Overclocking advice :P

Well i decided i will overclock my e8400 to something sustainable say 3.5ghz~, dont want it too high as if i need to send back then they wont notice xD.

Iam stuck with how to overclock, the old days when it was in the bios and was piss easy to just change the bus speed etc. I am using an asus p5n-d and the only options i have is multiplyer and FSB to change, i uped that to 1400mhz but that made the cpu hit only 3.1ghz. Some1 care to explain how to overclock the cpu on this board? im stumped and cant find anything on the web.

thanks
edit: also does anyone know how to change the speeds on cpu cooler? i hate it constantly changing and would rather it be on full blast or quiet.

Fan control is often in the "health" sections or something silimar.

If it's a nvidia board then you can do unlinked overclocking which is very easy. You can just clock the RAM and CPU to whichever speeds you like.

So simply up the FSB to whatever you want it to be. 400MHz maybe.

think if i can only change the FSB and ram right, i changed it to 1400 and it made the chip go to 350, isnt it ment to get to 400? i only overclocked my old 3000 barton amd xD and that one liked it :P.

I did linked just because i couldnt be bothered to overclock my ram manually as i somehow get BSOD now (after a week being stable :P) so i will have another attempt in a few.

Another question, asus probe thing just warned me that the 5v rail went down to .5 (instead of 5v) this was for a second, perhaps a glitch? never happened before but what does the 5v rail actually power?(noob with psu's xD)

I'm not exactly that savvy with all the PSU stuff but USB etc.. is 5V.. honestly dont know.

Well all you need to play with to overclock is the FSB, Multiplyer (which is probably locked to 9x anyway) and voltage controls.

First up to get 3.5GHz you will need a FSB of 389MHz or if your board displays QDR (quad data rate) then 1556MHz. To get this speed I wouldn't expect you to need to change any voltages.

You will also need to make sure your memory is set to 1:1 ratio with your FSB so that it isn't being pushed to hard and causing potential instabilities while you are checking the overclock on your CPU. It is probably worth slackening the timings on the memory as well just to be on the safe side timings of 5-5-5-18 should be fine, you should have no problems running at the normal timings but better to do one thing at a time :)

a 1:1 ratio would force my ram to like 1k+, its never getting that high :P.

I was messing with the presets and then disabled them and it fixed it for me, now it shows the QDR fsb not just some random thing. Its @ 3.6ghz now and is showing 33C idle(was 32C earlier at stock). The ram is @ 900, is that bad?

fsb is 1600mhz now.

edit: im going to have food and so will run orthos to test stability.

Your CPU reports QDR so 4x the FSB, your memory runs at DDR (double data rate) so 2x the FSB.

So if your FSB is 400MHz (1600MHz QDR) then your memory at a 1:1 ratio will be at 800MHz DDR, which is stock speeds for your RAM.

ah i totally forgot about doubling the ram xD, thanks for clearing that up. The cpu is @ a nice 50C after orthos, but since the bios is reporting it wrong(stupid e8400 compatabilities :P) its probably like 30c, nearing it xD.
Will try a bit higher @ 450, brb xD.

edit: this board sucks ass when overclocking >.<, cant get higher then 400fsb, it cries if its higher, it wont get to xp loading but will post 2/3 times, but sometimes it gets passed the loading screen adn loads nothing after that xD.
so i guess 3.6ghz is the most im going to get, oh well ill see how much it effected my 3dmark06 score. Is there any voltages that i should watch/edit manually? like HT/NM/SB? because i dont want them going over.

edit2: xD, would em, overclocking my bfg 8800gts void its warranty? im guessing it would but any idea its possible to find out xD you overclocked it? If not, how do i control the voltages to the gfx card as i really want that to stay below maximum so yeh xD.

edit3: xD, the results are now : 13303 and thats up from something like 12550, thats a huge increase in my opinion, next to try the graphics card i think, 700/1000 instead of 675/972 should do something, how can i increase shader clock?

edit4: well, was messing around memory timings and heres what i got it to: 4-3-3-4, is that good?

edit5: xD, you guys must love me by now..... overclocked the gfx card to 760/1070, cant find shader clock so cant up that BUT now i get 14029 in 3dmark, not bad. Now to try crysis and see if theres a difference.

For your 8800gts you should try rivatuner or a similar program (no link sorry) its featured in a pcformat magazine.

Edit: Just put the mag infront of me and its issue#210 February. Link is RivaTuner v2.06 download from Guru3D.com

thanks