Overclock my q6600.

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Interesting, the nob at the back is making no difference to the speed of the fan. At least I can't hear a difference. Thats not very good :/. I think I might have to take a look at the wiring, I suspect something has come loose.

 

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I've fixed the fan and i'm currently stress testing at 3.23ghz 100% load at constant temps across all cores ranging 66-70 degrees over the 4 cores. But I'm running 1.45v so there is room to come down.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey 8igdave

i'm currently stress testing at 3.23ghz

Any chance of an updated screenie? . . . CPU-z [CPU] & [Memory] tabs if poss please!

 

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Quite annoyingly it just restarted the pc by installing something and accidently clicking yes to restart. However It must have done about 4 hours prime with 100% load across the cores. I think I'll be happy to consider that stable for now at 3.23ghz. You know I think it's the MCH voltage. Putting it up to 1.43v seems to have greatly improved stability.


I shall try and hit 3.4ghz and take some screenies then.

Enjoy your pie? I've never been a huge fan of pie. Nor have I ever been brave enough to try kidney, just doesn't appeal to me.

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea that's pretty high!, although the 65nm cores can take higher voltage then the latter 45nm ones it's still best not to have it that high anyway .

Is it me or is the tRD (Performance level) far too low(tight)!? (Oh nm, of course it's near the std FSB).
(Grrrr, damn IE8, how do I turn off auto-sizing for those images?, the little yellow/orange arrow box isn't showing anymore when I hover the pointer over the pic).

Glad you're making progress anyway .

Btw when did Abit go bust? , I thought they got bought out & rescued by some firm about 1-2yrs ago!

4hrs P95 isn't properly stable btw, 24hrs is much closer though!

 

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Have just booted at 3.4GHZ this is a first in a long long time. I suspect that when I reset my cmos long ago I forgot to fix the MCH and it has been so long that I forgot what setting I used to use.

Im running at 1.5 corev now and 1.5 mch. Must be getting toasty but I shall try bring it back down, for all I know 1.45v would work for this. Gota stress test it though first.

I don't know about being saved but i've been out of the loop for the last 3 years.

 

[Big.Wayne]

8igdave,

now at 3.23ghz

You know I think it's the MCH voltage. Putting it up to 1.43v seems to have greatly improved stability

last screenie from you had the system at 2.4GHz . . . I'm not sure what has happened since then or what settings you have changed? . . . how the memory is set up etc etc . . .

I'm blind here!

Enjoy your pie? I've never been a huge fan of pie. Nor have I ever been brave enough to try kidney, just doesn't appeal to me.

Lol yeah . . . turned out to be a stew, very tasty but I ate a bit much heh! . . . I got a bit of a meat sweat going on!

 

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Haha yeah well I knew my system to be stable at 3ghz so I thought i'd go into previously unstable territory with my new MCH fix.

Here are fresh 3.4ghz screenies. The temps look like they have just stoped rising at a range of 72-75 across the cores. I think the screenshot shows slightly less:



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haha bummer, though I think I rather stew. Meat sweats are just the worse. Don't eat steak and then go clubbing. Though depending on how old you are that may not be your thing anyway

 

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I appear to have a 0.5 Vdrop as i'm putting in 1.5 and getting out 1.45.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey 8igdave,

Haha yeah well I knew my system to be stable at 3ghz

Oh man your just rushing back into the deep end again!

I was hoping to test a few things out but your too keen . . . wanting to see how your sticks held up above DDR2-800 speeds and also get some vCore baseline tests done at 3GHz . . . 72°C full load at 3.4GHz with 1.45vCore hmmm

Where has Memset gone!

[edit] lol look at the PWM temps! . . .81°C

 

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Oops I forgot about memset. I haven't yet tested my ram or done the timings because I always do that last when overclocking. Especially when the cpu is a bit dodgy.

