*Official Retail G0 Q6600 Overclocking Thread*

[Ol'Baditude]

Here's a clip from last night.

[Loser777]

It all comes down to scaling... 3.4 will probably need 1.4v+

[BeastNotro]

It all comes down to scaling... 3.4 will probably need 1.4v+

I was just going to post that ... yeah it may need 1.40-1.42v to get 3.4ghz on that VID ... another issue will be cooling as at 1.40-1.42v the temps will rise to at least 65C-70C full load on his cooling, priming in the first hour to get MAX temps.

So maybe MAX on his rig will be 3.2-3.4ghz with his cooling setup, but more likely 3.2ghz cause of cooling issues maybe all that will be 24/7 on his rig, but you never know... good air cooling is a must when hitting 1.42-1.43v on the Q6600's.

[klanjsek]

3.4 @ stock might be a little tough for you. I can boot my 1.2000VID at 3.4GHz at stock settings and run applications , but forget about Prime stability.

When you say you are priming stable, how long are you priming for?

I am priming for 3 hours. I know, it may not enough for many , but it is ok for me as in real life i am not using my comp for anything heavy, except for gaming which still do not stress cpu as much. So my benchmark is to be 3h prime stable.

Anyway, I went for 3.4 and core 3 failed within a minute. raised voltage to 1.35 and it failed after 3 minutes. so, no 3.6 for me i guess. will try to raise voltages more but, i do not want to go over 70°c. is there anything else beside cpu voltage that i should raise?

I am still new to 755 platform so excuse me if asking stupid questions.

edit: I set it for 1.360v and now it says 1.352 in cpu-z/ai probe and it is been stable for 30mins, temps are 66/66/59/59

[klanjsek]

Update: It seems prime stable at 1.36 (cpu-z/ai probe) at 3.4ghz which I guess is not to shabby for 1.325 VID chip. Temps are 69/69/62/62 (core temp).

Are those ok for 24/7 use?

[Ol'Baditude]

There's nothing wrong with 1.325VID chips. Mine made it to 3.6 at 1.4V, just the same as my 1.2625VID chip. It would not, however, scale to 3.8GHz, and would not give me the nice 3.0GHz at 1.176v like the 1.2625 would. The scaling at the mid level frequencies was good, the at near the end points it was not as good a chip.

[FabricioGS]

Hy ppl, I'd like some advice here.

I'm trying to get stable on air (TR Ultra 120 Extreme lapped and the Q6600 lapped too) above 3.6GHz.

With 3.7GHz (463x8) I can Prime almost 2 hours then system reboots. With 3.8GHz (425x9) it instantaneously reboots when Prime starts.

Temps on the Q6600 @ 3.7GHz are ~75ºC @ load so I think it's not the problem. I'm almost sure it's my psu (Enemax 535W) but can someone else confirm what else could be and what other advanced adjustments I should use?

For 3.7 I'm using about 1.4750 vcore and 1.5250 vcore for 3.8 (both set on bios) with very little vdroop.

[coo-coo-clocker]

Have you tried scaling back to 1 or 2 sticks of ram?
Also, whats the VID of your chip?

[jcool]

At some point you have to get temps down if you want to OC higher. 75C at >3,6Ghz is very high and very likely to cause instabilities.
Depends on your CPU, but general rule is, the higher your frequency, the lower your CPU temp needs to be.
Rule of thumb for Kentsfields, <70C for 3,6Ghz, <65 for 3,8 and <60 for around 4Ghz. Assuming your chip can handle the Mhz in the first place.
Xeons can usually take a few degrees more, but in the end it comes down to the individual chip (as always).

Bottom line is, 75C is probably too high for that kind of clock to be stable, sorry.

[FabricioGS]

VID 1.250v. Actually, I tried booting with only two sticks but system couldn't post at all (very strange).

[Ol'Baditude]

Well, it tough to tell if that's the PSU or not, but it definitely couldn't hurt to upgrade to a more powerful unit, perhaps a corsair or PCP&C in the 6-700 range. Also, There are plenty of Silverstone units in the Strider or Zeus series that won't cost alot of money and will provide clean power for the life of your machine.

As for the overclock itself, what are your FSB and MCH voltages? RAM frequency and timings etc?

Do you have a listing of BIOS parameters which includes the parameters that you have changed? I work with the award BIOS on my Gigabyte X48T, so I'm not too familliar with what you are dealing with.

I could do 3.83GHz stable on my 680i, so I'm sure you could do it on your board, assuming your chip will handle it. I was under water though.

Those temperatures are more than I would like to see however, and that is definitely not helping your cause.

Hy ppl, I'd like some advice here.

I'm trying to get stable on air (TR Ultra 120 Extreme lapped and the Q6600 lapped too) above 3.6GHz.

With 3.7GHz (463x8) I can Prime almost 2 hours then system reboots. With 3.8GHz (425x9) it instantaneously reboots when Prime starts.

Temps on the Q6600 @ 3.7GHz are ~75ºC @ load so I think it's not the problem. I'm almost sure it's my psu (Enemax 535W) but can someone else confirm what else could be and what other advanced adjustments I should use?

For 3.7 I'm using about 1.4750 vcore and 1.5250 vcore for 3.8 (both set on bios) with very little vdroop.

