Call to AB9 Pro owners

[nickaal]

Hi all.
I'd like to get an idea of the max fsb you are able to reach with your board (with last BIOS or recent).
I am limited by my ram but would like to know if changing it would be wise or not. So please, get to your BIOS and overclock like mad!

[Highland3r]

~ 450 or so with the stock cooling. Added an extra fan over the NB to help with temps.
Run a vmodded board here @ 465 stable, again with additional cooling over the NB.

[nickaal]

Alright thanks for the reply Highland3r but are you doing that with a E6600 or E6300?
I saw your links in footnote and couldn't help noticing the 534MHz FSB with E6300.
Is that with the Vmodded AB9? I reach easily 480 with mine with northbridge at 1.45V but at 489 it is not 100% stable anymore. It is not warm but i get errors with the ram. Could that be due to the chipset being limited in volts? It is able to run windows ok it's just under orthos that it fails so I thought would be the ram.
Also what kind of cooling on cpu are you using to go that high?

[Highland3r]

Alright thanks for the reply Highland3r but are you doing that with a E6600 or E6300?
I saw your links in footnote and couldn't help noticing the 534MHz FSB with E6300.
Is that with the Vmodded AB9? I reach easily 480 with mine with northbridge at 1.45V but at 489 it is not 100% stable anymore. It is not warm but i get errors with the ram. Could that be due to the chipset being limited in volts? It is able to run windows ok it's just under orthos that it fails so I thought would be the ram.
Also what kind of cooling on cpu are you using to go that high?

The 534mhz is with an E6300 and P5B Vanilla. Might be worth running windows memtest to check whether the ram is at fault. Also try increasing mem or cpu voltages to see if that helps. (depending on what you're currently running - can you confirm those voltages and memory timings?)
Cooling on the 6300, can't remeber have a feeling its stock cooled - but might be water.

[nickaal]

So!
I have my E6300 at 1.35V. It can go higher with that voltage. I tried 1.375V but appart from being warmer, it did not help. Regarding the ram, it is at 5-5-5-15 at 2.1V.
I tried 5-5-5-18 at 490MHz and it works with the same voltages. At 495MHz, it starts to be really difficult. cpu works fine but ram gives me errors. I do not really want to make it run at 2.2V as I read somewhere that xms2 memory is warranted up to 2.1V.
Now, I tried running memtest for windows and it was giving me errors at 486MHz. I thought I could trust orthos but apparently not. I am gonna stay at 480MHz at 5-5-5-15 which is still a decent overclock for promo ICs. CPU is at 3.36GHz and does not exceed 55 degrees at full load so really happy with that.
Now I reduced the voltage on CPU to 1.3V and all is 100% stable.
This is my first Abit motherboard and being an Asus fan, I must say I don't regret my choice. I had a chaotic setup due to poor Bioses but these guys keep updating them even though there are new flagship products on sale.
Thanks for the input Highland3r, let me know if you have any suggestions regarding what I detailed.