Overclocking Q6600 please help

Turbulance · 15 Oct 2009 at 22:55

Hello,

Recently I've found that my current system has started to struggle with modern games on top settings, so I have been trying to overclock it extend its useful life a bit longer. Unfortunateley I have only managed to get it to 3.2Ghz and it still seems quite unstable. Some games will run perfectly fine but others, such as World of Warcraft will crash the system in moments if I run it in dual screen and sometimes it will crash on single screen setup. I have a few screen shots of my current settings and was wondering if you guys could give me some advice please. The rig is about a year and a half old now I think most of the gear apart from the PSU was brought with the machine.

First though, my current setup is:

Intel Q6600 CPU
DFI Lan Party X48-T2RS Mobo
4Gb Corsair Dominator Memory
PC Power & Cooling 620w PSU
2x 150GB Raptors Raided together (OS+Games drive)
500Gb WD Caviar Black for storage
BFG 8800GTX 768Mb GPU

Screenshots of system setup in EVEREST(trial)edt:

p.s sorry about the image I've just quickly thrown it together

Any suggestions? Thanks

*edit* sorry I've posted this in the wrong forums

hawker1986 · 17 Oct 2009 at 08:34

Sorry everest doesnt mean much to me, i never know if its telling me what it should be able to do or what its doing at the time. Go get CPU Z and up some pics from that instead.

Hawker

blinghound · 17 Oct 2009 at 09:09

On the third picture along, it actually states that your q6600 is clocked to 3.6 GHz (3599mhz), you have to raise the v-core if you want a stable system. I would advise you to post a pic of core temp and cpuz.

Thanks

hawker1986 · 17 Oct 2009 at 13:06

blinghound said:
On the third picture along, it actually states that your q6600 is clocked to 3.6 GHz (3599mhz), you have to raise the v-core if you want a stable system. I would advise you to post a pic of core temp and cpuz.

Thanks

Actually the top of that pic shows he is using a lower multi (400x8=3.2Ghz) the 3.6 is a mis calculation by windows. more Vcore is likely the problem I agree though, as said CPU Z and coretemp screens would help.

Hawker

Justintime · 17 Oct 2009 at 13:34

Gpu upgrade would do more than overclocking the cpu which may make no difference whatsoever.

Turbulance · 6 Dec 2009 at 01:08

Sorry to bump an old thread but thanks for the replies, had some computer issues and not been back for a while. I will try increasing the vcore then and see what that does, very annoying that my computer crashes every few hours while playing DragonAgeOrigins. Yeah in the bios the reading is set to 400x8 and its still unstable

Justintime I will deffinetley take that into consideration, I have some money now and was thinking of just upgrading the whole thing, save the psu which is almost brand new and buying an i5 DDR3 system and a new graphics card. Any advice?

*edit*

Just remembered I didnt post up a cpu-z screenshot, nice program, seems to be far less bloated than Everest and free

BTW I increased the Voltage to 1.29v (+12.5% over), should this still be higher? Just dont fancy frying the chip for nothing

Thanks in advance

gazzer_21 · 6 Dec 2009 at 13:38

my Q6600 is running with 1.45V and has been for over 2 yr's.
so you can always add more Volts, buy the less you give it the better,
mine hit a hump around 3.2 that took a lot more volts to get over than expected, happy at 3.4 for me though. Still not found any thing that makes me feel I need to upgrade.
Besides the "OH I want one" urge I get every now and then.
Get a new GFX card, will do more than the over clock will get you and will only hold you back if you up grade the cpu any way.

Turbulance · 6 Dec 2009 at 14:27

Thanks, I have just upped it to 1.35volts now, hopefully that will be enough juice for it. Will need to do some more testing, if its still crashing I may up it a bit again.

