Soldato
- Joined
- 11 May 2006
- Posts
- 5,786
My relevant specs are as follows:
Q9550 (Rev E0)
Asus P5Q Pro (Latest BIOS - 2102)
2x2gb OCZ DDR2-800
Windows 7 64bit & Windows XP 32bit (Tested overclocks in Win 7 only)
The Q9550 has been perfectly stable at 3.4ghz since I got it last year:
Everything in AI Tweaker is at auto, except FSB@400, DRAM timings manually set at 5-4-4-15 and CPU voltage set as 1.275. As I said, everything is perfectly stable like this but as soon as I try to increase FSB any higher I start getting errors in Prime95 and Intel Burn Test.
I then fiddled with several settings in AI Tweaker and got varied results, pretty much immediately get errors in IBT. Sometimes I can't even get to run Prime95/IBT, because either explorer crashes or I get BSOD.
So then I decided to set absolutely everything to auto and just increase FSB. I managed to boot into Windows 7 @ 3.8ghz (450x8.5) and magically I get no calculation errors in IBT or Prime95 .... but for some reason either program will randomly crash. I thought this was strange because I could go through 20 runs of IBT and get no calc errors, but if I try it again I suddenly get a crash (i.e. windows says it has stopped responding). At 3.8ghz, the bios automatically sets cpu voltage at 1.34 (according to CPU-Z) and when running IBT, temps don't go above 68C.
I'm not sure whats causing it, but I manually set DRAM timings to 5-4-4-15 (at Auto they're higher, 6-6- something) and could barely use Windows since explorer and catalyst control centre kept crashing.
I got a feeling it's the RAM thats limiting the overclock, but then again it could be the Northbridge. I do think the CPU is capable of more though.
Any ideas? Would getting faster ram (say DDR2-1066) help?
Q9550 (Rev E0)
Asus P5Q Pro (Latest BIOS - 2102)
2x2gb OCZ DDR2-800
Windows 7 64bit & Windows XP 32bit (Tested overclocks in Win 7 only)
The Q9550 has been perfectly stable at 3.4ghz since I got it last year:
Everything in AI Tweaker is at auto, except FSB@400, DRAM timings manually set at 5-4-4-15 and CPU voltage set as 1.275. As I said, everything is perfectly stable like this but as soon as I try to increase FSB any higher I start getting errors in Prime95 and Intel Burn Test.
I then fiddled with several settings in AI Tweaker and got varied results, pretty much immediately get errors in IBT. Sometimes I can't even get to run Prime95/IBT, because either explorer crashes or I get BSOD.
So then I decided to set absolutely everything to auto and just increase FSB. I managed to boot into Windows 7 @ 3.8ghz (450x8.5) and magically I get no calculation errors in IBT or Prime95 .... but for some reason either program will randomly crash. I thought this was strange because I could go through 20 runs of IBT and get no calc errors, but if I try it again I suddenly get a crash (i.e. windows says it has stopped responding). At 3.8ghz, the bios automatically sets cpu voltage at 1.34 (according to CPU-Z) and when running IBT, temps don't go above 68C.
I'm not sure whats causing it, but I manually set DRAM timings to 5-4-4-15 (at Auto they're higher, 6-6- something) and could barely use Windows since explorer and catalyst control centre kept crashing.
I got a feeling it's the RAM thats limiting the overclock, but then again it could be the Northbridge. I do think the CPU is capable of more though.
Any ideas? Would getting faster ram (say DDR2-1066) help?