Soldato
- Joined
- 9 Dec 2009
- Posts
- 5,427
- Location
- Bristol
Hi all,
I've not posted here before & firstly I want to thank everyone for putting up some fantastic guides, discussing your overclocking & giving me the confidence to have a go myself.
I've been running this system for 3 years, before that I had an E6300 in a Gigabyte DS3 with some Corsair Value 667 RAM. After fiddling about with the old system & getting better performance I decided to upgrade, but I struggled to get the Q6600 stable at 3Ghz & at stock speed it was still much quicker than the E6300 @ 2.2Ghz, so I ran it at stock settings, until now that is.
I was going to buy an i5 bundle (from OCUK of course) but with money being rather tight at the moment decided to throw caution to the wind & try to push my existing system before placing the order. Well I am now running rock solid at 3.2 Ghz & the jump in performance is significant, no way am I going back to stock speeds again! I want to get the most out of this system before I move on, it's not just about economy, it's good fun & if I can get another year or maybe even 18 months out of it then I'll be very pleased indeed (not to mention more knowledgable).
So before I ask for advice on what I intend to do I just want to share what I was doing wrong & how I got to a solid 3.2Ghz (solid to me means no CTD's during gaming, no odd things happening, errors, freezes etc).
1. Voltage
I was overcautious when raising the Vcore, 1.32 volts is the most I would go up to. This allowed me to boot to Windows but I'd crash as soon as I ran a game or other demanding application. So this time, as per the beginners guide, I raised the vcore up to 1.4v incrementally at stock speed until I got to a steady 62c under load, only then did I start raising the clock speed. The results, compared to the way I was doing it before (going up bit by bit with both the vcore & the clock speed) were excellent. Stable @ 3.2Ghz, 45c when idling & 63c under load when benchmarking, usually about 61ish when gaming.
2. Multiplier
I had left this on x9 as I figured it was pointless decreasing the cpu speed by setting it lower. After reading on a couple of threads about people getting better results with the muliplier set at x8 I gave this a go & the results were excellent. At x9 I struggled to get to above 380mhz but now steady at 400mhz X8.
3. FSB/RAM Ratio
I used to leave this on automatic, but any overclocking of the RAM (beyond 2-3 mhz) makes the system unstable, so have set this to 1:1 & at 400mhz everything is nice & steady, though I'm not really sure if the actual ratio has any effect on stability. Anything over 400mhz certainly does. Apart from this, the only other RAM adjustments are raising the voltage to 2.1v & setting the timings at 4-4-4-12, as specified by Geil (admittedly I have no idea how to tweak RAM timings so just did what it said on the box).
This is how I've running the system for the last 2 months & it's performed faultlessly, but I've been wondering how to get more out of it. This is what I have come up with.
A. Get some 1066mhz RAM. The board only goes up to 800mhz, but I can run the RAM @ 800mhz on a 1:1 ratio then when I raise the clockspeed beyond the current 400mhz (which my current RAM doesn't like) i will be able, I hope, to get to 3.6Ghz with the RAM running at 900mhz. I originally intended to get 8gb (4x 2gb) but after reading on here 8gb won't give that much of a performance gain over 4gb for gaming (plus DDR2 is so flipping dear) I've decided to plump for the current capacity of 4gb. 1gb modules are about £20 each.
B. Get a new cooler. The trusty Mk1 Arctic Freezer Pro has served me proud, but as I was running at stock for nearly 3 years the fan hardly turned! With this overclock it's regularly cycling between 50% & full speed unless I'm just web browsing & although not really noisy, its fairly audible. For the sake of £20 a rev.2 model, which is reportedly also quieter seems like an obvious choice to round the cost up to £100.
So that's what I intend to do. I would really like some comments & advice.
Is this a worthwhile uprade? Or is there a better way of going about getting a better overclock?
Is the RAM issue really the bottleneck stopping me from going any faster?
Is there any benefit from 8gb over 4gb for gaming?
4 modules or 2? I could get x2 modules of 2gb & leave 2 spare slots for when I can afford another 4gb, though it will probably be even more expensive in the future. Also, I figured 4 modules rather than 2 would have more pathways & make the memory more accessible.
Anyway thanks for reading, again I really appreciate all the help this forum provides.
Q6600 @ 3.2 Ghz
Abit IP35 Pro
4gb Geil PC2-6400 (4x 1gb)
Arctic Freezer Pro (rev.1)
Pallit GTX 460 1gb
OCZ Steath Xtreme 600w
Clear case, x4 80mm Hyperfans
Coolermaster Aeorgate Fan Controller
W7 64-bit Home Premium
I've not posted here before & firstly I want to thank everyone for putting up some fantastic guides, discussing your overclocking & giving me the confidence to have a go myself.
