~pcwiz Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 I'm new to overclocking. I know how to overclock (raising FSB speed, increasing multiplier, upping vcore, etc.) but I admit I haven't done it before. Some quick questions. I have a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P motherboard, I'm afraid that I will fry something if the overclock goes too high, and since I'm using a stock cooler, there is bigger chance of something going wrong. I've heard that Intel processors throttle themselves if the temp goes up too high, but can anyone verify that and give me some peace of mind? I've seen people going to 3.6 on the Q6600 with stock cooling, but I know that mileage varies. The first thing I plan on doing sometime is upping the FSB multiplier and then running a Prime95 stress test. Oh and another Q. If my overclock proves to be unstable, will I be able to get back into BIOS to revert it to original values? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazevedo317 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 do not try 3.6 on stock cooling. i for one never even used the stock cooler. but with the ACF7 im stable at 3.6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbetts Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 NEVER EVER with stock cooling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdb424 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 More fans or water cooling. or rarely, both....... lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazevedo317 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 NEVER EVER with stock cooling. esp. with the Q6600 {censored} cooler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synaesthesia Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Overclock gradually, and run a stressing program (you might wanna do this in windows), and watch the core temperatures + stability of your rig, everytime you kick it up a notch. You might need to adjust the Vcore at some point. If you wanna get 3.6ghz, get a beefier cooler. The Q6600 will get freakin hot at that frequency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted August 17, 2008 Author Share Posted August 17, 2008 I'm not planinng to OC it anywhere near 3.6. I'm planning on 3 max, probably around 2.7 or 2.8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 I'm not planinng to OC it anywhere near 3.6. I'm planning on 3 max, probably around 2.7 or 2.8 You shouldn't have many problems with that but, honestly, you shouldn't feel much of a difference either. I wanted to buy a ZEROtherm FZ120 Zen and overclock my Q6600 to 3.0, but then I realized it doesn't make sense with the Nehalems coming out in less than 2 months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(MoC) Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 You shouldn't have many problems with that but, honestly, you shouldn't feel much of a difference either.I wanted to buy a ZEROtherm FZ120 Zen and overclock my Q6600 to 3.0, but then I realized it doesn't make sense with the Nehalems coming out in less than 2 months. You can do stock up to 3, but no more than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 In any case a ZEROtherm FZ120 Zen is very reasonably priced and it does make a hell of a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 <br />I'm new to overclocking. I know how to overclock (raising FSB speed, increasing multiplier, upping vcore, etc.) but I admit I haven't done it before. Some quick questions. I have a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P motherboard, I'm afraid that I will fry something if the overclock goes too high, and since I'm using a stock cooler, there is bigger chance of something going wrong. I've heard that Intel processors throttle themselves if the temp goes up too high, but can anyone verify that and give me some peace of mind? I've seen people going to 3.6 on the Q6600 with stock cooling, but I know that mileage varies. The first thing I plan on doing sometime is upping the FSB multiplier and then running a Prime95 stress test. Oh and another Q. If my overclock proves to be unstable, will I be able to get back into BIOS to revert it to original values?<br /><br />Thanks<br /> To answer the last question first the Gigabyte boards have overclock protection they will reset themselves when the overclock is too unstable, you will see the machine attempt to start then it will shutdown and restart with the BIOS set back to its defaults. If this by some chance does not work properly then it is just a matter of disconnecting the power to the machine and removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes to reset the BIOS. For the overheating protection you need to have the TM2 enabled in the BIOS its default setting on any board I have had so don't mess with this setting when your in there. So some suggested setting for the 3GHz you want. Set CPU multiplier to 9x The FSB at 334mhz The ram multiplier set to 2x Leave the voltages set to normal Make sure the TM2 is enabled Then make sure the C1E is enabled to provide the frequency/voltage scaling this works on any OS I have tried on my machines Disable Speedstep it always screws with my overclocking With any luck the machine should boot right up at just over 3GHz depending on how accurate the clock is on the board some vary by a mhz or two. If you change the CPU multiplier to anything other than the 9 and/or set the CPU voltage to anything but normal then you may as well disable the C1E as the scaling will no longer work. Now since you have the ram set so low if you have DDR2 800 modules then you may be able too depending on the timings at 800 (say if 5-5-5-15) set them to something like 4-4-4-12 to get some extra speed out of them, if you use CPU-Z you should see a table in the memory section of the defaults used at the various speeds it may say lower for 667 but I doubt it so you can give these a try to see how they work. Oh and if you have done any reading where it tells you to run the Prime95 for 8, 10, 12+ hours to determine if you have a stable overclock don't listen to them in my experience if it is going to fail on a core it will happen in the first 5-10 minutes. I usually let mine go for about 3-4 hours as I know it will be the longest the machine will ever be under that kind of stress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bofors Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Set CPU multiplier to 9x ... If you change the CPU multiplier to anything other than the 9 ... The CPU multiplier of a Q6600 should be locked at 9. