Q6600 help

[tom.eagles]

Hi there,

I have my ram set to 4 4 4 12 but is recommended to run at 5 5 5 15 in vista i have no issues oc'ing the cpu to 333 on the fsb to get to 3GHZ but xp pro is unstable as hell, i have an Artic cooler freezer pro 7.

I cant find the setting in the f2 bios so separate the ram and fsb clocks as the ram wont oc very well. Tried relaxing it to 5 5 5 15 but no joy.

would like to:

a) Try to squeeze a bit more out of it in vista
b)Get a stable OC in XP

Reasons: Faster render times in 3DS Max and Terragen
anyone have any ideas?

edit:System specs are in profile

[Thorsson]

Vista is usually more picky about memory than XP, so it's odd that XP is unstable. Did you have any crashes on XP that may have corrupted some files?

As far as OC'ing the RAM goes you could try upping the voltage a notch, and upping the NB voltage a notch too, as you have 4 sticks. Don't know the RAM though and there is a risk that upping the RAM voltage might kill a weak stick.

[h0mes]

what motherboard cpu + ram do you have?

what vcore and vdim do you have? auto??

[sjbuck]

Try running with two sticks rather than 4, I noticed much more instability when going from 2-4 (GB/STICKS), ended up staying with 2GB, more than enough memory for almost everything.....

[TAKTAK]

as sjbuck says, try with 2 sticks of RAM, and if it is stable (4 sticks has been known to cause problems of instability and slow things down) and if it fixes the problem then sell your 4 1gb sticks and get 2 2gb sticks instead (i know its faffing, but if it fixes it then its worth it right?)

[Bugbait]

If you intend to overclock invest in some highly compatible, decent RAM. GEIL's seem to be well supported among the Tier1 motherboard manufacturers. Not familiar with your particular motherboard but the previous suggestions of testing with 2 sticks at a time is a good idea. There is a reason overclocker’s buy matched pairs, it can make a difference when pushing the limits of the RAM. I run 4x2Gig sticks with the same settings as 2 (4-4-4-10 @400MHz) without issues. Just need to find what RAM your motherboard likes.

[tom.eagles]

Hi all thx for input:

my system is links on the My system link under my name. but added it again here

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R F2 Bios FSB set to 333 Mhz
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping 2.4 O/C @ 3 GHZ in vista and XP pro
Memory: 4 X Transdata 1GB DDR2 667 matched Pairs (1.8v 5 5 5 15 native settings) running at 4 4 4 12 in vista and 5 5 5 15 in XP
HDD Capacity: 1 x Sata II 320GB Western Digital 8MB Cache
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 3870 Ultimate
Power Supply: Blue Storm II 500 Watt
Monitor: HP w2408h on HDMI output 1920*1200
Internet Connection: 4MB/512KB ADSL
Cooling Artic Cooler Freezer Pro 7
500 Watt Blue Storm II

Its strange as before i upgraded from AMD X64 6000+ with exactly the same ram and graphics card XP Pro totally outperformed Vista 64 Ultimate. Now its the opposite way round.

Vista is where i do my work and XP is just used for a few older games and testing the games stuff i work on etc.

[Thorsson]

I don't see how it could be hardware. I can only think of two things - your XP installation has become corrupted in some way, or something in your XP setup is causing problems, e.g. drivers or even the settings.

Note your RAM is running at its intended speed. It doesn't look like OC'ing RAM (which ususally requires 2.1-2.2v). It's possible you could clock the processor higher if you put the RAM at 6:5 say, but what CPU temps are you getting now, under load?

[vinnyT]

Have you 'upgraded' your xp to sp3? I found that after I did, xp became much more prone to crashes than before.

If you have, try uninstalling sp3, see if that helps.

[Brewster0101]

I had no end of problems with two gigabyte motherboards on the P35 chipset. I had issues with windows crashing with only two sticks of 1gb memory (ocz gold), after issue on the second board I replaced with Asus board with a P35 chipset and had no issues after that. Even now running 2 x 2gb (ocz Reaper) overclocked to 1200 with no voltage increase...

[tom.eagles]

Am getting consistently around 60 degees C under full load on cores 1 and 2 running 1 version of orthos and around 58 on cores 3 and 4 running a second simultaneous copy of orthos.

whats the recommended voltage setting for a q6600 at 333 ? i have seen anything from 1.325 downwards on the forums.

Edit: Updated drivers on the ATI card xp now a bit more stable, wont use SP3 had too many issues with it before.

FPS in XP Pro 32 bitis much lower sometimes upto 40% than under vista 64 bit ultimate.

Convinced its not hardware as you guys have pointed out, just one of those little issues i want fixed.

Like i said the only time the pc is oc'd is when i am using 3D studio Max or Terragen for work, but can involve long stretches of time on rendering so i dont want to end up cooking my cpu

[tom.eagles]

I had no end of problems with two gigabyte motherboards on the P35 chipset. I had issues with windows crashing with only two sticks of 1gb memory (ocz gold), after issue on the second board I replaced with Asus board with a P35 chipset and had no issues after that. Even now running 2 x 2gb (ocz Reaper) overclocked to 1200 with no voltage increase...

Lol i had to RMA 3 Asus P5K boards....

1)Bios died after about 4 hours system went dead no post.
2)Second one No network card functioning at all
3)third and final one could recieve data over the network card but no out bound traffic.

Normally I have always gone Asus without issues, but after the P5K i gave it a miss.

I have a Amd x64 6000+ Asus M2NE and a BFG 8800 GTS 320 lying around waiting for a sale or a build only reason i really decided to upgrade was the BFG couldnt handle the 24" at full resoulution, at 19" the system was awsome.

[Thorsson]

Mine runs at at 1.275 for 333, but that's its VID, which seems rather high compared to what others are showing. I'd always try running it at stock, and then put it up a notch at a time. Voltage increase power exponentially, so keep an eye on the temps.

[tom.eagles]

Sorry been out of town for a few days.

So basically i should set the vcore voltage in bios to the VID? mine defaults to 1.325 and on the box the cpu came in it is written max 1.35 v.

tried dropping it down to the VID reported by cpuz and windows wouldnt boot.

[Thorsson]

1.325 seems high. What is the VID? Just start there and up it a notch at a time until it is stable under Orthos. Are you sure that you have a stable OC at 333? Perhaps the CPU is the problem, rather than the RAM.