# Overclocking Q6600 to 3.0Ghz



## C_Trinity

Hey,

My specs are as follows - 

Q6600 GO CPU
Asus P5k Premium MB
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 PC2-8500 Memory


At the moment I have the following settings in my Bios - 

CPU FSB - 300 (x9)
DRAM FSB - 800Mhz
PCIE Freq - 100

All voltages Auto.


When I try and increase the CPU FSB to 333 (x9) (With DRAM FSB at 800Mhz) I crash under stress...I've tried voltages on the CPU up to 1.4v and still crashing.

Any ideas?

Thanks !!


----------



## 1 g0t 0wn3d

What are your temps?


----------



## C_Trinity

No more than 57 under stress.


----------



## 1 g0t 0wn3d

set the voltages to manual and set cpu voltage to 1.368v leave all others a default


----------



## C_Trinity

1 g0t 0wn3d said:


> set the voltages to manual and set cpu voltage to 1.368v leave all others a default


Thanks for the reply... do you mean set just the CPU FSB to 333, the CPU Voltage to 1.368, and all other settings auto/default ?


----------



## Kalim

There should be more BIOS options.. are you using the latest BIOS?


----------



## C_Trinity

Yes, I have the latest rev of my bios, version 0504.

I have a lot more options than I've listed...any help is appreciated.


----------



## Kalim

Increase vFSB and vMCH as you increase the FSB MHz and try again. Try and keep them as low as possible and work your way up manipulating only one at a time until you find what makes it stable. You should need very little voltage increase from stock rated to achieve 3GHz. Only add about 0.1v maximum over stock voltage for it.

It'll be better if you can list the voltages you can control in BIOS since I'm not aware what the new BIOSes for your motherboard allow in volts, they all differ. 

450FSB should be a piece of cake for your board and CPU once you get started on it.


----------



## C_Trinity

Thanks again for the reply...

Couple of things - 

What is vMCH?

Here are my BIOS screens (I've scrolled down on the first one to show you the voltage options...)










Second is my CPU options - 











These are both showing what I have set at the moment as stable.

Hope this helps!


----------



## blackduck30

also try setting your ram voltage to 2.1V


----------



## C_Trinity

It is set to 2.1v, shown from CPU-Z. Also tried manually setting 2.1v.

I've tried so many combinations of things !! Is it worth playing around with any other voltages? NB etc?

I'm hoping after all this I haven't got the worst GO CPU in the world


----------



## blackduck30

What power supply do you have ?


----------



## C_Trinity

Cooler Master RealPower 700W


----------



## C_Trinity

I just tried the following settings - 

CPU FSB - 333
DRAM FSB - 667
CPU Voltage - 1.4v
Dram Voltage - 2.1v

All else auto. It lasted longer than the previous crashes (about 10-15 mins), but still crashed .


----------



## C_Trinity

Sorry for the multiple posts...

Just tried increasing the MCH NB Voltage to 1.4 (the next in the list) with the above config, still crashing.

Any suggestions welcome. :smile:


----------



## smz

I want to jump in here. First off as a previous member of the hardware team and probably pending reinstatement at some point. I do want to say that though I do specialize in computer hardware professionally, I am a little above an amateur in the world of overclocking but now with the experience of 5 or so different motherboard makers, I have a good idea who's hot and who's not. Before I start. I am posting this because I also have the Q6600 and until I get some advise from one of the guy's in here that know more about this then myself, it is staying put at 3.22ghz and fully stable. More about that in a sec because I think the board maker has a lot to do with overclocking in general, same as the power supply, and HS & Fan. I've used ECS (fry's free boards, the worst in the business), MSI, Asus, Abit, & Gigabyte. I won't list boards I've only encountered for brief periods of time.

As far as utilities for overclocking via software, my vote goes to Asus and Gigabyte. My abit boards have great abilities inside the soft menu in bios but the guru software doesn't work so nothing for them. Gigabyte has easy tune which is amazing. just when you can't get a cpu to post, just under clock the heck of it and then turn up easy tune. I gained 250mhz per core with this strategy. Asus is Asus. It's the Roles Royce of boards, period. Then there's my trusty Abit IP35-E.

