Mar 2007 at 18:57

I know in your first post you said that you had read various guides - but really, got through this one very carefully to ensure you have everything disabled that could, and by the sounds of it, be putting uneccesary pressure on your DS3 preventing the fsb going any higher

Misiowiec · 18 Mar 2007 at 19:45

goody_106 said:
I know in your first post you said that you had read various guides - but really, got through this one very carefully to ensure you have everything disabled that could, and by the sounds of it, be putting uneccesary pressure on your DS3 preventing the fsb going any higher

Thanks for the link, but I've followed that guide too. But even without having followed it the system should make it past 275Mhz FSB, I mean that's a mere 3%! Seems to me like I've either got something fundamentally wrong, or the motherboard is broken. Or what do I know, could be anything.

Goody_GTI · 18 Mar 2007 at 21:23

Have you tried increasing the voltage on the vmch or whatever it is called in the bios? Basically the voltage for the northbridge - I think thats right !

Misiowiec · 19 Mar 2007 at 09:19

goody_106 said:
Have you tried increasing the voltage on the vmch or whatever it is called in the bios? Basically the voltage for the northbridge - I think thats right !

Yes, I tried that but no luck! I see we have the same system btw; did you follow some specific guide to get it working? What voltages are you using?

Goody_GTI · 19 Mar 2007 at 18:40

Misiowiec said:
Yes, I tried that but no luck! I see we have the same system btw; did you follow some specific guide to get it working? What voltages are you using?

Yep I followed the guide i posted already, seemed to work alright for me, but this is a really weird one as the main point of the DS3 is its high fsb capability, theres got to be something stopping it?!

Can you post a full list of the important bios options? as in voltages, timings etc. and we'll go from there

Misiowiec · 26 Mar 2007 at 12:26

After much tinkering it's now overclocking to 3.0Ghz totally stable. It really was a matter of checking and double-checking all settings, reaseating all connectors and increasing voltages. Well worth the effort!
The guide that helped me is here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1169366

Many thanks to all.

CompMan · 26 Mar 2007 at 12:27

Change the bios my ds3 would'nt do anything on f9 bios i changed to f10
and overclocking worked fine.