whats a good overclock for a Q9300?

[ExoMale]

fitted this the other day along with an Akasa K32 cooler and picking up a evga supernova gs 550w gold rated power supply later to replace my find cx600 and so with a guaranteed high quality supply i want to try some overclocking to see what this quad can do, but i dont know where to start as it wont quite be the same as a single core overclocking lol.

i will still likely have my hd 5450 so barely be testing any games, i just wanna try it out.

 

[pastymuncher]

It's basically no different than clocking any other socket 775 cpu. This particular cpu is restricted by it's lowly 7.5x multiplier so you need a motherboard that is capable of high fsb's to get any decent overclock. Even a board that can run a 450 fsb that's only going to get you to 3.375Ghz and if you are using that Foxconn P31 board in your siggy you won't get anywhere near that. If you are very lucky you may get to 2.8Ghz but I wouldn't bet on it. The P45 boards were the kings for clocking 45nm quads.

 

[ExoMale]

ah okay cheers for that, i didnt buy the quad for overclocking, i was just curious about it and for a bit of fun, i have no idea how it does for games yet, i will probably change the board soon if i find a good deal, but i keep seeing decent systems with i5 2400's or 1155 pentiums to i3's for a tad over 100, however not sure i could get that close selling mine.

 

[ExoMale]

well certainly cant overclock, this board has like one option for cpu and also im guessing the restriction on the processor plays it part.

333 is the default, theres a step 1 @ 340 step 2 @ 347 step 3 @ over 350 then theres the manual option which max out at 600.

so me being me i manually did the first attempt with a 400 making it 3ghz( 500mhz increase) and all that did was crash on every post screen meaning i had to take battery out , step 1 works just fine with its 50mhz increase lol, but step 2/3 or manually anything over 340 keeps the system running, but blanks screen(power light flashes like in standby) and every time i switch computer off via switch on psu it resets the overclock, so now ive put it on step 1 and left it ha.

 

[HeX]

When you changed the FSB to 400 did you adjust your memory ratio to keep it within spec?

 

[ExoMale]

When you changed the FSB to 400 did you adjust your memory ratio to keep it within spec?

nope, i only touch the pcie up 100 though the crash happened even when that was default, i didnt know to adjust memory settings which is why i asked for advise ha, overclocking a single core i never had to bother with memory, just fsb and volts

 

[new boy]

Find out what you memory is rated for (ie 800MHz or 667MHz)

Your memory runs at twice your FSB, so to run a 400 FSB, you need 800MHz ram (or else you are overclocking your ram, and it may or may not like that, you can chuck it some extra voltage to make it work sometimes)

You can loosen ram timings a bit if your ram is struggling, for example, if your ram runs at 5-5-5-12, you could loosen it it 6-6-6-15

Or you can change the "strap" so it doesn't run 1:1 with the FSB. Its been a long long time since I played with systems like this, but from memory I'm pretty sure you want to run 1:1 unless you have no other option.

You also have other things that will determine how high you can run your FSB. The chipset will play a large part in that. if the chipset is struggling, then giving it a bit more volts might help (northbridge? Its been a while, so double check)

Good luck. overclocking components from that period is a lot of fun IMO! Not like the boring stuff we have now.

 

[Rroff]

SetFSB might allow you to change voltage and frequency settings not exposed in the BIOS though identifying the chip might not be easy.

 

[HeX]

nope, i only touch the pcie up 100 though the crash happened even when that was default, i didnt know to adjust memory settings which is why i asked for advise ha, overclocking a single core i never had to bother with memory, just fsb and volts

Q9300 is a 333FSB CPU

I assume you have 800MHz memory. Therefore currently your memory is working on a 5:6 ratio (333 / 5 = 66.6MHz * 6 = 400MHz doubled for 800MHz).

If you overclocked the CPU by upping the FSB to 400MHz you are also effectively overclocking the memory at the same time:

400 / 5 = 80 * 6 = 480 doubled to 960MHz, which as you can imagine, isn't going to work.

As such you also need to adjust your memory multiplier/ratio at the same time, in this case you'll want to change it to 1:1 to keep the memory in spec.

 

[ExoMale]

thanks for reply.

no actually im running 667mhz memory, its what came with the system and 4gb is the limit, so unless 800mhz actually makes a difference(never noticed from experience) i wont be swapping out.

yeah i noticed something about 960mhz, but i didnt think much off it, i havent done too much overclocking in the past, but biggest i guess from memory was taking a 754 sempron from 1.8 to 2.3 with fsb increase and slight voltage lol, but next time restart my system i will take a look at the memory options as this motherboard doesnt have many options.

 

[HeX]

In that case, by default you'll be running your memory at 1:1 (333 FSB doubled to 667MHz for memory).

If you want to keep in spec when running 400MHz FSB then you'll need to change your memory ratio to 6:5 (if that's an option on your board) 400 / 6 = 66.6 * 5 = 333.3 doubled for 667MHz.

 

[mistersprinkles]

It's basically no different than clocking any other socket 775 cpu. This particular cpu is restricted by it's lowly 7.5x multiplier so you need a motherboard that is capable of high fsb's to get any decent overclock. Even a board that can run a 450 fsb that's only going to get you to 3.375Ghz and if you are using that Foxconn P31 board in your siggy you won't get anywhere near that. If you are very lucky you may get to 2.8Ghz but I wouldn't bet on it. The P45 boards were the kings for clocking 45nm quads.

I got damn near 600Mhz FSB out of my P45 board back in the day. They were great. I was running an E6550 on an ASUS P5Q-E. 4Ghz baby.