Very Confusing Set of Numbers from Gigabyte S3

Vern1961

Vern1961

Vern1961

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After building up my PC have been going through the numbers in the various sections and they don't quite add up. Any assistance in making some sense of this would be appreciated.

The Mobo is a Gigabyte S3 running a Conroe E6600 Core 2 Duo rated (supposedly) at 266/1033.

On boot up/post the system check shows a clock speed of 266 x 9 = 2400Mhz.

However BIOS under MIT only shows the clock frequency set to 200Mhz x 9.

The Gigabyte software utility I-Tune shows 266 x 9 = 2400Mhz.

CPU-Z however shows the overall speed as being 1600 with the multiplyer only x6 which would also give a clock speed of 266.

Raising the speed from 200Mhz to 266Mhz in MIT has increased temperatures by @ 10C and raising over 266Mhz then starts to show an overclock situation in Post and I-Tune (but the temperatures look as if they are not sustainable).

The $64,000 question is which set of figures should I believe or have I just not set things up correctly to start with. I'm also worried what speed my CPU is really running at if the FSB figure in MIT is set to 200. Is the thing actually running underclocked? In which case why would POST and I-Tune register the correct speed.

Help....!
 
Okay, got that.

Doing a search, it seems Speedstep isn't called as such in the BIOS, but is either C1E or EIST. Do I need to switch both off?

Also, would that be responsible for BIOS showing my FSB as 200 instead of 266 or is that another issue? It's definitely a GA-965 board which should support a 1066 bus.

Re the temps, I switched volts over to Auto - would I be better off reverting to Manual and setting the CPU voltage to 1.3, which I believe is the default?
 
What cooler do you have installed? Manual is always best if you know the correct figures to use.
 
Vern1961 said:
Okay, got that.

Doing a search, it seems Speedstep isn't called as such in the BIOS, but is either C1E or EIST. Do I need to switch both off?

Also, would that be responsible for BIOS showing my FSB as 200 instead of 266 or is that another issue? It's definitely a GA-965 board which should support a 1066 bus.

Re the temps, I switched volts over to Auto - would I be better off reverting to Manual and setting the CPU voltage to 1.3, which I believe is the default?
Click to expand...
turn off both EIST and C1E
 
Vern I use the same cooler and all I've found is that it's noisy and quite hot. Keeps load temps under 50C but that's only at 2ghz with stock 1.28V

You might need a better cooler if pushing it anyway high ;)
 
Well I was originally after an Arctic Freezer 7 but before I decided to rip the guts out of it I bought the cooler for my Packard Hell and there wasn't enough room in their sub standard case. May upgrade now I've got a wider case but need to cool it on expenditure for the PC for a month or two!

In the meantime I've made the BIOS changes suggested, and the clock is steady at 9 x 266 = 2400. It has set the "stock" voltage at 1.25v which is giving me idle temps of around 38c for the CPU and 42c on the cores but a quick Orthos pushed that to around 51c under load for the CPU and 57-58c for the cores.

Now going to attempt a very small overclock to see what effect that has, not interested in going high but it would be nice to get to 2.7Ghz on the stock voltage.
 
65C should be your limit temp. If you reach that then I wouldn't push any higher.

Curious to see how much heat an AK955 can actually dissipate. It's damn loud either way. Haven't pushed mine past 2.1Ghz and I didn't notice any real increase in temps. By the time I have my good motherboard I'll also be the proud owner of a Noctua UH12 :)
 
Only got to 285Ghz x 9 and woudn't post (on 1.25v!). :mad: Had to clear CMOS to recover. Not prepared to trash my system by pushing further. At 281 x 9, i.e. 2.54 Ghz, temps were pushing 60c for CPU and 62-63c core under Prime and that's with just one session running.

So it looks like the CPU's Packard Bell use are as big a POS as the rest of their PC's. And I'm less than impressed with the AK955 - as I said later in the year I may change it out for an Arctic 7 cooler.

Re the noise, I can't hear it over the PCI slot extractor I bought from Hi de Hi, makes a real racket. Will try a drop of 3 in 1 on the bearing and if that doesn't help it's coming out.
 
Using 3 in 1 may result in an early death as any dust will then stick to the oil and then will effectively act as an abrasive to wreck the fans.
 
Vern if the PCI fan uses a 4 pin molex connector then you'll see it's actually only using two of those cables. Switch them to the other side of the molex connector (keeping neutral on the inside) and your fan should run at 5V instead of 12V which doesn't move as much air but for my akasa fan is almost inaudible.
 
I'll give that a try but in all honesty now it looks like I'm not going to be able to o/c this CPU, the PSU and 80mm case fans should suffice for cooling.
 
At the risk of appearing incredibly rude - have you tried the overclocking instructions supplied here as you're saying a few things that would suggest you haven't.

1.25V is a very low CPU voltage - the rated CPU voltage for an E6600 is 1.3525V from the Intel specification sheet here and you are actually probably quite safe to run them up to 1.4V on the stock cooler as long as they are running cool enough (under 70C on load).

The overclocking instructions in that thread are tried and tested with the S3/DS3 and they generally don't fail unless the user has forgotten a setting or changed something they shouldn't have, so do a BIOS reset before you start.

You will need a good CPU cooler and good RAM (PC6400 ideally) to get a decent overclock on that board though. Good luck.
 
The AK955 is not a good cooler ;)

If you have the cash then try and get a Noctua CPU cooler.

What ram do you have vern?
 
Not sure what make the RAM is, whatever unbranded generic DDR2 PB put in their PC.

Admit re the o/c I was probably taking it too quickly, but that said with the temperatures getting quite toasty at 1.25v I didn't want to risk increasing the voltages. Think you're right about the Akasa cooler, not much better than stock and a bit of a b.gg.r to fit.

Guess if you're going to build a serious o/c PC, using second rate ex Packard Bell parts is probably not the way to go.

I'll run "as is" for now and maybe make a couple of changes in a few months time to enhance the clockability.

Edit: Just looked in BIOS and the RAM is running at 533Mhz. As I said, no expense spared by Packard Bell and their masters in the purple shirts!
 
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