Quote Originally Posted by RunawayPrisoner View Post
Did you say Q9450 with 445 x 8?

Clickie for my new validator

Sincerely, I am starting to think the Q9450/X3350 processors like my favorite mATX board.

Edit: Or actually... since it's a brand new board and a brand new processor, I conclude that the FSB wall on these chips are due to the design of the motherboard... or maybe older chipsets just cannot handle the chip as well. Now I'm really interested in seeing how a QX9650 would clock on a G35 board...
I am not going to bin my Rampage X48 and buy an old G35
I think it's either the good settings you found out for the bios either you are trying to sell "golden" chips j/k.
You used over 1.4v Vcore to validate that 4ghz though.
I would be curious to see if you get 3.8Ghz with a safe voltage.

Anyway I am expecting a Q9450 OEM start of this week and see by myself what the Rampage with water cooling can give for quad-cores.
But from reading a lot of boards and tests my understanding is you can get a safe overclock (no voltage over Intel's suggested maximum, no 70°c+) with good cooling like that for the quad 45nm:
Q9300 -> 3.4Ghz
Q9450 -> 3.6Ghz
Q9550 -> 3.8Ghz
QX9650 -> 4Ghz

And if you are lucky (about everything counts: proc-mobo-ram-psu liking each other), you can get up to +200Mhz with a safe voltage/temp.