o/c Q6600, everything alright?

[Andeh13]

Im in the process of overclocking my Q6600. I have the B3 stepping and so far i am at 3106mhz, with the FSB at 345 and the temps at 47c(under load), and a voltage of 1.38125.

Do these figures look safe & correct? Once i start getting round the 347 mark it starts to fail. So far, prime95 has been running for 5mins and touch wood, no problems.




ideally id like to try and get to 3.2ghz (goal i set myself), but is this realistic with these steppings? I am still very new to this so i am just changing the FSB up in steps of 1 or 2, then altering the voltage when it fails. So far i am stuck at 247 though, and desbite having the voltage up to around the low 1.4 mark it still BSOD when loading vista/in vista. Is this the limit of my chip, or is there anything else i can try?

My PC is under the 'My Specs' panel, and im running vista 64 with cpuz, easytune 5pro and prime 95.

Thanks


edit: iv got the Artic freezer pro 7 cooler, and after 5 tests on prime 95 it stopped due to an error. Second test(no changes) iv run is at test 9 now and no problems (touch wood) but as the first one failed, this one will prob go after a while aswell im guessing.

edit2: BSOD on 10th test. going back down to 343 FSB, with the same voltage.

[Zhaoman]

Even the B3 steppings should overclock quite well, have you checked your memory dividers and pci frequency?

Memory dividers should be 1:1

Pci frequency should be 100Mhz

[staffsMike]

The freezer isn't much of a cooler for an overclocked B3. My scythe ninja could barely tame the beast at stock settings.

[Andeh13]

My PCI express is set to 100mhz, but i cant find the memory dividers in my bios. Could it be under a different name? A mate of mine set up most of these settings for me, but i cant remember if he did the memory dividers.

Do i need to adjust any of the other voltages? FSB, DDR2,(G)MCH etc

As for the cooler, i am happy with temps around the 50c mark, i can turn some of the fans up in the antec 900 if needs be.

[Andeh13]

Going through the BIOS & checking a few guides online im not sure if i have the ratio 1:1. When i change the CPU freq to:

344, the mem freq goes to 1032, 345 goes to1035, 346 goes to 1038.

is that the correct ratio? i cant see many other options that allow me to change it though.

[inonefly]

no need for 1:1 ratio really, higher memory mhz will give better bandwith

[SiM]

no need for 1:1 ratio really, higher memory mhz will give better bandwith

Depends if his memory can overclock that much though... I would be careful overclocking the memory as it can die if you give it too much volts and it does need active cooling if you go above 2V or so

[Zhaoman]

yeah, when clocking ur processor you have to bring your memory down in case of frying it.

[chadders]

Going through the BIOS & checking a few guides online im not sure if i have the ratio 1:1. When i change the CPU freq to:

344, the mem freq goes to 1032, 345 goes to1035, 346 goes to 1038.

is that the correct ratio? i cant see many other options that allow me to change it though.

1032 / 344 = 3
1035 / 345 = 3
1038 / 346 = 3

As for setting ram divider, Google threw up this:

Hit control+F1 in the bios for more options if you haven't already.

Any use?

The freezer isn't much of a cooler for an overclocked B3. My scythe ninja could barely tame the beast at stock settings.

Having gone from e6600 to q6600, and from freezer 7 pro to scythe ninja I've ended up with a thermalright true 120 extreme (with 2000rpm sharkoon golfball).

edit: manual finally downloaded...

If you do not find the settings you want in the Main Menu or a submenu, press <Ctrl>+<F1>
to access more advanced options.

Looks like you want to go into the "MB Intelligent Tweaker(M.I.T.)" option.

You'll know which option it is when ram is reported at 690mhz and your FSB is 345 (as per your original post).

[Andeh13]

So far iv managed to get the FSB up to 354, which has held stable on prime95 for a few hours now. Temperature is at a steady 54c and the clock speed is 3120mhz. This is all off 1.45625v.

For some reason i cant seem to get the FSB up any higher without it failing prime95. Any advices on what i could try next?

On a seperate note:
A mate of mine who im doing this with (both o/c our PCs together), he cant get his G0 stepping Q6600 higher then 308 without the machine more or less instantly crashing (where as mine would last at least a few mins into prime95 before crashing/erroring). Another problem he is having is when he tries to 'leap frog' the 308FSB to say 315, it will set itself in the bios, but when in windows CPUz & easytune 5 pro dont register it & both show what his FSB was before (308). He has the same RAM & PSU as me and a gigabyte 4 (mine is3) motherboard.


thanks in advance!

[Zhaoman]

it might be you're memory failing if you haven't set the divider down;

test the FSB limit first by decreasing the multiplier on the CPU and divider on RAM and raising the FSB as high as possible.

then test the CPU limit by increasing the multiplier and decreasing the FSB if necessary.

once you achieve the highest CPU speed, increase the RAM dividers until you reach your maximum.

Just gunning the FSB doesn't let you know which of you're components are failing: be it FSB, CPU or RAM.

[Andeh13]

thanks for all your help guys! Starting to figure this out bit by bit!

So far, this is how my bios looks:



I couldnt find any mention of memory timings, but going off what chadders said, if i changed the memory multiplier to 2, it brought up the correct RAM mhz. Does this mean my timing ratio is now 1:1?

As for the current state of it, i still cant get it above 357 (fsb) without it crashing in a matter of minutes. Iv read your post, Zhaoman, a few times but im still not 100&#37; clued up with the lingo so not sure how to procede. Is there any chance you could re-word it in terms of what my bios says above? I just get a bit lost in the terminology the way its stated atm.

many thanks guys!

[Zhaoman]

Your settings look pretty good; this will test to see how far your mobo will go:

Change the System Memory Multiplier to [1]
Change the CPU Clock Ratio to [6X]

Raise the CPU Host Frequency by [10Mhz] each time until you can't go up anymore without crashing in Prime95 (20 min tests will be sufficient).

You might want to bump up the FSB Overvoltage Control a little bit as you do this: keeping an eye on temperatures.

Hopefully, your CPU Host Frequency will go to 400Mhz without crashing:

In that case, bring the CPU CLock Ratio to [8X] and test for 6 hours on Prime95 (this will bring your CPU to 3.2Ghz), if everything goes well:

Bring the System Memory Multiplier back up to [2] and test overnight on Prime95, (this brings your memory back up to 800Mhz).

If at any stage your computer crashes, then you know which component to feed (a touch) more voltage; if it just refuses to overclock further then you've hit your limit mate! Happy trails

[Thorsson]

I wouldn't be happy putting that many volts through the CPU myself. I'm surprised that heat isn't an issue TBH.

[Noxvayl]

I wouldn't be happy putting that many volts through the CPU myself. I'm surprised that heat isn't an issue TBH.

I agree... I'd bring the CPU voltage down until you get faults in orthos. Then start to very slightly raise the voltage again until the faults stop. You want to use the lowest voltage possible to keep the temperature down

[Webby]

Andehh,

To get the memory timings info up you will need to unlock the extra features in the bios (not sure why Gigabyte do this its so annoying!) to do this (as previously mentioned) when you first enter the BIOS press ctrl and F1 together then when you enter the MIT screen (you posted above) should have extra options including the memory timings. Hope this helps.