simplified overclocking..

[CMcguire]

Ok there seem to be a fair few guides out there to overclocking a q6600.. but they seem to go on about turn this off change this and that..etc ..etc.. but to just overclock the cpu what do i need to do besides bumping up the fbs? I want to do it as simply and safely as possible.. so i really dont want to be turning off safety features like throttling and such that some guides seem to suggest..

p.s. no june contest tisk tisk

[Apoptosis]

hehe... we will have a july one ;)

[DMB2000uk]

The throttling, or rather speedstep, is recommended to be turned off as when you overclock it it will default to the lowest multiplier most of the time, so that you will only know if it is stable by putting it under load for a long time (see: ORTHOS). Having said that, my overclocked E6600 has speedstep still on.

As you increase your FSB you will be increasing the RAM speed, so unless you want to overclock that too, drop that down to the next divider so that it runs slower than it should. Decent RAM will be able to overclock so far before it either requires more voltage or looser timings. For simplicity sake (so that we don't have to check the RAM for stabitly as well as the CPU set that to a divider below its rated speed, i.e. 800Mhz set to 667Mhz).

Ok, jump up your FSB by 5-10 Mhz a time and boot into windows, do a quick check for stability each time, the best is probably ORTHOS, let it run for 1 loop for now. When you get to a point where orthos errors increase the CPU core voltage by one increment and try the test again. To test that your memory/northbridge is also playing nice, run test 5 looped from Memtest86+ (has to boot off of a CD). run that for about 30mins to get a general idea of if its ok.

When you get to the point when memtest errors, and the memory hasn't been pushed ridiculously past its rated speed then you will have to increase the voltage to the northbridge (sometimes called MCH) or decrease the RAM divider (if it is a ridiculous RAM overclock and adding RAM voltage doesn't help).

Stay below 1.5v on your CPU and you should be ok. As a general rule the more voltage goes in the more your processor will run hot.

Think that's about all the basics you need to know, if you need any of that clarifying then let me know.

Dan

[Dragon_Cooler]

hehe... we will have a july one ;)

I CANT WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

im guessing it will be just for quad cores, or cpus in general?

[CMcguire]

He's refering to the monthly contests.. not overclocking stuff

btw is it true you can end up frying your video card when you bump up the fbs?

And with my corsair 8500 ram would i need to bump the speed on that down at all? I would think that it should be stable for any fbs changes i would be doing.. but of course im new at this whole thing so I don't really know

[Zertz]

He's refering to the monthly contests.. not overclocking stuff

btw is it true you can end up frying your video card when you bump up the fbs?

And with my corsair 8500 ram would i need to bump the speed on that down at all? I would think that it should be stable for any fbs changes i would be doing.. but of course im new at this whole thing so I don't really know

Just set your PCI-E clock at 100 Mhz and it won't happen

Stepping down the RAM speed while you overclock is a good idea since you don't want your RAM limiting your CPU. You can also check how far your RAM can go stable and then overclock your CPU and make sure you stay under that limit.

[CMcguire]

well i've bumped up the fbs to 333

so 333x9 = 2.99ghz

The lowest i could set the pci was like 101 point something... i have to take another look at it to see what i should really set it to.. have a feeling i could be limiting it in some way?
*Anyone know what it ought to be with http://www2.bfgtech.com/bfgr88768gtxoc2e.aspx and the intel XBX2 mobo?
I used the vista memory check to quickly test the memory and i got no errors on that.. I'll look into running memtest for a while at some point

O and running orthosx2 for an hr and everything seems fine...

The intel XBX2 bios is pretty crap.. doesn't exactly give a lot of options for changing things i find.. also i found it weird when doing the ocing i was following the advice off a website to bump up your voltage slightly before try to make sure you can get the overclock then dropping the voltage as much as you can while still remaining stable... the thing is when i bumped it up programs like cpu-z were still reading it as the default voltage.. (having said that the bios showing current state of cpu didn't seem to update voltage when i changed it where as it did with the cpu changes i'd post a pic but i dont have a camera)

All and all the bump up in fbs seems to only have bumped up my load temps by maybe 4C or so i think it was around 66-68 before (not really sure didnt run a test before i oced i.e. one with the same ambient temps)
and it touches on 73C now... obviously i'd perfer things lower.. but i have a feeling the temps are slightly off (bios thermal check says about 40C or less but core temp is showing 48-50C idle)..

[DMB2000uk]

I hope that it was the PCIe bus you put down to 101 and not the PCI bus

Dan

[Zertz]

The intel XBX2 bios is pretty crap.. doesn't exactly give a lot of options for changing things i find.. also i found it weird when doing the ocing i was following the advice off a website to bump up your voltage slightly before try to make sure you can get the overclock then dropping the voltage as much as you can while still remaining stable... the thing is when i bumped it up programs like cpu-z were still reading it as the default voltage.. (having said that the bios showing current state of cpu didn't seem to update voltage when i changed it where as it did with the cpu changes i'd post a pic but i dont have a camera)

All and all the bump up in fbs seems to only have bumped up my load temps by maybe 4C or so i think it was around 66-68 before (not really sure didnt run a test before i oced i.e. one with the same ambient temps)
and it touches on 73C now... obviously i'd perfer things lower.. but i have a feeling the temps are slightly off (bios thermal check says about 40C or less but core temp is showing 48-50C idle)..

Software can't read voltage properly, if you really want to know exactly how much voltage there is, you'll have to get a multimeter.

An increase in frequency shouldn't affect temps much, what heat's things up is when you increase the voltage.

It makes sense that the BIOS reads a lower temp because the CPU is almost not being used at all.

[CMcguire]

I hope that it was the PCIe bus you put down to 101 and not the PCI bus

Dan

well my options in the bios for bus overrides are
PCI Express Burn-in mode Percentage (this has option of default or 101-109 going up by about 1 each step) this is what i set to 101..

Other then that there us only PCI configure with the following that can be changed
PCI Latency timer (set at 32 by default.. but goes up to 248 in steps of 32) no idea what this does
And then HPET enable and Disable.. its set to disabled..

[Zertz]

I hope that it was the PCIe bus you put down to 101 and not the PCI bus

Dan

well my options in the bios for bus overrides are
PCI Express Burn-in mode Percentage (this has option of default or 101-109 going up by about 1 each step) this is what i set to 101..

Other then that there us only PCI configure with the following that can be changed
PCI Latency timer (set at 32 by default.. but goes up to 248 in steps of 32) no idea what this does
And then HPET enable and Disable.. its set to disabled..

If the PCI buses we're set wrong, you're components would already be dead, so you don't have to worry