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Anyone running a Q6600 on a 650i Mobo?

Soldato
Joined
10 Feb 2007
Posts
3,467
I am thinking of getting a Q6600 to play with, but first wanted to know peoples success with this chip on a 650i motherboard. I currently have a P5N-E which I would prefer to keep.

So, how far can a 650i chipset clock a quad?
 
I am just about to do the same thing.

The board will not limit the quad, heat will definately be the deciding factor.

I will let you know when mine is up and running if you wish; should be within the week.
 
BlastRadius said:
I am just about to do the same thing.

The board will not limit the quad, heat will definately be the deciding factor.

I will let you know when mine is up and running if you wish; should be within the week.
Much appreciated.
 
That board runs my QX6700 at 333 x 9 = 3.0Ghz so I don't see why the Q6600 wouldn't be able to do the same. I ran at that speed for a couple of weeks and then dropped back to stock, because I really didn't need the extra speed. Of course you may want to go higher... On air I think 3.2GHz is probably a sensible limit, but I haven't tried higher myself.
 
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BlastRadius said:
I am just about to do the same thing.

The board will not limit the quad, heat will definately be the deciding factor.

I will let you know when mine is up and running if you wish; should be within the week.

I think you will be horribly disappointed as the 650i boards don't clock quads very well at all. The ASUS P5N-E is probably the worst of the lot due to it's exceptionally severe vDroop. Somewhere between 300MHz (2.7GHz) and 333MHz (3GHz) was my experience with a Q6600 on the P5N-E's I had (even a properly voltmodded one). I swapped to a Gigabyte N650i-DS4 and I got 333MHz (3GHz) maximum despite the 6-phase power regulation, and the same chip will do 378MHz (3.4GHz) in the Gigabyte P35-DS4 that I've just got now.

The only NVidia chipset boards known to clock quad-cores well at all is the EVGA 680i and even then you want the revised version.
 
Severe vdroop, yes ;)

Q6600 may be different from QX6700, but my P5N-E certainly runs mine at 333 x 9 totally stable (4 instances of Prime95 for 24hrs+) and I'm sure it would go further. Could be a case of "your mileage may vary"... But for sure, there are far better boards out there.
Of course I don't actually need FSB overclocking, I have the multiplier :)
 
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eVGA 650i Ultra Vdroop Pencil Mod the graphite on the pencil is conductive, so more electricity is able to run through the chip thus fixing the droop,quote from another site
 
WJA96 said:
The only NVidia chipset boards known to clock quad-cores well at all is the EVGA 680i and even then you want the revised version.

My bfg 680i clocks quads quite well... I've had a Q6600 in there at 3.6ghz, and was bootable at 3.8ghz This wasn't a G0 stepping one either.. (although it was on water.. but still only used 1.45v to achieve this..)

It is also the latest revision board with D00 in the serial number.. (just to make sure.. this is latest revision right?)
 
It appears that WJA96 may be correct.

I just had the chance to sample a Q6600 on the 650I and it wasn't a great experience. Thankfully I had a chance to look before I bought as I will not be getting one, and will stick with what I have until penryn/barcelona. My friend has virtually the same setup as mine in sig (he copied lol) but he has had a B3 stepping Q6600 for a month or so and asked me to clock it.

At stock with everything on auto it was fine all 4 cores under 45 loaded with Prime95 Version 25.3.

To reach 2.7G we upped the fsb to 300 (1200QDR) and tried all on auto, it failed Prime after 20Seconds. We set Vcore at 1.325 in the BIOS, this made 2.7 stable with load temps of 55,56,52,52 which he was happy about and for heat reasons is the where he keeps it for day to day use.

3G (333fsb, 1333 QDR) is very reachable as well keeping the same Vcore but using the +0.1V to account for Vdroop but temps were starting to get toasty at 64,66,60,62 which is still repectable and would easily top 10,000 in 3Dmark06.

We pushed on and got stable at 3.2 (350 fsb) but with oodles of Vcore we had idle temps in the 50's and load in the 70's - I am sure with lots more time we could have lowered the Vcore slightly and increased the cooling until we saw similar temps as we did at 3Ghz or pushed for higher clocks with the same Vcore.

My conclusion of the Q6600 on a P5N-E SLI is not as good as it is for dual core processors. The Vdroop, as WJA96 pointed out, is this boards downfall. We had to apply a lot more Vcore than was needed to account for the Vdroop meaning higher than usual coretemps.

Basically I think I could live with 3.0Ghz and maybe 3.2Ghz with a lot more tweaking and maybe watercooling the CPU, it all depends on your setup and how you cool it. As stated I will stick with my E6400 @3.2 @ 1.325 and low 50's, and wait until native quads and software to utilise it appear.

BIOS 608
Coretemp 0.95
CPU-Z 1.38
Prime95 V25.3
 
BlastRadius said:
3G (333fsb, 1333 QDR) is very reachable as well keeping the same Vcore but using the +0.1V to account for Vdroop but temps were starting to get toasty at 64,66,60,62 which is still repectable and would easily top 10,000 in 3Dmark06.

Those temps are not toasty at all for a quad core CPU. And in fact early 70s at 3.2 is absolutely not a problem either, but starting to get up there

Certainly people with this board can get a Q6600 and run it at 3.0 - 3.2 until they get a better motherboard if that is their desire. 3.2 is about the limit on air anyway. Raising the vcore to counter the vdroop only makes it idle hotter, as at idle the vdroop isn't there to the same extent, and you're running more vots than necessary. Under load, the vdroop doesn't cause higher temps vs a board that doesn't have it, because all you are doing is putting the vcore up to where it should be.

Not sure why I defend this board - it's pretty crap in my view, but it does exactly what I need it to do, so can't complain.
 
It it still a great board and I am very happy it it does 450FSb with ease. To be honest I was hoping to clock the Q6600 to 3.6G and that would have given me the green light to go get one myself; as that would have still been less FSB than I am currently able to use.

I knew about the Vdroop problem before I bought this board and was happy as I only planned a 6400; and it was from reading some stuff that WJA96 said on these forums that made me go for it (don't panic I said I am happy lol).

For a C2D this board is still great, personally I will not spend £170 on a C2Q which is not as nice to OC and has very little performance benefit anyway.

This is only my opinion from one limited experiance, your own experiance will almost definately differ - The G0 stepping may well be a wiser choice??
 
Indeed it handles dual cores a whole lot better than quad for overclocking, that is very clear. I don't regret the purchase really as I had very few options at the time. It runs my QX6700 24/7 under full load totally stable and trouble free, and what more can you ask. If I wanted another quad system I'd certainly choose differently, but that is always the case anyway. The market moves on and the rate of development is amazing.
 
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