Check my overclocking maths please!

[Webby]

The Q6600s bootstrap is set to 266MHz, so pushing to 333 WILL overclock the northbridge as it will be running at the more aggressive timings of the 266 bootstrap.

If you inserted a CPU that really did run at 333 FSB, then the northbridge will not be pushed as hard.

I have yet to see a Q6600 that didn't do 3.2GHz (with at-most a tiny voltage increase) out of around a dozen or so. I would suspect most failures to hit that would be from dodgy motherboards/setups/users.

Depending on the board the strapping will change depending on the FSB, I will have a look around to try and find a reference for that statement (not sure where I read it now...)

[Lee H]

Yes you can re-enable it, but it may cause stability issues and might affect the overall overclocking speed of the processor.

[SiM]

Oh and sometimes 450x8 works better than 400x9

[PeterStoba]

you'll be wondering why the CPU is running at slower speeds which is what I did for about 2 days

And you're in charge of a computer retailer

[arthurleung]

If your clocking then I would advise having a look at the DFI P35 board as I found mine to be extremely stable even when hitting 333Mhz FSB (no voltage increase needed from me) and then onto 400 Mhz FSB.

Oh and don't forget to turn C1E off or you'll be wondering why the CPU is running at slower speeds which is what I did for about 2 days

I've had C1E running all the time, it shoots up automatically wen I need it.
I do hear reports of Vista messing with C1E locking the CPU at lowest speed when using the power saving / balanced profile.

[Pob255]

Remember to set the memory ratio to 1:1 while overclocking, only increase the ratio after your happy with your cpu speed.
Also remember to manually set the memory timing to there stock numbers, as the Auto setting can cause problems when underclocking the memory (which you should be doing while you find the stable speed of the cpu you're happy with)

Infact, read our handy sticky thread
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...beginners.html
and this
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...eral-info.html
and this
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...de-v1-0-a.html

[Webby]

The problem with speed stepping is that it lowers the voltage with the multiplier, now at stock settings I guess it knows what voltage is fine for the 6x multi (at stock FSB) it uses but if you have a high FSB and then you get reduced to a 6x multi the voltage is potentially not enough for that clock speed then you get problems! For example my CPU at 6x multiplier would still be running at 3GHz but the voltage would be dropped well below what would be required for this to be stable.

[MSIC]

Yep, that makes sense. I can see me either doing minimal overclocks to allow speedstepping to remain, or more likely going into the over 3Ghz range for fun times.

As an aside (and without me making a whole new thread), can anyone find a good priced Q6600? I'm still waiting for Scan to do one on a Today only, but it's currently £120.
OCUK shave a few quid off, but a) i wouldn't and b) i'd lose that with postage costs anyway.
Anyone see any shops selling it for £105 - £110?

[AD-15]

hello,

Dude, if I were you I'd totally forget about speedstep and C1E when overclocking.

They caused massive issues when I would raise the FSB, it just isn't stable. Now that I've disabled them, I can push the FSB much further without problems.

What I do with my system is, save 2 profiles in the BIOS. One overclocked one normal. That way, when you play not-so-heavy games, that won't benefit too much from an overclocked CPU, you could use the non-overclocked profile. When you want to use CPU-intensive programs, you could use the overclocked profile. This way, you're not pushing the system, and reducing it's lifespan, all the time.