Temperatures appear to still be on the rise. Now i've got 78/79/77/77. I'm happy provided they stay bellow 85 on full load. As far as i'm concerned this pc will never ever hit 100% on all four cores and thus will likely never reach 80 anyway in general gaming use.

I recon I can probably drop the MCH and vcore a bit i'm just starting up high. What ram settings did you have in mind. I can always try them out after an hour or two of this. I don't feel the need to stress test for 9 hours. If it works for a few hours I just run with it and if I ever get a crash I'll look into it closer.

However memory overclocking doesn't really bother me because like I said in that motherboard post I made. I only overclock to get more performance and overclocking ram yields next to no real world performance.

PWM temps hitting the 90s now haha. Is that bad? I turned off a lot of the safety features for overclocking XD

 

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An update:

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey 8igdave,

Oops I forgot about memset. I haven't yet tested my ram or done the timings because I always do that last when overclocking.

There are many different schools of thought on how to overclock the LGA775 platform . . I spent three years using it and found for the best result you can't just concentrate on the CPU clock . . . you need to pay attention to the NB/NBcc/tRD and the memory otherwise you will be "crippling" the performance . . .

I don't feel the need to stress test for 9 hours

That's fine, no one has suggested this yet?

However memory overclocking doesn't really bother me because like I said in that motherboard post I made. I only overclock to get more performance and overclocking ram yields next to no real world performance.

This is a common misconception . . . the LGA775 platform uses an old-school IMC located off chip on the Northbridge, you need to aim for a "total" system overclock and not just pure CPU MHz . . . having the memory running sync [1:1] blows chunks and raised system latency and makes the general useage "clunky" . . . I would prefere myself to have less CPU MHz if it meant I could hike up the memory on an upwards divider . . . I'd also try and get the CPU multi reduced to 8x and this will raise the "real" FSB (NBcc) and help the data get from the CPU to the NB faster . . . .

At the moment is seems your overclocking style is askin to a barbarian with wading into a combat with his two handed maul of Ogre-Bain!

For the best results you really need some finess and know-how and plan your attack . . .

PWM temps hitting the 90s now haha. Is that bad?

What do you expect, your just doing the most basic overclocking and pumping the volts sky high!

I thought you needed help from the thread title "Overclock my q6600" but your just storming in doing what you think is best hehe . . . I'm not sure how much help I can be if your in a rush and not wanting to listen!

 

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At the moment is seems your overclocking style is askin to a barbarian with wading into a combat with his two handed maul of Ogre-Bain!

Haha this made me laugh.

It's not that i'm just trying to rush ahead. I thought my cpu could never post above 333FBS again when it turned out I just needed an MCH boost and now i'm just trying to find out how high it can actually go before I try and tinker with things.

Just becuase I put the voltage high doesn't mean I intended to keep it. Would have thought it's pretty common practice to start high and work it down till it's unstable.

It was menchened above that 4hours isn't stable enough and 24 is much better. I was just plucking 9 hours out as I beleive its the general considerd time for "stable". But personaly I'm not really anal about it being 100% stable at full load because I know i'll never manage to hit that in general gaming so if its 4 hours stable i'll just test it further by gaming and if it crashs then i'll go back to the drawing board so to speak.

It's not so much about being in a rush but you said you were going to be gone for an hour or two so I desided to see what I could get out of it. At the moment I;m pretty chuffed it's hit 3.4ghz and now am happy to try and work the memory around it. I reckon the MCH could probably come down to 1.45 and the vcore can probably loose 0.1 or 0.2.

As for the memory its self, I was thinking of trying to get it running 4-4-4-12 with as higher frequencey as it's happy with through dividers. I don't think you'll manage to get it over 900 though as I think they were it's limit when I tested years ago.

Don't think I'm not listerning to what you saying or ignoring you. I'm just having fun playing at the moment, these obviously arn't the real settings I'm going to use as the voltages are too high but at least I know it can do it, just needs refining no?

