Planning on overclocking Q6600 soon, need a little advice

[Matt]

I've been looking at some overclocking guides and I've made a plan for overclocking my Q6600. Is this a good way of going about doing this?:

1. Manually set Vcore to stock instead of auto. Disable C1E and Speedstep. Lock PCI to 100MHz.
2. Increment FSB by a small amount, leave multiplier at 9. Run Prime95 for 3 or 4 hours.
3. If stable, increase FSB by another small amount. If unstable, increase Vcore by a step.
4. Continue until I reach my target of 3.0GHz, or until my temps/Vcore rise to high for my liking.

I've also seen recommendations to set the DRAM ratio to 1:1 while overclocking, is this necessary? What is a good amount to increment the FSB?(I'm thinking 10MHz per step.) As for the stability test I should run a smallFFT prime95 test, correct? What am I most likely to fry while OCing and how can I avoid that? Will it be safe to leave NB voltages etc. on auto?

Sorry for all the questions as of late, I'm still learning.

[sswilson]

Your plan looks almost perfect to me.

The only comment I'll offer is that you don't need to do a 3 or 4 hour prime after each bump. My experience has been 2 min for rough testing, 2 hours for fine testing, 8 hours+ for stability. If it's stable enough to do 2 minutes, it'll almost always (exception would be at much higher OCs) survive the next bump of 10 without requiring a cmos reset. Once you get to your OC goal, the 2 hour test will let you know if you need any small boosts to voltages, and the 8 hour test is a good overall system stability burn in test.

Personally, I leave prime set to blend as I want to verify the memory at the same time, but as you stated many (if not most) use smallfft.

[chrisk]

Looks good. I was a little 'reckless' and went for 3.0GHZ right off the bat with my G0 chip, with no voltage increase. people were getting 3.4-3.6 with these so I figured 3.0 was easily attainable. You might not want to try this but with some decent cooling, your chip should easily hit 3.0ghz.

[jay51]

i have my q6600@3.6 on air ,i went right to 400FSB/1600QDR with very little voltage. my GO chip can take 1.5v but temps get to high... and runs fine at 1.4v ..dont let temps go over 65c and you should be fine..

good luck




edit: what your vid of that chip?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by jay51

i have my q6600@3.6 on air ,i went right to 400FSB/1600QDR with very little voltage. my GO chip can take 1.5v but temps get to high... and runs fine at 1.4v ..dont let temps go over 65c and you should be fine..

good luck




edit: what your vid of that chip?

According to Core Temp, my VID is 1.2750v. Also, I think I'll just leave my ram at 2:3 and that will make it run at around 400MHz(DDR2-800) while I'm overclocking unless I have errors then I'll drop it down to 1:1. After I'm done I'll run it at around 533MHz(DDR-1066 or so)

[jay51]

Originally Posted by Matt

According to Core Temp, my VID is 1.2750v. Also, I think I'll just leave my ram at 2:3 and that will make it run at around 400MHz(DDR2-800) while I'm overclocking unless I have errors then I'll drop it down to 1:1. After I'm done I'll run it at around 533MHz(DDR-1066 or so)

nice my vid is same as yours. my ram was running at 11:13 1020mhz which ran perfect,but using a evga 780i mobo ,i linked and sync my ram at 1:1 runs it at 800mhz... my ram is 1066

[_Sigma]

I use Intel BurnTest. Nothing gets a CPU working quite like it. If your OC is the slightest bit unstable, it'll fail. Just be warned you need to watch the temps and be ready to pull the plug.

But the G0 q6600 from what I've seen pretty much goes to 3.0ghz w/o much of an increase in voltage.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by _Sigma

I use Intel BurnTest. Nothing gets a CPU working quite like it. If your OC is the slightest bit unstable, it'll fail. Just be warned you need to watch the temps and be ready to pull the plug.

But the G0 q6600 from what I've seen pretty much goes to 3.0ghz w/o much of an increase in voltage.

Intel Burn Test can pass while Prime 95 fails
Intel Burn Test can fail while Prime 95 passes

There is ONLY one good source of finding a stable overclock and that is to fold.

Otherwise Prime95 has been the most stable and reliable way to find out if a system is stable.

I personally do not trust Intel Burn Test nor will I recommend it to anyone for use to check stability of a system.

[rjbarker]

I personally do not trust Intel Burn Test nor will I recommend it to anyone for use to check stability of a system.

After my past experiences with IBT ...I agree totally!!

[sswilson]

IBT seems to be hit or miss dependant on hardware.

If somebody were complaining that they could get good stability results from everything but IBT, I'd suggest that they ignore the IBT results. OTOH, if they claimed that everything but Prime was stable, I'd advise them that they needed to do a bit more work to get their rig stable.