Let me start off with I just got the Q6600 from my local Fry's during a rare sale of a CPU only. It was $189 in a retail box no rebate, just a loss leader. Grabbed that puppy. It was a newly made chip manufactered on my birthday of all days, 2/26/08. So G0 is what I got. Now get this part.No matter what I did, I could not get the gigabyte board to post and run this chip stable over 3.0ghz. Period. Adjusting everything in the world wouldn't help. What was funny is I had the exact same cap with my previous CPU the E6400 with a stock clock of 2.13 so we have a difference of 270mhz that takes us to the stock clock of the q6600. now keep in mind the E6400 I could max out stable at 2.75ghz the Q6600 maxxed out at 3.00ghz give or take. That 270mhz difference I just referred to is almost on par with what I'm capped at with the Q6600.

I just wanted to share that. Furthermore, The machine would be stable for about 4 hours on Prime95 Torture, but it never seemed to ever make it past that and then reducing the same chip to stock, I encountered instability as well so I dunno?

OK now my current setup, success, and questions. I bought a new Abit IP35-E which is based on the Intel P35 express chipset. Stocked nicely with Corsair XMS2 PC6400 4-4-4-12 running solid as a rock at 860mhz with the FSB Overclock. It seems CPU voltage modification isn't really necessary to get it to this plateau. Corsair requires the ram to run at 2.1v for the 4-4-4-12 timings but some how abit doesn't register the 12 right and CPUid shows up as 4-4-4-18 which I really won't complain about. I'm running a Zalman 9500LED mounted in a very stocked Antec 900 case with Antec 120MM case fans in every optional spot and no onboard cards except a 7600GT. Case temperature is always about 10(F) above room temp. Idle temps with coretemp show between 90 - 98(F) give or take. Under stress it's creeped up a bit. I know the celsius number maxxes out at 60C but only on one of the 3 torture tests in prime 95, the other two and regular pounding of the machine results in 55C or lower.

So the big question is... what would you suggest as far as getting my clock speed higher? I still have room to tone down the ram frequency. I have not touched anything but 2 steps above stock CPU voltage and the DDR2 that I already mentioned. everything else is default/stock.

My power supply is an Antec Trio 550W which may be a tad small but the machine is pretty bare with just the video card, one drive and one dvd burner.

I'm open to ideas and anyone who knows the abit soft menu could probably give me the name of the voltage to tweak if you so desire.

Thanks everyone for hearing me out and good luck to the person that has a real Q6600 lemon for overclocking. Hopefully it's something stupid you are overlooking.

SMZ



C_Trinity said:


> Sorry for the multiple posts...
> 
> Just tried increasing the MCH NB Voltage to 1.4 (the next in the list) with the above config, still crashing.
> 
> Any suggestions welcome. :smile:


----------



## Kalim

C_Trinity said:


> It is set to 2.1v, shown from CPU-Z. Also tried manually setting 2.1v.


CPU-Z won't show you the current operating voltage, EVEREST will :wink:


> I've tried so many combinations of things !! Is it worth playing around with any other voltages? NB etc?


Yep.


> I'm hoping after all this I haven't got the worst GO CPU in the world


What's your CPU VID?

Just as a coincidence, I'm posting from a Q6600 G0 now from work, this is what it's at daily: http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/4756/wp37530csd0.png
It just came back from my nephew so I was checking it out incase he damaged it :grin:


C_Trinity said:


> I just tried the following settings -
> 
> CPU FSB - 333
> DRAM FSB - 667
> CPU Voltage - 1.4v
> Dram Voltage - 2.1v
> 
> All else auto. It lasted longer than the previous crashes (about 10-15 mins), but still crashed .


Change DRAM Command Rate to 2.
Change DRAM FSB to 667 4-4-4-12-3-52-6-3-3
Raise FSB Termination Voltage two notches.
Raise CPU PLL Voltage by one notch.
Increase CPU GTL Ref by one notch.
Raise NB Voltage by one notch.
Then try again.
Check what your in-windows "Performance Level" shows up as in *Memset*.

