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My Q6600 is faster than my AMD 940 ?

blizzarduk

blizzarduk

blizzarduk

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Joined
10 Apr 2009
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15
Location
Dorset, UK
I have 2 PCs, one is a Q6600 and the other a Phenom II 940. I assumed the new Phenom would kick the butt out of my Q6600, especially as I don't overclock. But in encoding MPG2 for DVD the Q6600 was slightly faster, for a 4 hour video file, encoding in half DVD resolution size, the Phenom was about 2hrs 40mins while the Q6600 was about 2hrs 20mins.

Whats up with that ? I thought the Q6600 had to be overclocked to reach the stock speed of the Phenom 940.

Could I have some kind of bottleneck ? Both PCs have 4gb ram and Windows XP. I was using the same TMPGEnc 4 Xpress software version on both PCs.

Any info appreciated, thanks !!
 
Yep, that is the one :) I am new to overclocking so currently only have it at stock speeds (although as I type I am using "autoclock" with Overdrive to test my OC possibilities).

At both stock speeds I would have thought the 940 would have easily beaten the Q6600 in encoding, as both are quad core, and the 940 even has more cache and mhz. Yet on my tests they were very similar, with the 940 being even slower. Perhaps TMPGEnc isn't exactly a benchmark test, but it is what I use a lot of the time so was hoping for better results. Perhaps I don't have it setup right.

Any idea how I go about overclocking my G0 Q6600 ? I am a novice but love the Overdrive utility from AMD as it is so simple to use. Anything like that for Intel ? I have Gigabytes Easytune software.
 
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Overclocked Q6600 would show that Phenom a clean pair of heels imo specially for media encoding at 3gig it would probably get that time down to well under 2 hours.
 
Ive had my q6600 for a while now, most of it's life i ran it at stock, because i knew nothing about overclocking, when i started to oc, i started on stock volts which got 3.0ghz, (1.2750 vid chip) jumped straight to 3.4 on 1.3750, then 3.6ghz on 1.4 vcore. 3.8ghz was a different matter altogether, had to lap the cpu and my TRUE cooler and put a couple of 2000 rpm fans on it and use a vcore of 1.512 at load. imho its the best cpu intel ever made, im gonna buy a couple of delta fans and try and push the cpu to 3.9/4ghz before i sell it and go for a Q9550.
 
strange results indeed, obviously the calculations envolved in the particular encoding you do isnt suited for the amd. about overclocking however; i strongly recommend you learn how to do it the proper way, doing anything so low-level through ure OS is a bad thing.

things such as overclocking and bios flashes should be done in the "lowest level" way possible to avoid error; so definately dont do so in windows.
 
Trouble is I get SO confused when I read about how to overclock. What I would love is a step by step guide, but all I see is loads of things that look like gibberish to me. If someone said "go to bios, go to xxx page, go to v.core, up that to xxxx step by step until PC resets" then I would be cool. But most guides I have seen are for experts or those who have done it before. I am a total newbie but willing to learn, I just want to begin by learning from a starters guide before I learn from a expert guide.

Do you know of a guide that is like a "dummies guide to" ?
 
Never flash a bios in windows guys, particularly on asus boards, its a disaster, as i learned on an old s939 board.
 
The easiest way to overclock is to just raise the FSB.
If your FSB is 266, try 300 and perhaps 333.

It is usually best to keep the RAM clocked at its normal speed to begin with (unabridged).
Later you can try simple tricks such as running the RAM at 667MHz rather than 800MHz, but bridging the RAM so it rises with the FSB. So if you FSB rose from 266MHz to 333MHz and the RAM was set at 667MHz but linked to the FSB, the RAM would actually rise to 835MHz. You can try something similar with graphics cards, but you cant normally increase the RAM and graphics as much as the CPU. Many people can raise the CPU by over 1GHz (eg a Q6600 from 2.4 to 3.4GHz; a 30% increase), but you are less likely to get a 30% increase with RAM (800MHz to 1040MHz) or a graphics card. Perhaps 15 – 20% is a more realistic target if you want a stable system.

The main obstacles to over clocking are the motherboard, the heatsink/fan, your PSU, the RAM and probably last is the CPU (as virtually all new Intel and most new AMD CPUs overclock to some extent).

