Overclocking q6600 maximus form 1066 ram

Monkeeee01

Monkeeee01

Monkeeee01

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Hi guys,:D

I'm new to posting on this board but I have been reading all your posts and use Overclockers.co.uk for me shopping a fair bit. I have been building pc's for about 3 years now mostly for music/studio purposes but in the last 6 months I have got heavily into gaming and modding pc's but I am quite new to overclocking,

This won't just be a one off post I would like to become a regular poster here.

I have a Q6600 on a Maximus Formual SE board with PC8500 Crucial Ballistix Ram and a Zotac 8800GT AMP. I have had my cpu overclocked to 3ghz for a few months (on air with stock intel cooler in a very very cool antec case and it doesn't push any more than 35o idle, average 52 under full load playing games for hrs on end and a max of 70o under prime.

I had it all overclocked no problems but I was getting problems with my pc completely freezing up on me and my only option was to press the restart swtich. I figured this was a memory issue and also read a lot of other posts with simular set ups and the same problem and so I ran the Memory diagnostic tool in Vista and it kept coming up with Memory errors.

I have read A LOT on the net about people having problems with Crucial Ballistix and Asus boards (especially the 1066 PC8500) so I tried updating to the latest stable bios 1102 then I tried 1201 the beta but neither of them improved the situation and I still got freezing problems,

I read that a lot of people have tried the Rampage bios 0403 so I attemped to put that on and after a lot of messing around I managed to do it via my USB Flash drive and booting to that and running the cmd prompt.

Now my board works perfectly with the 1066 Ram and is not showing any memory problems so I would highly recommend flashing to the Rampage bios

Now my question is this:confused:

Is it better to Overclock my machine to 3ghz with the bus speed on 333 x 9 and the FSB on 1333 and have my ram set to 1066 (533 as it runs at half speed) and CPUZ is showing a ratio of 5:8

Or

3.2ghz with the bus speed on 400 x 8 and my Ram on 800mhz (400) with CPUZ showing as a ration of 1:1

I know a lot of people recommend having a ratio of 1:1 but I'm not sure if I like the idea of my Ram underclocked working at 800mhz when I spent the extra money on 1066 PC8500:( (although I have been told that the PC8500 1066 is only the PC6400 800 but overclocked by crucial?)

Or

When I get a better cpu cooler I can try 425 bus x 8 = 3.4ghz with my Ram on 850 = 425 (at half) which would also be 1:1 mapping ratio (I have read that this would be the best but I am still not sure about my Ram working at 850mhz when its 1066mhz)

I have primed my pc for 4 hrs on 3ghz - 1066 with 5:8 ratio mapping no problem but when I tried 3.2ghz 800 with 1:1 which I would have thought would be better but my pc failed showing BSOD after 2 mins of prime (but I did forget to increase the volts to my cpu so I am prepared to try that later again.)

I am starting to wish I bought PC6400 800mhz now!:(

Any advice would be really apreciated:cool:

Thanks

Gareth
 
I would try to get 400x8 stable if you can do so with decent temps. 3.2ghz will need a small bump on the CPU voltage (probably 0.025v-0.05v above the VID/default voltage). It wouldn't do any harm to up the northbridge and FSB Term voltages by 0.1v, and PLL by 0.04v too.

As for memory ratio, there's no need to stick to 1:1, tho running faster than 1:1 offers little benefit tbh. Your PC2-8500 Ballistix will run at atleast 4-4-4-12 @ 800mhz, and it might even run tighter (3-4-4-8, 4-3-3-10 or whatever).
 
I've already got my cpu volts on 1.3v I have read that this will need to be 1.4 at least for 3.2ghz

My Northbridge is already at 1.5v and CPU PLL is at 1.6

My Ram works fine at 4-4-4-12 on 800mhz but I read that you shouldn't change it from the 5-5-5-15 which it defaults at?

If it will definalty be more stable the I don't mind running my Ram at 800 even though I would like the extra speed 1066 offers but tbh you don't really notice the difference.

Next question is shall I buy another 2gb of PC8500 1066 ballistix or shall I just buy PC6400 800 if that's what they will be running at?
 
Northbridge at 1.5v and PLL at 1.6v are waaaaay too high for the CPU clock speed tbh. No need for the northbridge or FSB Term to be any more than 0.1v, or the PLL to be 0.4v above stock speed atm.

No reason why you shouldn't drop down to 4-4-4-12 at 800mhz. But no reason why it would be more stable than 1066mhz 5-5-5-15. But again performance difference is minimal.

How old is your current Ballistix? Because Crucial changed from double-sided sticks to single-sided sticks earlier this year and they are not really compatible with each other (work ok for some people, but not for others). If you have the older double-sided sticks then your best bet would be to sell your current sticks and buy 2x2gb of something.
 
my Ram is about 3 months old, I was told to put the nb on 1.5 and Pll on 1.6 for stability. I will reduce these later then when I attempt 3.2 again.
 
Should be the single-sided stuff (easy to check. Just look down the insides of the heatsinks to see if there are chips on just one or on both sides of the PCB).
 
ok bumped my cpu votage up a little and set timmings to 4-4-4-12 and I have 3.2 running stable at ratio of 1:1. I have primed it for an hr and run 3Dmark. (i know I need to prime it for longer but my cpu temps hit 77o and I don't want to go any further till I have an asus silent square)

feel a bit cheated that my ramm is 1066 but its only running as 800mhz but to get my ramm at 1066 and get a 1:1 ratio I would have to get my bus speed to 500 so I could realistically run my multiplier at about 6 or 7.

Although I have been told its better to have a higher bus speed and lower mulitplier?

Shall I give this a go?

The only thing I can say for sure is that if you own a maximus formula board and crucial ballistix tracer pc8500 1066 then I would only reccomend using the rampage 0403 bios!
 
Asus P5B Deluxe lets me do 400x9, and run the RAM at 533 using Q6600 and Corsair PC2-8500, maybe you should look into a new board :D
 
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