You won't need no where near 1.4v for 3.0GHz with a G0, that's usually what you'll need for 3.60GHz.



smz said:


> So G0 is what I got. Now get this part.No matter what I did, I could not get the gigabyte board to post and run this chip stable over 3.0ghz.


This is one of the lowest end and cheapest Gigabyte boards, P35-DS4 with Q6600 G0 same cooler as yours: http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4844/3906setupxt2.png
Not best FSB board but perfect for clocking CPU and RAM, one of the best.


> I just wanted to share that. Furthermore, The machine would be stable for about 4 hours on Prime95 Torture, but it never seemed to ever make it past that and then reducing the same chip to stock, I encountered instability as well so I dunno?


If it never happened before your overclocking adventure, it means you damaged the CPU through overclocking, through hardware or BIOS changes. 


> Corsair requires the ram to run at 2.1v for the 4-4-4-12 timings but some how abit doesn't register the 12 right and CPUid shows up as 4-4-4-18 which I really won't complain about.


You can change the tRAS in the BIOS. 


> So the big question is... what would you suggest as far as getting my clock speed higher? I still have room to tone down the ram frequency. I have not touched anything but 2 steps above stock CPU voltage and the DDR2 that I already mentioned. everything else is default/stock.


Play with the FSB and MCH voltages whilst keeping DRAM within fully stable MHz. Above 3.22GHz may require +0.1 higher voltages than stock for stability. The norm is 3.60GHz at 1.40-1.45v actual measured.


----------



## C_Trinity

Thank you for your reply Kalim...

Yesterday I ran Prime95 on my overclocked system, and it didn't fail with 2 hours of operation. However it does fail when I play a game such as COD4. 
I've been told, then, that the CPU overclock is successful, I'm failing on a graphics problem. Raising the PCI-E Frequency to 105/107 should help, according to a friend of mine. Will try that, but I'm not going to go above 110/115 as I hear many problems with the GPU and HDD can occur.

If this doesn't work I will try the settings you suggest .


----------



## 1 g0t 0wn3d

leave the pci express at 100 any movement of that can hurt stabability horribly


----------



## smz

I wanted to post a follow to the reply. What was addressed was my old configuration. I am now on IP35-E. the cpu can run prime95 torture 24 hours straight @ 3.22ghz and cpu voltage up 2 notches. 1.30.25 is what I think it's at. I'm guessing that too much fsb on that gigabyte may have had some effect on its stability.

So in the scenario I need assistance is with the Abit IP35-E in the softmenu which is their overclocking menu within the bios.

So after looking at all options the abit has, i noticed a couple of differences from the Gigabyte.

I have tons of cpu voltage options. Another voltage setting is 1.200 and only other option is 1.275 i think. Another option increments .5 at a time starting with 1.50. And two things with xCH but not variable settings, just stock and one overclock choice. However one option I have no idea what it does is the CPU % option. Set by default at 63%. 
I am also willing to lower the Ram lower than the above 800mhz that it's currently at, even if I have to drop some of the settings down.It doesn't make a lot of sense because I've posted it with about 1.4V and prime95 errors within 30 seconds. wprime seems to make it through it's test just fine.

I validated my 3.6 ID. Can you tell me what you consider a temperature thresold i should focus on while on load from a torture test? I mean generally when would this chip be expected fail because of the temperature? Most it ever got to was 70C when it was at 3.6ghz. This was actualy in a different case when I was trying it on my server machine but I have the same board and ram on my Antec 900 that it's permanently installed in.

