Ok, this is going to take a while for me to type down. ><
Around January, I bought a completely new system, pre-built. The primary components were:
Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86ghz
MSI 975x Platinum Edition motherboard
2x1GB Elixir DDR2 PC667
The power supply and graphics card were very generic items, so I threw them away and replaced them with a X1900XT and an Enermax Noisetaker 485 watt power supply.
Fast forward some time later, I decide to try and overclock the system. I did this by raising the FSB in 5 at a time, which worked fine up until 367FSB, which gave me a 2.67ghz speed overall, and a 700 or so mhz ram speed. Any higher (even with vcore at 1.28-1.3), and the computer would refuse to post, which was incredibly disappointing, especially as I invested in an Arctic Freezer Pro 7 just to have fun with the Core 2 Duo. I have seen many people reach 3ghz and beyond on just air alone. Slight annoyance aside and a weak self-assurance that the cooler would extend my relatively untaxed processer by millenia, I left it alone with a slight hunch that maybe, just maybe it was my ram holding it back.
Fast forward to last week; Gibbo posting about the deal where 2GBs of GEiL PC6700C4 is being old for mere peanuts. I thought it would be a good idea to invest in more ram now that games like UT3 and Crysis is on the horizon, so I purchased 4GBs of the memory (other 2GB I ordered later after the first 2GB, it comes tomorrow) and took the old (elixir) ram out. This would mean I have only the superior ram in it, which with its promising performance and higher speed surely should help my PC overclock better.
Or so I thought. The bad thing was, putting the new ram in has overall made my PC even slower - I put the new memory in, put all my clock speeds at default (so I overclock from scratch with the new memory in) and set the GEiL timing rates to their intended settings in the BIOS - 4,4,4,12 with 2.1 volts and a 400mhz DDR speed which results in 800mhz memory speed as CPU-Z correctly shows. So far so good! At this point, the FSB still shows only 266mhz which is giving my processer its default 1.86ghz speed. With the old ram, I could push the FSB high enough that the speed hit 2.67ghz, but no higher than that or it would not post. But unfortunately with the new memory, the FSB will only go high enough for a 2.56ghz Core 2 Duo speed, any higher and I get failed posts and/or BSODs upon Windows loading the desktop.
What is making my CPU/computer give up so easily? Could it be the power supply, crud motherboard or something else? Or is there some certain part to the overclocking process I am overlooking? This is a problem that has been niggling away at me for a long time now; I sometimes go green with envy at posters with 3ghz+ 6300s in their sigs, knowing I can easily reach the same with my equipment but for some inexplicable reason, just can't. Later on down the road, the low processor speed is going to bottleneck the rest of the system, particularly the 8800GTS. If anyone here can help me find a solution (help me hit 3ghz at last!) then I would appreciate it a ton.
Around January, I bought a completely new system, pre-built. The primary components were:
Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86ghz
MSI 975x Platinum Edition motherboard
2x1GB Elixir DDR2 PC667
The power supply and graphics card were very generic items, so I threw them away and replaced them with a X1900XT and an Enermax Noisetaker 485 watt power supply.
Fast forward some time later, I decide to try and overclock the system. I did this by raising the FSB in 5 at a time, which worked fine up until 367FSB, which gave me a 2.67ghz speed overall, and a 700 or so mhz ram speed. Any higher (even with vcore at 1.28-1.3), and the computer would refuse to post, which was incredibly disappointing, especially as I invested in an Arctic Freezer Pro 7 just to have fun with the Core 2 Duo. I have seen many people reach 3ghz and beyond on just air alone. Slight annoyance aside and a weak self-assurance that the cooler would extend my relatively untaxed processer by millenia, I left it alone with a slight hunch that maybe, just maybe it was my ram holding it back.
Fast forward to last week; Gibbo posting about the deal where 2GBs of GEiL PC6700C4 is being old for mere peanuts. I thought it would be a good idea to invest in more ram now that games like UT3 and Crysis is on the horizon, so I purchased 4GBs of the memory (other 2GB I ordered later after the first 2GB, it comes tomorrow) and took the old (elixir) ram out. This would mean I have only the superior ram in it, which with its promising performance and higher speed surely should help my PC overclock better.
Or so I thought. The bad thing was, putting the new ram in has overall made my PC even slower - I put the new memory in, put all my clock speeds at default (so I overclock from scratch with the new memory in) and set the GEiL timing rates to their intended settings in the BIOS - 4,4,4,12 with 2.1 volts and a 400mhz DDR speed which results in 800mhz memory speed as CPU-Z correctly shows. So far so good! At this point, the FSB still shows only 266mhz which is giving my processer its default 1.86ghz speed. With the old ram, I could push the FSB high enough that the speed hit 2.67ghz, but no higher than that or it would not post. But unfortunately with the new memory, the FSB will only go high enough for a 2.56ghz Core 2 Duo speed, any higher and I get failed posts and/or BSODs upon Windows loading the desktop.
What is making my CPU/computer give up so easily? Could it be the power supply, crud motherboard or something else? Or is there some certain part to the overclocking process I am overlooking? This is a problem that has been niggling away at me for a long time now; I sometimes go green with envy at posters with 3ghz+ 6300s in their sigs, knowing I can easily reach the same with my equipment but for some inexplicable reason, just can't. Later on down the road, the low processor speed is going to bottleneck the rest of the system, particularly the 8800GTS. If anyone here can help me find a solution (help me hit 3ghz at last!) then I would appreciate it a ton.
My MSI 975x default settings must all be totally wrong.
)
... on air...) so the fact that you only have 1.4v going through it could probably be the cause.. of course it could just be the limit of the cpu, some are good, some aint...