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The thing is I do only have today and tomorrow to do this and I can't afford to spend all my time stress testing out little things either. I go to uni soon. So I need to just get a basic strong overclock really by tomorrow lunch time. I think I'm getting close. I could spend all day trying to find out the fastest ram timings I can achive but that would take at least 15 hours really to be properly stress testing the differnt settings. I just can't afford that.

Have hit 1 hour stable now.

 

[Assimilator1]

I appear to have a 0.5 Vdrop as i'm putting in 1.5 and getting out 1.45.

Lol, you haven't got a 0.5=1/2v vdrop it's 0.05v , I assume you mean 1.45v is under load?
Mine's about 0.032v vdrop, it's normal so don't worry too much about it.

Personally I think going over 70C is too high, Intels max is about 72C IIRC.
I was close, see here 71C for G0 core http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=29765&processor=Q6600&spec-codes=SL9UM,SLACR (although that is for Tcase).
Also you say gaming doesn't max out all cores, UT3 does, what about other newer games? And what about the extra heat from the graphics card?
You definately don't want to go over 80C!

Re stress testing, even 9hrs is nowhere near enough if you want to avoid any o/cing related crashing, but if you don't mind putting up with the odd crash then fair enough . I just hope you don't play any MMPORPG's, because I can tell ya doing a big mission in Guild Wars can take a couple of hours & it's infuriating having a crash near the end of one & having to start over!
And if you do any uni work on it I hope you save often .

Big Wayne
What's NBcc?
I was the 1 who mentioned stress testing for more than 4hrs, once near final settings, unless you don't mind the odd crash .

Agreed re RAM/FSB o/cing for these.

 

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Lol, you haven't got a 0.5=1/2v vdrop it's 0.05v , I assume you mean 1.45v is under load?
Mine's about 0.032v vdrop, it's normal so don't worry too much about it.

Personally I think going over 70C is too high, Intels max is about 72C IIRC.
I was close, see here 71C for G0 core http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=29765&processor=Q6600&spec-codes=SL9UM,SLACR (although that is for Tcase).
Also you say gaming doesn't max out all cores, UT3 does, what about other newer games? And what about the extra heat from the graphics card?
You definately don't want to go over 80C!

Re stress testing, even 9hrs is nowhere near enough if you want to avoid any o/cing related crashing, but if you don't mind putting up with the odd crash then fair enough . I just hope you don't play any MMPORPG's, because I can tell ya doing a big mission in Guild Wars can take a couple of hours & it's infuriating having a crash near the end of one & having to start over!
And if you do any uni work on it I hope you save often .

Big Wayne
What's NBcc?
I was the 1 who mentioned stress testing for more than 4hrs, once near final settings, unless you don't mind the odd crash .

Agreed re RAM/FSB o/cing for these.

Haha yeah thats what I ment, typed it wrong at the start and ran with it. I know its normal but it seems a little on the high side.

Suprised, I'm sure i've seen people hitting over 70 when overclocking. I've run prime for 4 hours now stable at 80 degrees haha. Probably won't have done it too much good in that case but i'm sure it be ok. I'll be upgrading it soon anyway. The room is pretty toasty now thats for sure .

I'm quite suprised UT3 manages to take a quad to full load. I didn't think many games had really managed to use the 4th core much. Supcom being one of the best at it.

Well I'm going to now fiddle with it and get these voltages down so I can get it to 70 on full load. Thanks for the info.

 

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Update: Now putting 1.475v through and it appears to be keeping the temperature at ~70 atm. Shall see if it goes above 75 I shall lower voltages some more.

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Looks like it is going to as its hit 74-70 and only been a few minutes.

:EDIT:

Doesn't seem to be getting hotter. All good, shall see if it passes 4 hours then I'll lower the voltage a bit and fiddle with the ram and leave it running for the rest of the day and see if it passes.

:EDIT:

Crashed shall go down to 3.3ghz and work my way up instead.