Overclocking frustration! q6600

northun_munky · 28 Mar 2008 at 09:16

Hi Guys,

Just invested in a nice shiney new q6600 from overclockers as my poor old Pentium d915 was struggling with Crysis. It's made a huge difference at stock speeds, not only for the games but load up times too but I couldn't resist having a go at overclocking it. Although I've read as much as I can find on forums and guides about overclocking i'm a bit new at this and having a few problems.

It will happily run stable at 2.9ghz without having to change any voltages but at 3.0ghz (1333FSB) it loads vista fine but then reboots. No BSOD but wont last for more than a minute in Vista.

I've tried various combo of raising the vCore, CPU Vtt & NB voltage to no avail, and even bought a new PSU as I thought it might be the 450W PSU that came with the case that was the problem, but it still does exactly the same.

Strangely, If I do start raising the voltages more than 0.05v (CPU Vtt & NB) It sometimes wont even boot at all. I don't think its temperature as CPU temp doesn't go above 45c for the whole minute it actually runs.

I've trawled the forums and most people suggest that the G0 stepping of the q6600 should do 3ghz on stock voltages and if it doesn't its probably just luck of the draw with the CPU I got. Thats fine if its the case but if anyone has any ideas they would be most appreciated.

If you want any other info just ask and I'll try to find it for you. Thanks In advance

sid · 28 Mar 2008 at 11:02

northun_munky said:
Hi Guys,

Just invested in a nice shiney new q6600 from overclockers as my poor old Pentium d915 was struggling with Crysis. It's made a huge difference at stock speeds, not only for the games but load up times too but I couldn't resist having a go at overclocking it. Although I've read as much as I can find on forums and guides about overclocking i'm a bit new at this and having a few problems.

It will happily run stable at 2.9ghz without having to change any voltages but at 3.0ghz (1333FSB) it loads vista fine but then reboots. No BSOD but wont last for more than a minute in Vista.

I've tried various combo of raising the vCore, CPU Vtt & NB voltage to no avail, and even bought a new PSU as I thought it might be the 450W PSU that came with the case that was the problem, but it still does exactly the same.

Strangely, If I do start raising the voltages more than 0.05v (CPU Vtt & NB) It sometimes wont even boot at all. I don't think its temperature as CPU temp doesn't go above 45c for the whole minute it actually runs.

I've trawled the forums and most people suggest that the G0 stepping of the q6600 should do 3ghz on stock voltages and if it doesn't its probably just luck of the draw with the CPU I got. Thats fine if its the case but if anyone has any ideas they would be most appreciated.

If you want any other info just ask and I'll try to find it for you. Thanks In advance

I think you might be facing chipset limitations there,

Try something like 400 * 7 to see if that works

You need something like a P35 chipset or better for quad overclocking.

sid

northun_munky · 28 Mar 2008 at 11:13

Hi Sid,

Thats for that. I can't really afford to get a new board at the mo. To be fair, 2.9ghz is probably more than quick enough for whatever I can throw at it at.

Its just this overclocking lark is quite addictive...

northun_munky · 28 Mar 2008 at 11:16

I'm not sure if I can chage the multiplier. I'll look into it.

V3g3tto · 28 Mar 2008 at 11:55

The Q6600 is random for me, last night it wouldn't work at 3.4, yet before it worked at 3.5ghz, it literally decides what it wants to overclock to.

sid · 28 Mar 2008 at 12:39

northun_munky said:
I'm not sure if I can chage the multiplier. I'll look into it.

There should be an option in the BIOS to change it

Basically you can reduce the multipler and keep the clock speed the same to rule out the cpu (assuming you've got decent ram)

If that doesn't work then its most possibly the motherboard limitations

Other ideas would be to investigate FSB holes but you might just want to google if your board has these.

sid

northun_munky · 28 Mar 2008 at 15:59

Ok, I found the multiplier in the bios and changed it to x8, keeping the FSB @ 1333 and the memory synced at 666. (2.66ghz) It booted into vista fine but when I tried to run 3dmark06, after 5 mins it went to the BSOD with 'A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval'

Any ideas?

VortexA1 · 28 Mar 2008 at 16:04

sid said:
I think you might be facing chipset limitations there,

Try something like 400 * 7 to see if that works

You need something like a P35 chipset or better for quad overclocking.

sid

Yeah I'd second the comment about the P35 - apart from that I'm not sure. I'm sure others will tell you something else if they can help.

I hope you can get it higher and stable m8. It's a nice oc cpu.

sid · 28 Mar 2008 at 18:23

northun_munky said:
Ok, I found the multiplier in the bios and changed it to x8, keeping the FSB @ 1333 and the memory synced at 666. (2.66ghz) It booted into vista fine but when I tried to run 3dmark06, after 5 mins it went to the BSOD with 'A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval'

Any ideas?

Can you try a higher FSB? It should be stable at 2,66ghz if its stable at 2.9ghz

Hmm.. try 400*6 = 2.4ghz which is stock for the cpu

sid

tetraman · 31 Mar 2008 at 08:53

i have just changed my mobo this weekend as i couldnt get the fp-in9 to run stable above 2.8ghz.oc tech guy said 2.8 is about right with this mobo.