First try on Q8200

[Makhaira]

Ok, I'm just dipping my toe into the pool since I'm getting my hands on a Q9550 tomorrow, and haven't really seriously meddled around in OC'ing before. I know the Q8200 is a poor clocker, but I thought I'd have a play on stock volts to see what I could do tonight, before aiming at 3.4/3.6Gig with the Q9550 tomorrow.

Naturally, some questions have appeared...

Q8200 is stock 2.33Ghz, with a 7.0 multiplier. Generally it's a rubbish clocker. I've upped my FSB to 370, locked my PCI-E at 100, and left NB/SB/Vcore at stock (I'm actually undervolting the CPU in Windows, it's down at 1.1v and appears happy - makes me suspect that my cheap and nasty P5QPL-VM EPU board is the source of my 370 wall, rather than the CPU).

So my Q8200 is sat at 2.6Gig now, and seems happy, although I haven't Primed it yet.

RAM was another story though...

I've got some Corsair TWINX 8500C2, and I've managed to get the following out of it:

1110Mhz at 6-5-5-18-44
or 888Mhz at 5-5-5-18-36

Now, at what point does speed become more important than timings? In other words, without launching into a series of benchmarks, which would be the better RAM config to have? Or is that not possible to tell without benching?

All comments/musing/wise words of advice appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[Makhaira]

In all the trawling I've done of the net that is the most succinct explanation I've seen, thanks for that. I might even try dropping the RAM speed a bit further to tighten up the timings then.