First Time Overclocker With Professional Results

[mawsoccer]

im assuming you have an "A" because i run 3.8 @ 1.3750 BIOS @ 1.38~1.39 load.. (AW9-D Max)??

Yes, I do have a week A chip. What week is urs? Sounds like you got a pretty good chip there if ur running at 1.4 vCore. What kind of cooling do u have and what are ur temps like?

[PanteraGSTK]

The only way to do that on the P5B deluxe is to start computer at 399 fsb and clock up to 500. However, this takes alot of Vmch volts and really good cooling, its not for 24/7 running. Don't get FSB strap and Memory ratio confused, they are two different things.



Correct, you want to be sure you are still on that 1066 strap for the super fast mem performance...(to do this set fsb at 390, boot up, and then set fsb at 400, if mobo does double restart strap changed, and it didnt work, but if mobo boots right up without the double reset you are still on 1066) you will probably need to raise your mem volts a bit for DDR-1000, but that kit should be able to handle that speed without much issue.

Edit - you may need to raise the NB volts a bit to get 4:5 going, but i see you are already on 1.55v so that should be good, but thats just something to try if it doesnt work righ away.

I wasn't getting the strap confused with ratio. I have to (well, I don't HAVE to) use 1:1 because I am limited to my 7x multiplier. I'd rather not have to use clockgen or anything as I want it to boot at my OC. I'm planning on getting a 6400 or a 4300 to fix my multiplier issue. I just want somebody to make a board that lets you choose what strap you are on. I've reads lots of reviews of commando's, strikers, quadgt's rd600 and I'm not really impressed with their oc performance vs the MUCH less expensive S3 I have. I just want my BIOS options, asynchronous ram ratio's, 2 full pci-e x16 slots, 3 pci slots, 2 pci-e 1x slots, 8 phase power, better board arrangement, sli and crossfire support, and bug free BIOS. But I guess I'll never be happy.

[Revv23]

I wasn't getting the strap confused with ratio. I have to (well, I don't HAVE to) use 1:1 because I am limited to my 7x multiplier. I'd rather not have to use clockgen or anything as I want it to boot at my OC. I'm planning on getting a 6400 or a 4300 to fix my multiplier issue. I just want somebody to make a board that lets you choose what strap you are on. I've reads lots of reviews of commando's, strikers, quadgt's rd600 and I'm not really impressed with their oc performance vs the MUCH less expensive S3 I have. I just want my BIOS options, asynchronous ram ratio's, 2 full pci-e x16 slots, 3 pci slots, 2 pci-e 1x slots, 8 phase power, better board arrangement, sli and crossfire support, and bug free BIOS. But I guess I'll never be happy.

Yes it's true there is no perfect board, you jusst have to find one that suits you best. Its too bad that there can't be something better out there.

Personally i think the 2 best boards are the quad GT (as long at you dont need more then 510fsb) because it runs 1066 at all times and will even do 1t. The second one would be thenew DFI 965 infinity, but that is untested still and not in retail yet -however it looks really promising.

Well, I got it on a 4:5 ratio right now, but I dont notice too much difference. I dont run at 3.6 daily, the temps are a bit high and the vCore is getting up there, maybe after I lap it.

I run it at 3.4 Daily at much lower vCore and temps.

Thats your desicion, you were asking for tips about getting more speed, 4:5 is faster, do any comparison benchmarks and you will see it. your 24/7 clocks are your call in the end.

[PanteraGSTK]

Yes it's true there is no perfect board, you jusst have to find one that suits you best. Its too bad that there can't be something better out there.

Personally i think the 2 best boards are the quad GT (as long at you dont need more then 510fsb) because it runs 1066 at all times and will even do 1t. The second one would be thenew DFI 965 infinity, but that is untested still and not in retail yet -however it looks really promising.



Thats your desicion, you were asking for tips about getting more speed, 4:5 is faster, do any comparison benchmarks and you will see it. your 24/7 clocks are your call in the end.

AnandTech maxed out the fsb at 525 on the 1067 strap. Makes me want one real bad....except BIOS issues.

[Skip Da Shu]

OK, but what im talking about is download the program mentioned, and see what your latencies are at Ex: 40ns, 54ns, 61.2ns etc.......