Thanks for your help guys.
SMZ


Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition SP2 (Build 3790)
CPU Arch : 1 CPU - 4 Cores - 4 Threads
CPU PSN : Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
CPU EXT : MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 EM64T
CPUID : 6.F.B / Extended : 6.F
CPU Cache : L1 : 4 x 32 / 4 x 32 KB - L2 : 2 x 4096 KB
Core : Kentsfield (65 nm) / Stepping : G0
Freq : 3600.54 MHz (400.06 * 9)
MB Brand : Abit
MB Model : IP35-E (Intel P35+ICH9/R)
NB : Intel P35/G33/G31 rev A2
SB : Intel 82801IB (ICH9) rev 02
GPU Type : GeForce 7600 GT
GPU Clocks : Core 560 MHz / RAM 700 MHz
DirectX Version : 9.0
RAM : 4096 MB DDR2 Dual Channel
RAM Speed : 400.1 MHz (1:1) @ 4-4-4-12
Slot 1 : 1024MB (PC2-6400)
Slot 1 Manufacturer : Corsair
Slot 2 : 1024MB (PC2-6400)
Slot 2 Manufacturer : Corsair
Slot 3 : 1024MB (PC2-6400)
Slot 3 Manufacturer : Corsair
Slot 4 : 1024MB (PC2-6400)
Slot 4 Manufacturer : Corsair


----------



## EssoOil

Hi C-Trinity, I also have a Q6600 on an Asus P5K Premium MB.

I've overclocked mine to 3Ghz and its only ever crashed once. I think I have it pretty stable. I'm at work right now but will post my settings here later.

One thing I can say is that you are missing a trick only using 800 RAM. I use OCZ DDR2 8500 Dual Channel which gives a DRAM frequency of 1066. Having fast memory helps greatly when overclocking. Its pointless having a super fast CPU if the memory cannot keep pace with it.

You are correct to have the FSB at 333 but you MUST listen when people tell you the CPU Voltage does NOT need to be anywhere near 1.4v. For 3Ghz you just need to increase it by two notches to around 1.368. This will make the CPU run cooler which will greatly help stability.

I notice on your CPU settings screen you have "CPU ratio setting" on "Auto". I have mine to 9. Auto might be 9 but change it anyway.

Also, are you using the DRAM timings shown on your RAM? The label on my DIMMS show 5-5-5-15 which is exactly what I set it to on my motherboard. Again, you have yours on "Auto".

I have also picked a few more stable settings up from various forums. Like I say -I'll post them here tonight.

Regards, EssoOil.


----------



## smz

agreed. first rule of thumb is to eliminate as many "auto" settings as you can and ram is necessity to enter the key numbers in manually and set voltage to 2.1V if it applies to your ram.

Multiplier 9x and you should give the board a chance to change it. As far as voltage being raised. I am up only two notches and I finally passed my previous limited of 3.22 and am running stable at 3.30ghz again same voltage as 3.22 and no adjustments to any other voltage setting. My ram does run at 4-4-4-12 but abit overrides my "12" setting and bumps it up to 18. It does that on all three of my abit boards even though one of the other systems is using Kingston HyperX. For the record I am running PC-6400 @ 880mhz without a hitch. surprisingly enough still getting 4-4-4-12 even that high.



EssoOil said:


> Hi C-Trinity, I also have a Q6600 on an Asus P5K Premium MB.
> 
> I've overclocked mine to 3Ghz and its only ever crashed once. I think I have it pretty stable. I'm at work right now but will post my settings here later.
> 
> One thing I can say is that you are missing a trick only using 800 RAM. I use OCZ DDR2 8500 Dual Channel which gives a DRAM frequency of 1066. Having fast memory helps greatly when overclocking. Its pointless having a super fast CPU if the memory cannot keep pace with it.
> 
> You are correct to have the FSB at 333 but you MUST listen when people tell you the CPU Voltage does NOT need to be anywhere near 1.4v. For 3Ghz you just need to increase it by two notches to around 1.368. This will make the CPU run cooler which will greatly help stability.
> 
> I notice on your CPU settings screen you have "CPU ratio setting" on "Auto". I have mine to 9. Auto might be 9 but change it anyway.
> 
> Also, are you using the DRAM timings shown on your RAM? The label on my DIMMS show 5-5-5-15 which is exactly what I set it to on my motherboard. Again, you have yours on "Auto".
> 
> I have also picked a few more stable settings up from various forums. Like I say -I'll post them here tonight.
> 
> Regards, EssoOil.


----------