I've been running this system for 3 years, before that I had an E6300 in a Gigabyte DS3 with some Corsair Value 667 RAM. After fiddling about with the old system & getting better performance I decided to upgrade, but I struggled to get the Q6600 stable at 3Ghz & at stock speed it was still much quicker than the E6300 @ 2.2Ghz, so I ran it at stock settings, until now that is.
I was going to buy an i5 bundle (from OCUK of course) but with money being rather tight at the moment decided to throw caution to the wind & try to push my existing system before placing the order. Well I am now running rock solid at 3.2 Ghz & the jump in performance is significant, no way am I going back to stock speeds again! I want to get the most out of this system before I move on, it's not just about economy, it's good fun & if I can get another year or maybe even 18 months out of it then I'll be very pleased indeed (not to mention more knowledgable).
So before I ask for advice on what I intend to do I just want to share what I was doing wrong & how I got to a solid 3.2Ghz (solid to me means no CTD's during gaming, no odd things happening, errors, freezes etc).
1. Voltage
I was overcautious when raising the Vcore, 1.32 volts is the most I would go up to. This allowed me to boot to Windows but I'd crash as soon as I ran a game or other demanding application. So this time, as per the beginners guide, I raised the vcore up to 1.4v incrementally at stock speed until I got to a steady 62c under load, only then did I start raising the clock speed. The results, compared to the way I was doing it before (going up bit by bit with both the vcore & the clock speed) were excellent. Stable @ 3.2Ghz, 45c when idling & 63c under load when benchmarking, usually about 61ish when gaming.
2. Multiplier
I had left this on x9 as I figured it was pointless decreasing the cpu speed by setting it lower. After reading on a couple of threads about people getting better results with the muliplier set at x8 I gave this a go & the results were excellent. At x9 I struggled to get to above 380mhz but now steady at 400mhz X8.
3. FSB/RAM Ratio
I used to leave this on automatic, but any overclocking of the RAM (beyond 2-3 mhz) makes the system unstable, so have set this to 1:1 & at 400mhz everything is nice & steady, though I'm not really sure if the actual ratio has any effect on stability. Anything over 400mhz certainly does. Apart from this, the only other RAM adjustments are raising the voltage to 2.1v & setting the timings at 4-4-4-12, as specified by Geil (admittedly I have no idea how to tweak RAM timings so just did what it said on the box).
This is how I've running the system for the last 2 months & it's performed faultlessly, but I've been wondering how to get more out of it. This is what I have come up with.
A. Get some 1066mhz RAM. The board only goes up to 800mhz, but I can run the RAM @ 800mhz on a 1:1 ratio then when I raise the clockspeed beyond the current 400mhz (which my current RAM doesn't like) i will be able, I hope, to get to 3.6Ghz with the RAM running at 900mhz. I originally intended to get 8gb (4x 2gb) but after reading on here 8gb won't give that much of a performance gain over 4gb for gaming (plus DDR2 is so flipping dear) I've decided to plump for the current capacity of 4gb. 1gb modules are about £20 each.
B. Get a new cooler. The trusty Mk1 Arctic Freezer Pro has served me proud, but as I was running at stock for nearly 3 years the fan hardly turned! With this overclock it's regularly cycling between 50% & full speed unless I'm just web browsing & although not really noisy, its fairly audible. For the sake of £20 a rev.2 model, which is reportedly also quieter seems like an obvious choice to round the cost up to £100.
So that's what I intend to do. I would really like some comments & advice.
Is this a worthwhile uprade? Or is there a better way of going about getting a better overclock?
Is the RAM issue really the bottleneck stopping me from going any faster?
Is there any benefit from 8gb over 4gb for gaming?
4 modules or 2? I could get x2 modules of 2gb & leave 2 spare slots for when I can afford another 4gb, though it will probably be even more expensive in the future. Also, I figured 4 modules rather than 2 would have more pathways & make the memory more accessible.
Anyway thanks for reading, again I really appreciate all the help this forum provides.
Q6600 @ 3.2 Ghz
Abit IP35 Pro
4gb Geil PC2-6400 (4x 1gb)
Arctic Freezer Pro (rev.1)
Pallit GTX 460 1gb
OCZ Steath Xtreme 600w
Clear case, x4 80mm Hyperfans
Coolermaster Aeorgate Fan Controller
W7 64-bit Home Premium
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