Mak3R · 6 Dec 2009 at 21:52

Hehe dont complain about those volts. Mine needs 1.4V to hit a measly 3Ghz

Turbulance · 7 Dec 2009 at 18:39

I didnt realise you needed to increase the voltage of the CPU so much especially as the main setting that is being changed is teh front side bus

Big.Wayne · 7 Dec 2009 at 19:51

Turbulance said:

Hi Turbulance,

I just wanted to point out that your memory isn't configured as well as it could be, a Quad-Core running at 3.2GHz can be very data-thirsty and your giving it less than it needs with memory running at DDR2-800 CAS5

To achieve an *overall* fast system you need to find a balance between these Three areas

CPU GHz = 3200MHz
System Bus =1600MHz
Memory = 800MHz

If you can get your memory running at 533MHz (DDR2-1066) you will remove the bottleneck you currently have and notice an immediate speed increase! :cool:

sastusbulbas · 7 Dec 2009 at 19:59

sorry to bump! I myself am running PC-6400C5 XMS with similar timings to that pic in the middle. Would it benefit me by upgrading to DDR2-1066 with a CPU like the E6300?

Big.Wayne · 7 Dec 2009 at 20:07

sastusbulbas said:
sorry to [Hijack Turbulance's Thread]!

Fixed!

Fast Memory is good on the LGA775 platform, try and overclock the sticks you have first before buying faster ££ DDR2 ££ . . . . I managed to pick up 4GB Of used Corsair DDR2-1066 Cas5 a few days ago for £50 so it just goes to show there are still reasonably priced kits out there is you look! :cool:

sastusbulbas said:
Would it benefit me by upgrading to DDR2-1066 with a CPU like the E6300?

of course, the E6300 running even at stock speeds can use DDR2-1066 . . .

Turbulance · 8 Dec 2009 at 00:34

Thanks for the advice Big.Wayne, Just had a quick look in the bios, but the sheer number of settings is overwhelming for my first 775 overclock. ANy chance you could point out what I should be altering please?

Thanks

Current Bios settings:

Turbulance · 8 Dec 2009 at 00:46

I've just had a mess coz I wasnt sure if it was right but if its wrong I can just pull the mobo battery out and start again. These are the new memory settings, I just wasnt sure if they were right because I remember reading somewhere that the memory ratio should be 1:1 for 2 sticks of memory.

New memory settings in cpuz rather than the bios:

Does this look better?

Thanks,

Big.Wayne · 8 Dec 2009 at 00:55

Hehe, holy cow Turbulance, any chance you can resize your screenies as I'm at work on a 1280x1024 and I'm having problems viewing your Full HD images!

Yes that looks better! :cool:

Turbulance · 8 Dec 2009 at 01:30

Sorry it was taken on my phone lol, Thanks for your help, gonna try and stress test this now see if its working OK

Khrest · 8 Dec 2009 at 16:08

Sorry to hijack, but I was interested to hear the suggested Vcores above.

I have an E6600 which runs happily at 8x380 = 3040 but wont go any higher. I have never really taken the vcore up beyond 1.28 but by the sound of things that might be worth a try; I'd really like to get to 8x400 as I know my Geil ram can take at least 410Mhz.

What is 'safe' for an E6600? My system currently stays around 55c under load.

Gin0rm0 · 8 Dec 2009 at 17:38

Khrest said:
Sorry to hijack, but I was interested to hear the suggested Vcores above.

I have an E6600 which runs happily at 8x380 = 3040 but wont go any higher. I have never really taken the vcore up beyond 1.28 but by the sound of things that might be worth a try; I'd really like to get to 8x400 as I know my Geil ram can take at least 410Mhz.

What is 'safe' for an E6600? My system currently stays around 55c under load.

It won't go any higher because it probably needs more volts. You may be able to hit 3.2 on 1.35v but I ran my E6600 @ 3.4 with 1.4v in the BIOS (1.39 actual).

If you want more than 3.4ghz stable you'll probably need a lot more voltage. Up to 1.45v with decent cooling should be no problem. Just watch those temps.

Big.Wayne · 8 Dec 2009 at 18:51

Off Topic:

Khrest said:
Sorry to hijack

Are you sorry? . . . It's not polite or helpful to Hijack someone elses technical support thread when you could easily make your own!

Gin0rm0 said:

Please do not feed the animals!