I'm almost afraid to post as ya'll obviously know way more about OC'ing than my simple bump the FSB and maybe the vCore experiences. I'm also new to Intel CPUs as this is also my first Intel experiment since PIII days.

Also forgive the lengthy post but I wanted to try to get all info out in one shot.

So far I'm impressed with both the E6400 proc and the ASUS mobo. They might end up going into my main desktop.

First, the system & purpose; This thing is a headless dedicated number cruncher (BOINC) and must run fairly reliably 24/7/365 at FULL load. It has VNC on it and I hook up a KVM switch to do setup and BIOS changes. But it might go days w/o being checked.

The system consists of an E6400 (Allendale I believe), an ASUS P5B-E mobo (way more mobo than I normally use for this stuff) zip-tied into a plastic basket along with a PSU, a single IDE 30GB drive, a $33 PCIe vid card (also don't normally spend $$ on vid cards) and two 512MB sticks of Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 memory. For more than a mental image here's a rather dated pic - http://www.skipsjunk.net/info/texcrunch7.html

Oh yea, I picked up a Corsair Nautilus 500 for about half price and am cooling this thing with it. Full load temp right now is at ~48C via CoreTemp.

I have reasonably stable (haven't had time to thoroughly test yet) settings that net me 3.2GHz (400 x 8) and RAM at 1:1 with following settings in BIOS:

CPU Frequency: 400
DRAM Freq: DDR2-800

Mem Voltage: 1.90v
CPU VCore: 1.3875
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.300v
NB VCore: 1.25v
SB VCore: 1.50v
ICH Chipset Voltage: Auto


I have also ran with the following setting to get to 3.3GHz:

CPU Frequency: 413
DRAM Freq: DDR2-826

Mem Voltage: 1.95v
CPU VCore: 1.4000
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.300v
NB VCore: 1.25v
SB VCore: 1.50v
ICH Chipset Voltage: Auto

The system "feels" a big sluggish at the 3.3GHz settings. So I downloaded Everest Home v2.20.

In the 3.2GHz (8*400) config Everest reports:
Read 7782
Write 2326
Latency 57.0

BOINC Benchmarks FP:3002 INT:6262

In the 3.3GHz (8*413) config it reports:
Read 7141
Write 2298
Latency 72.3

BOINC Benchmarks FP:3100 INT:6495

I've also had it running at 3.36GHz but not yet stable.

I'm assuming the slower memory timings are a result of the "strap switch" being discussed.

My questions ("finally" they say)
1) For use with number cruncher apps should I give away the memory latency and go for the MFLOPS or stick with my 3.2GHz settings?

2) What if I move this to my general usage (occasional FPS game) desktop?

3) Any tips on what the voltages other than VCore and VDimm should be?

Once in a while I hear my ol' IDE drive doing what sounds like the heads latching down and unlatching! If I push things to far one of the results I've seen is "no drives detected" coming from "Jmicron". Is this the SB?

Any info, advice or tips appreciated. -- Skip


.................................................. .....................
CPU-Z v1.39 REPORTS:
Name Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Code Name Conroe
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
Package Socket 775 LGA
Family/Model/Stepping 6.F.6
Extended Family/Model 6.F
Core Stepping B2
Technology 65 nm
Core Speed 3200.2 MHz
Multiplier x Bus speed 8.0 x 400.0 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1600.1 MHz
Stock frequency 2133 MHz

Northbridge Intel P965/G965 rev. C1
Southbridge Intel 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) rev. 02
Graphic Interface PCI-Express

Memory Type DDR2
Memory Size 1024 MBytes
Memory Frequency 400.0 MHz (1:1)
CAS# Latency (tCL) 4.0 clocks
RAS# to CAS# (tRDC) 4 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 4 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) 12 clocks
Command Rate 2T

Mainboard Vendor ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Mainboard Model P5B-E
BIOS Vendor American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Version 1002
BIOS Date 01/30/2007
Memory SPD
Module 1 DDR2, PC2-6400 (400 MHz), 512 MBytes, Corsair
Module 2 DDR2, PC2-6400 (400 MHz), 512 MBytes, Corsair
Software
Windows Version Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
DirectX Version 9.0c