When specing a system, it is good to try to get a low TDP CPU. So for example the first Q6600 quad core processors had a TDP of 105W (this is the B3 CPU's). These were supperseeded by (G0 CPU's) with a TDP of 95W. Basically this means the newer G0 CPU's use less electric, with lower Voltage requirements. This in turn generates less heat, so they are easier to overclock and have more potential. When you overclock, many motherboards can automatically raise the Voltage as required by the CPU at the new frequency. If they did not, you would either have to do it manually, or the new frequency would likely fail if the new clock speed was significantly higher.
 
dude overclocking is not an exact science hence why there is no manual

let me just explain this quick..... every single cpu is different for example i have a q6600 that will do 3.8 at 1.49 v while the other guy on the fourm said he could only get it there at 1.51 and mine is running at 51c idle temp and 75c under load (coretemp) so hence why its not an exact science you have to test your cpu over and over and over to see first of all the temps then try to get it stable and the type of motherboard you use and cooling systems all plays a roll in what O/C u can get its not as simple as put your core up to this frequency and this voltage and go u have to test.
 
Ripper12345 said:
let me just explain this quick..... every single cpu is different for example i have a q6600 that will do 3.8 at 1.49 v while the other guy on the fourm said he could only get it there at 1.51 and mine is running at 51c idle temp and 75c under load (coretemp) so hence why its not an exact science you have to test your cpu over and over and over to see first of all the temps then try to get it stable and the type of motherboard you use and cooling systems all plays a roll in what O/C u can get its not as simple as put your core up to this frequency and this voltage and go u have to test.
Click to expand...


i got my q6600 6 months ago, is stable at 3.4 any higher it will crash. it will pretty much run anything that i chuck at it.
 
I haven't really delved in to the CPU marks of my CPU before, but while doing some testing ready for overclocking I noticed this (see pic). Why is the MHZ so much lower then it should be ?

overcloc2k.png
 
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easily rocking q600 G0 SLACR 3.2ghz here @ 1.3 volts so not too toasty or anything...runs everything great...why not crank it up a bit and see the real difference!

Why is the MHZ so much lower then it should be ?
Click to expand...

you have put the multiplier to 6x... it needs to go to 9x

6x 266 = 1.5ghz.

9x 266 = 2.3ghz

i run my q6600 like this;

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/5219/32ghz.jpg

edit, so you can see i run an 8x multiplier and an fsb at 400. so 8x400 = 3200ghz

edit 2, go into bos and turn off EIST, and anything that looks like cpu downclocking when idle type things as these will screw up your overclock.

Disable ‘C1E’
Disable ‘EIST’
 
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Speedstep is probably on in the bios, it lowers multi and volts at idle making a far more energy efficient chip. It can be disabled at bios level of course.
 
Its speedstep, designed to lower your overall clock speed (via dropping multiplier down to 6x) when the system isnt being taxed.

Once the PC does anything strenuous, it'll go back to 9xFSB. It'll be constantly doing this automatically as you use the PC. Produces less heat and prelongs the life of the CPU, as well as lowering your idle wattage usage. I've had mine as little as 18w when idle before, which is virtually nothing. It's nothing to worry about. :)
 
Well, I have started to try and overclock, not done much yet (especially compared to people here), below is my first attempt, how much further can I push it do you reckon on a fairly standard Zalman fan ? Screenshot taken under full load whilst encoding video.

overclock3.png
 
What's the CPU voltage?

You could probably get above 3Ghz - however, if you go any higher than you are now, you'll be overclocking your RAM. (It's rated for 400Mhz and you're currently at 399.) Depending on which RAM it is, it might be able to cope with the OC. But it's best not to test the OC on two components at once because when it fails, you don't know which part has given up.

The answer is to go into your BIOS and change the FSB : DRAM ratio from 3:2 to 1:1. This will knock the RAM down to 323Mhz and allow you to carry on OCing the CPU without worrying about the RAM giving up.
 
Yeah, it conked out, I upped the MHZ to 3ghz (FSB 334 or something) and my system hung and then screamed at me. Seems 2.9ghz is the furthest I can push it without doing as you suggest.

Thanks for the tip on the FSB option, I will give that a go. Will I lose much in speed though for reducing the memory down to 323mhz ?
 
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