C2D Overclocking Guide For Beginners P5K Add-On

[Clunk]

Ok, loads of pics added, and some stuff tidied up, looks a bit more presentable now

[Machinus]

I have a quick question -

If you were running a C2D with a ~400Mhz fsb with 800Mhz DDR2 RAM, is there any advantage to overclocking the RAM? You would have to use a divider in order to make that work, and wouldn't that lower your performance?

[Clunk]

Depends how much the RAM will overclock. If you have good RAM with plenty of headroom, you can see a decent jump in performance in some apps by running a divider.

Best thing to do is have a mess around with it and see.

Welcome to Hexus by the way

[Phil_P]

Great guide Clunk

^^ On that note, anyone have any Sandra memory bandwidth figures for running dividers versus 1:1 sync. I'd be interested to see the impact or say 667MHz @ 5:4 = 833MHz versus a genuine 1:1 833MHz at the same CPU clock speed (or anything comparable, I just picked those numbers as an example!)

[Clunk]

Have a look in the P5K deluxe thread, theres a few of sandra shots in there

For the highest bandwidth, try a lower multi with a high FSB and a higher divider.

[demonwolf]

Ive just come from a DFI SLI-DR board which came with a reliable windows bios flashing tool. Ive bought this board and really appreciate all the hints your giving clunk, your a star. I still have to update this bios and want to do it the safest possible way. What advice would you give on updating the bios?

[Clunk]

Use the EZ flash utility in the bios.

Grab a usb memory stick, put it in, extract your bios file to the usb stick

Boot to the bios, go to tools, then EZ flash.

Select your file from the usb drive and let it do its stuff.

If you dont have a usb drive, you can use a floppy, or even put it on your c: drive

[prits_88]

extremely nice post.

very easy to read, even for a noob like me, and i will look forward 2 trying it out in a few weeks when i can convince my dad to give me some money for my rig

[uchiha_itachi]

Hi Clunk,

Absolutely brilliant thread, thank you so much for your contribution. Just one little question. I am running 4 x 1gb sticks of ram in the P5K deluxe along with an e6600. I have the /PAE and /3gb switch on my boot.ini for winxp, should this pose any problem for overclocking, should I remove the switches? Generally any extras I should know before attempting to oc with 4gb of ram?

Thanks.

[Clunk]

I wouldnt even put 4x1gb of ram in there unless you have vista x64 to be honest.

I'm sure others can comment further, but I run xp home 32 bit and 2x1GB on this one, sorry

[uchiha_itachi]

Thanks for the reply Clunk, I can't use vista right now due to the software I use not being compatible with it.

I'll give the overclocking a go, and report back here with what I was able to achieve.... or not.

[dangel]

Well it's up and running - 4gigs of ram but cpu at stock for now (it's still bloody quick) - my only worry before i overclock is the MB temperature - asus probe II is reporting 47C! The cpu is 21C (water cooled) which is astounding..

[Agrippa]

Hi Clunk,

Absolutely brilliant thread, thank you so much for your contribution. Just one little question. I am running 4 x 1gb sticks of ram in the P5K deluxe along with an e6600. I have the /PAE and /3gb switch on my boot.ini for winxp, should this pose any problem for overclocking, should I remove the switches? Generally any extras I should know before attempting to oc with 4gb of ram?

Thanks.

I'm at 3.2GHz on an E6420 (2.13GHz stock) with 4 x 2GB RAM, so I wouldn't worry just yet.... :-)

[uchiha_itachi]

I'm at 3.2GHz on an E6420 (2.13GHz stock) with 4 x 2GB RAM

4 x 2GB? so you have 8GB in your system?

[Clunk]

I'm at 3.2GHz on an E6420 (2.13GHz stock) with 4 x 2GB RAM, so I wouldn't worry just yet.... :-)

You're on vista64 though arent you? He's on 32bit xp

[Agrippa]

Nope, XP x64. I'm not touching Vista again until SP1 arrives.