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Newbie Qx9650 overcloking questions

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

Soldato
Joined
18 May 2010
Posts
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Location
London
Im a complete novice at overclocking. Infact I am quite wary.

Iv had my Qx9650 for 2 years and never overcloked it. I do have a nice zalman cooler, which cost me £50 at the time, so Im sure it is primed for overcloking.

I also have a Asus x48 mobo so that is overclocking freindly.

I thinking of upgrading my gpu to a 5870 or maybe wating for the 6000 series from ATI.

At 3Ghz will I be holding back a 5870?

I would like to overclock to 4Ghz.

I found this: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2007/10/28/intels_new_45nm_yorkfield_qx9650/7

This part makes it sound so easy:

Without much effort at all, I could bring the QX9650 up to 3.33GHz with just a simple multiplier change to “10.” Moving to “11” I encountered a bit of resistance and had to bump the vCore up from 1.21v to 1.3v. This gave us a solid 3.66GHz. Again moving the multiplier a notch up to “12” for 4GHz left the system a bit unstable under 100% load. Pushing the vCore to 1.4v gave me full stability at 4GHz. Keeping in mind here that all I touched in the BIOS was the CPU multiplier and the CPU vCore.

Is this ALL I have to do? Wont messing around with multipliers affect my Ram?

Thats at 800mhz
 
Id suggest reading http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17612922 first but il write a quick bit on it.

Cpu speed is the fsb (Frontside bus) x the Multiplier. Yours is set at 333Mhz i believe based on running @ 4ghz with a x12 multiplier. Changing the multiplier doesnt affect the ram.

Ram speed is from the fsb. Due to being DDR (Double Data Rate), Ram speed is basically 2x FSB. You can overclock your cpu using 2 ways. Changing multi (which is normally upwards locked on most cpu's) or changing the fsb. If your fsb is indeed 333MHz, your ram is only running @ 666. Best bet would be to up the fsb to increase your overlock. Depending on your board it depends what it can take.

Id be inclined to up the fsb a bit, to increase your ram speed. Although it wont give a huge performance increase, it will give it a slight one.

Hope that wasnt too confusing. Id be a bit careful with voltage. Im not sure exactly what that chip can take but id try to stick to around 1.3v (im sure someone will come and correct me). You need to monitor temperatures as well as you overclock. Use either prime 95 or the intel burn test to check 100% load stability and temperatures.

Edit: on further reading it states the fsb is 1333 and now im kinda confused. Never did fully understand intels. Wait for someone else to appear. But what i wrote is mostly right i think.


With regards to if your cpu @ 3ghz will hold back a new graphics card, it does depend on what resolution you are playing.
 
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Don't let the FSB rating confuse you.
Just remember it is 'quad pumped' i hate that expression.

Basically divide by 4.
1600 = 400
1333 = 333
1066 = 266

Data is read four times per cycle.

Traditionally data is only read on the peak of the clock signal but with a bit of wizardry it is possible to read on the rise, fall, peak and trough.

Bigger numbers are better for marketing !!
 
I game at 1920x1200 resolution on a 24inch monitor.

I currently have a Qx9650 & 3Ghz with a 3870x2 radeon.

I want to upgrade either to a 5870 or wait for the new 6000 series from ATI.

Iv been told that my current cpu will hold back a new graphics card.

But if its by a very small margin, is it worth it?
 
Even at stock speeds your CPU is pretty good and won't bottleneck a 5870 massively. Certainly not enough to be worth spending a load doing a full upgrade to i7 or something like...
 
So you dont think Id gain that much by overclocking my cpu?

Not sure if I should just wait for thr 6000 series from ATI, or just bite the bullet and go 5870....

Iv waited since September, so I might just continue waiting.
 
I didn't say not worth it, just saying it shouldn't be too much of a bottleneck. :) You've got a decent cooler so you might as well give overclocking a try.
 
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