Hoping someone might be able to help me with some unexpected and confusing behvaiour from my rig.
For the last couple of years my Q9550 has been running rock solid at 3.8Ghz, paired with an XFX HD 6870. But recently it's felt like it could do with a bit of a boost in a few games, so today I upgraded it to a XFX R9-280X-TDBD BLACK EDITION. This didn't go as smoothly as expected!
With the 6870 swapped for the 280X, it repeatably spontaneously reboots within 20-30 seconds of being powered on. Resetting the BIOS allowed it to fully boot into windows (with the Q9550 at stock 2.8), I did the driver installation and everything worked fine. I then tried putting the overclock back, but still the same reboot behaviour as before. So back to stock again, and start working up gradually.
The result is with the Q9550 at stock 2.8GHz everything seems stable; it's still stable at 3.1GHz; at 3.2GHz it reboots running Intel Burn Test and MSI Kombuster at the same time; at 3.4GHz it BSODs on Intel Burn Test alone; at 3.6GHz it reboots seemingly at random in Windows.
If I swap back to the 6870, it's as happy at 3.8GHz as it always has been. CPU temps are the same as always with both cards: ~35c idle, ~55c under load.
Can anyone shed some light as to what is going on? Why would changing from a 6870 to R280X cause a previously solid overclock to become completely unstable, and require dropping the clock 700MHz to regain stability?
My old BIOS settings at 3.8GHz were:
Multiplier: 8.5
FSB: 450
PCIE: 100
DRAM: 901MHz
CPU vCore: 1.3v
DRAMV: 1.84v
CPU Spread: Disabled
PICE Spread: Disabled
C1E: Disabled
Everything else on auto.
System Spec:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (E0)
Asus P5Q Turbo Intel P45
4 x 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-6400C5)
BeQuiet Pure Power L8 630W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply
Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card
OCZ Agility 3 240GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-240G)
Seagate ST1000DM005 1TB Hard Drive
Western Digital WD7500AADS 750GB Hard Drive
4 x 120mm Fans
cheers
ak
For the last couple of years my Q9550 has been running rock solid at 3.8Ghz, paired with an XFX HD 6870. But recently it's felt like it could do with a bit of a boost in a few games, so today I upgraded it to a XFX R9-280X-TDBD BLACK EDITION. This didn't go as smoothly as expected!
With the 6870 swapped for the 280X, it repeatably spontaneously reboots within 20-30 seconds of being powered on. Resetting the BIOS allowed it to fully boot into windows (with the Q9550 at stock 2.8), I did the driver installation and everything worked fine. I then tried putting the overclock back, but still the same reboot behaviour as before. So back to stock again, and start working up gradually.
The result is with the Q9550 at stock 2.8GHz everything seems stable; it's still stable at 3.1GHz; at 3.2GHz it reboots running Intel Burn Test and MSI Kombuster at the same time; at 3.4GHz it BSODs on Intel Burn Test alone; at 3.6GHz it reboots seemingly at random in Windows.
If I swap back to the 6870, it's as happy at 3.8GHz as it always has been. CPU temps are the same as always with both cards: ~35c idle, ~55c under load.
Can anyone shed some light as to what is going on? Why would changing from a 6870 to R280X cause a previously solid overclock to become completely unstable, and require dropping the clock 700MHz to regain stability?
My old BIOS settings at 3.8GHz were:
Multiplier: 8.5
FSB: 450
PCIE: 100
DRAM: 901MHz
CPU vCore: 1.3v
DRAMV: 1.84v
CPU Spread: Disabled
PICE Spread: Disabled
C1E: Disabled
Everything else on auto.
System Spec:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (E0)
Asus P5Q Turbo Intel P45
4 x 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X4096-6400C5)
BeQuiet Pure Power L8 630W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply
Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card
OCZ Agility 3 240GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-240G)
Seagate ST1000DM005 1TB Hard Drive
Western Digital WD7500AADS 750GB Hard Drive
4 x 120mm Fans
cheers
ak
