Scratching the head a little.

[Arclite]

Just got a new Q6660 to replace my ageing E6300. Kinda confused on the overclock. Easy clock to 3.GHz via fsb@333Mhzx9 multiplier route but problems when clocking to 3.2Ghz via 400fsbx8multiplier. The boot up and windows are running fine but when i try to benchamrk using 3dmark 06, my FPS is drastically reduced. I remember having the same problem with my e6300 but the solution for me was to bump up the PCI-E frequency to 110. Now i have tried doing the same but to no effect.

Running the following at the moment.

Asus P5B-E plus with latest bios (can't remember the version no.)
All software up to date as they were with the e6300.
All the usual cpu throttling things are disabled.
Vcore@ 1.4v in bios but cpuz reads it as 1.34. Temperature on all cores ranging from 38-42 idle (warm weather in room).
Volts on [email protected].
Ram timings: Slack to begin with. 5-5-5-15
PCI thingy pegged@ 33.33mhz with PCI-E frequency @110.
Fsb volt at 1.3v with NB volts at 1.2v (no fan on it)


Any ideas what might be causing the slowdown in fps?

Just to recap: @3.GHZ everything is fine. 3dmark giving me just over 14k.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Arclite]

Anybody have any info on this pls??

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey Arclite,

I used an Intel® P965 Express Chipset (ASUS P5B-Deluxe) for around a year and I did run into some gaming weirdness like u are describing. After quite a bit of headscratching and snOOping around on the web I find out roughly what was going on, it seems the PCI-Express being used by the graphics card was dropping from x16 to x4

You can check for this quite easily for opening CPU-z and looking at the motherboard tab where it shows the current PCI-Express speed.

Some people said changing the PCI-Express frequency from it's default 100MHz to 101MHz or higher helped curb this problem. I'm not sure what the cause was and it only happened a few times to me, I think it was something to do with either having the chipset running with too many volts or running too hot. I checked the temps of my Southbridge and they were pretty hot so I added some custom cooling to cool down the southbridge and that seemed to do the trick. . . .

 

[Arclite]

Thanks for the info Big wayne! Well after some tinkering i bumped up my SB and NB volts, taking a huge risk without checking the temps but it seems to be working now. PCI-E frequency strangely doesn't do well a tick over 110, i reduced it to 103 and the performance is not too dissimilar then at 110. Only major concern is that after playing a game last night for an hour or 2 the game crashed and a nice vista pop-up came up saying that the driver failed to respond but now is working fine, it kept happening whenever i opened a new window but then was ok after a while. Im guessing its a GPU temperature problem but i have set these volts this high before with my old setup without much problems. Lets hope it was a one of driver malfunction and hopefully won't happen again .


Edited: Forgot to mention PCI in CPU-z now says its x16 don't know what it said before though.

 

[IAmATeaf]

I personally wouldn't run the PCI-E bus much above stock, you might end up with data corruption issues.

 

[Arclite]

I assume by stock you mean at 100. The only reason i run it above 100 is due to a massive drop in framerates otherwise. On my previous cpu, the e6300, pci-e frequency ran at 110, anything lower would result in low fps. I can't seem to understand the correlation between fsb overclock and drop in fps.

 

[Arclite]

Just running orthos at the moment been, 3 hrs and no failed test yet. Still trying to work out the cause of drop in fps, not much on the forums i have come across yet.