Q9550 Clocking

[VTR]

Just bought a Q9550 and Asus X48 Rampage to have a play around with.

Struggling to get much above 3.8Ghz at the moment though.

What's a safe voltage to go up to for these, 1.38v?

What settings do I need to adjust in the bios, LLC best left on auto or enabled/disabled? Been trying it enabled at the moment, completly elimiates vdroop but read elsewhere to leave it off.

What PLL, VTT, NB, SB voltages will I need to adjust in order to get over 450FSB?

Thanks.

Update - I'm at 3.8Ghz at the moment (1.37v idle/load with LLC on, may be able to achieve with lower but not tried) and NB and FSB both at around 1.4v, PLL at 1.52v. Prime stable for a few hours not left it longer as I feel there is more yet, was hoping for 4Ghz.

It's an EO stepping chip and it does 3.6Ghz stable at around 1.25v so I feel there's plenty of play left! Just need to know what's safe / what I should be running the PLL,FSB/NB at really.

3.85Ghz would be good if there's any way of getting a 5:6 memory divider as that means I can run my ram at 5-5-5-15 1087mhz (wont do 1208mhz on these timings with the 3:4 divider) which is what I had in the setup in my sig But I can only see 1:1 and 3:4 dividers in the bios, may need an update?

 

[CaptainRAVE]

1.4v is the upper vcore limit with these. Have never gotten past 3.85Ghz fully stable - the vcore needed goes up massively for me after this. Annoyingly, temperature isn't an issue, I just can't get anymore out of the thing. There are loads of threads around on it though.

 

[VTR]

Yeah I've only got an Artic 7 Pro on there at the moment, not even fitted my TRUE to it and it's under <50c so temps arn't a problem. What settings are you running for 3.85Ghz? PLL, VTT, NB, SB voltages etc.

And also what are you running your RAM at (timings and divider). I'm using 4GB OCZ 8500 at the moment, are you using 4 2GB sticks? I've also got 4GB OCZ 9200 which I may try adding, want to find the max stable clock with 4GB first though.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

For 3.85Ghz -

Vcore - 1.2750v
CPU GTL Ref - Auto
CPU PLL - 1.50v
FSB Termination voltage - 1.20v
NB Voltage - 1.20v
SB voltage 1.10v
PCI-e Sata voltage 1.50v (mimimum)

Ram timings left on default.

Used to have a x48 Rampage, couldn't get it any faster on that either (now have a P5Q deluxe). The Rampage motherboard is not supposed to be very good with Q9550s. Also be careful, it will tend to overvolt NB and SB by a mile.

Using this stuff - OCZ Platinum Series 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel

 

[EggCustard]

Well, 1.25V at 3.6GHz for an E0 doesn't sound optimistic, unless you have a 1.300V VID chip? Have you checked with CoreTemp?

...or if could be your overvolting too much, also possible.

What FSB is this at?

I would first use an FSB of 400 (1600) to test how high your CPU can go (unfortunately somewhat setback by the max 8.5x multiplier) and at what voltage. Once you've got that done and dusted (stable 100%) I would then increase the FSB gradually and re-test to see where you lose stability.

If you go overclocking CPU, memory and FSB all at once you'll soon get confused at what's causing instability. You'll get so carried away tweaking voltages here and there that you'll forget what has and what hasn't been attempted. Frustration will follow suit.

Also, you say 50C temps. Very hard to believe in Prime95/LinX, especially with that cooler.

From all you've stated I'm pretty sure your VID is 1.2750V or higher. The higher the VID the cooler it will run but also the more voltage it will require at higher overclocks.

1.3625V is the max 24/7 VCore you should use, unless there's adequate cooling and you're no where near the 95C TCase limit, near which throttling will kick in and ultimately a PC shutdown to protect the hardware.

 

[setter]

A few users on here reported similair problems with the 45nm quads on x48 boards. P45's are definitely better suited to theese chips.

@op, the max reccomended voltages for 24/7 are.

pll, 1.6v
nb, 1.4v
vtt, 1.4v

 

[pastymuncher]

X38/48 is your problem. They become fsb limited with 45nm quads. I had a DFI LT X48 T2R and even that could'nt get my old Q9550 past 3.7Ghz stable even with silly voltages. Swapped to a P5Q Pro Turbo and it hit 4.13Ghz.

 

[VTR]

Not checked the VID yet, think it's pretty low. 1.25v for 3.6Ghz is what the previous owner was running at, that was set in the bios without LLC so it would have actually been lower I'm at 453FSB stable which is 3.85Ghz, temps hit 56c (although using an older version of real temp, just tried with the latest version and idle shows higher but load is pretty much the same though). May be able to lower the vcore slightly from the screenshot, not tried yet.

edit will sort screenshot out after work!