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 <br />The CPU multiplier of a Q6600 should be locked at 9.<br /> No sh*t Sherlock for the high side setting but it goes down to 6 if you want it too allowing you to raise the FSB to get the speed you want, plus it would not be the first time I have seen the multiplier not detected properly its always a good idea to make sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonjoey Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 my q6600 was running 3GHZ with only stock vcore and stable on windows (8hrs prime) but on mac os x it crashes on stock vcore, and stable on 1.3v (doing imovie as we speak) i tried the stock cooler and it goes 60C on real temp. replaced it with scythe ninja revb and its 45C full load Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted August 20, 2008 Author Share Posted August 20, 2008 MacUser2525, Great tips! My DDR2 RAM came with 4-4-4-15 timings by default. Is that OK? I have sweet OCZ Performance RAM. Quite a bit more expensive than average RAM but well worth it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 <br />MacUser2525,<br /><br />Great tips! My DDR2 RAM came with 4-4-4-15 timings by default. Is that OK? I have sweet OCZ Performance RAM. Quite a bit more expensive than average RAM but well worth it <img src="style_emoticons/default/thumbsup_anim.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="thumbsup_anim.gif" /><br /> Good timings on the ram as it is that is what mine is rated for I am only running at 700mhz using it 1:1 with the FSB so I have mine set to 4-4-4-12 it works well using those settings so if yours is under its rated clock you may want to give it a try too. BTW anyone have a clue why the extra <br /> are showing up in all the posts I reply too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted August 20, 2008 Author Share Posted August 20, 2008 I'm not 100% sure, but according to the RAM info obtained from the kernel on OS X, my RAM is running overclocked at 1066MHz. Don't know if that's right...Don't ever remember changing any RAM settings in BIOS. I think it might be because the board is designed for 1066MHz RAM, maybe it just auto overclocks any lower speed RAM to match that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted August 20, 2008 Share Posted August 20, 2008 <br />I'm not 100% sure, but according to the RAM info obtained from the kernel on OS X, my RAM is running overclocked at 1066MHz. <img src="style_emoticons/default/blink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="blink.gif" /> Don't know if that's right...Don't ever remember changing any RAM settings in BIOS. I think it might be because the board is designed for 1066MHz RAM, maybe it just auto overclocks any lower speed RAM to match that...<br /><br /><br />Well that could be the case that it is running at that speed but I doubt it is doing it without errors unless you have upped the voltage going to the modules. So have you put more voltage to it, checked in Windows if you have that installed with something like CPU-Z or even booted with a memtest86 CD to make sure that your ram is running stable without errors no matter what the speed you are running at? You say not sure on changes so make sure that you have the multiplier set to 2x in the BIOS now if it runs at that speed without error then you can be good to go, most times if the ram is unstable either memtest or Prime95/mprime for a Mac will start throwing up errors and if it is unstable then you can start getting data errors that may not be detected by the OS these can cause data loss so make certain its working properly.<br /> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 BTW anyone have a clue why the extra <br /> are showing up in all the posts I reply too. To answer my own question Noscript in Firefox was doing it I neglected to white list insanelymac.com hence all the junk showing up in my posts as the scripts on the site could not run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted August 21, 2008 Author Share Posted August 21, 2008 Well that could be the case that it is running at that speed but I doubt it is doing it without errors unless you have upped the voltage going to the modules. So have you put more voltage to it, checked in Windows if you have that installed with something like CPU-Z or even booted with a memtest86 CD to make sure that your ram is running stable without errors no matter what the speed you are running at? You say not sure on changes so make sure that you have the multiplier set to 2x in the BIOS now if it runs at that speed without error then you can be good to go, most times if the ram is unstable either memtest or Prime95/mprime for a Mac will start throwing up errors and if it is unstable then you can start getting data errors that may not be detected by the OS these can cause data loss so make certain its working properly. Like I said, I haven't done ANYTHING. Pretty much all BIOS settings are at default. System works just fine though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kramer2k Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 make sure that you don't need to add any more voltage to your RAM to make it run at those rated speeds. Most require 2.1 V to get 4-4-4-12, some 2.2V. The usual standard is 1.8V at 5-5-5-18 And what kind of performance RAM? there's a lot listed at OCZ's site... http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ddr2/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted August 21, 2008 Author Share Posted August 21, 2008 Like I said, haven't adjusted anything in terms of RAM, and I don't need to The RAM is OCZ Platinum XTC Rev. 2 DDR2 800 4-4-4-15 http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memo...inum_revision_2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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