[FabricioGS]

I guess temps are not the real problem here (but it is one thing to consider) because in the past I could prime with temps around 80~85ºC for more then one hour (I know it's crazy but I tested anyway ). And actually 75ºC was the highest temp on the hottest core. the other ones were around 70~73º.

I have all settings back in my home, but as far as I remember I was using:

JumperFree Configuration Settings
AI Overclocking: Manual
CPU Ratio Setting: 8 (or 9 for 3.8GHz)
FSB Frequency: 463 (or 425 for 3.8GHz)
PCI-E Frequency: 103
DRAM Frequency: DDR2-??? (don't remember exactly but I guess it was 1:1 or 5:4 divider, above DDR2-1100)
DRAM Timing Control: Manual
CAS# Latency: 5
RAS# to CAS# Delay: 5
RAS# Pre Time: 5
RAS# ACT Time: 15
TWR: Auto
TRFC: Auto
TWTR: Auto
TRRD:Auto
TRTP: Auto
DRAM Static Read Control: Enabled

Transaction Booster: Disabled

CPU Voltage: 1.4750v (or 1.5250v for 3.8GHz)
CPU PLL Voltage: 1.60
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.40
Dram Voltage: 2.25
NB Voltage: 1.55
SB Voltage: 1.05
Clock Over-Charging Voltage: 0.8
Load-Line Calibration: Enabled
CPU GTL Voltage Reference: 0.63x
NB GTL Voltage Reference: 0.61x
CPU Spread Spectrum: Disabled
PCIE Spread Spectrum: Disabled
CPU Clock Skew: Auto
NB Clock Skew: Auto

[Ol'Baditude]

FSB 460ish might be getting up there for a Q6600. I know my Chip doesn't like it much, and I would probably have to do some serious tweaking to get it stable.

So I assume you are doing 425x9 for 3.8Ghz?

My BIOS shows two GTLREF values. GTLREF1 which defaults to .67 and GTLREF2 which defaults to .63 I believe. I can only assume that 1 corresponds to the CPU GTL and 2 corresponds to the NB GTL.

As far as I've been able to understand, the value for the CPU GTL ofg a Q6600 should be 67%. Perhaps try upping that one.

When I get up into the higher FSB's it helps to tweak these values and find a good combination. Anything past 450FSB and it helps me to up the GTLREF1(CPU GTL) +3%.
I'm not saying this will work for you, but it couldn't hurt to play around with these a little bit.

Are you sure it's not your RAM holding you back??? What are the frequency and timing values when you try your 3.8GHz overclock?

[Spacehead]

Nice I just go and installed X3210 (Q6400 or , 8x400)

[Pneumonic]

In my experience there is a point with Q6600 where you have to keep the temperatures low to gain more mhz... normally at the point where you have to give it a bit of a big bump in vcore to obtain a higher clock..

On my L737B192 I can run 8 hours Prime stable @ 3.745ghz @ 1.424v however to get to 3.825ghz 8 hours prime stable requires an extra .072v (1.496v) for 80mhz compaired to 3.825ghz prime stable - 4.023ghz primestable which needs extra 0.040v (1.536v) for 198mhz..

So at up to the 3.745ghz clock I can prime at temps of up to 75c on the cores (never let it go higher), where after this point and the big jump in vcore if any core hits 63/64c then prime 99% of the time will fail..

[Spacehead]

In my experience there is a point with Q6600 where you have to keep the temperatures low to gain more mhz... normally at the point where you have to give it a bit of a big bump in vcore to obtain a higher clock..

On my L737B192 I can run 8 hours Prime stable @ 3.745ghz @ 1.424v however to get to 3.825ghz 8 hours prime stable requires an extra .072v (1.496v) for 80mhz compaired to 3.825ghz prime stable - 4.023ghz primestable which needs extra 0.040v (1.536v) for 198mhz..

So at up to the 3.745ghz clock I can prime at temps of up to 75c on the cores (never let it go higher), where after this point and the big jump in vcore if any core hits 63/64c then prime 99% of the time will fail..

Yeah I have noticed that too. If I could keep my water temps at 20Celcius @ 247 I could run this chip easily at 4 GHz.

[fatguy1992]

I have a problem with Prime 95, now I know u all will probally just say its not stable, but it is.

I can run at 4.0GHz with 1.536v (idle) and 1.518v (load) and I can run 3D Mark 06, wPrime 1024m and super PI etc, its stable. Then as soon as I start Prime 95 in one sec it crashes. I get same problem for anything over 3.65GHz. When I was at 3.7GHz and it happened I uped my volts a lot and it still happened. If it was stable enough to run wPrime for 5min +, y can't it even run Prime 95 for 1 sec. Also I know my temps aren't the problem, because I watch them when I run wPrime etc and if it was my mobo would tell me before shutting down.

So WTF is going on?

[malik22]

whats the max voltage you guys recomend to use for 24/7 usage on water for a Q6600 G0?

[jcool]

I'd say 1,5V.. 1,55V if you're bold and can keep your temps low.
Really depends on the chip, mine puts out 260W at 1,45V lol.. so no go (and no sense) with 1,5V+ lol.

[whe3ls]

i just got my new gigabyte board.

so far its about 15 minutes stable.

[Loser777]

Both of my 1.2125v VID chips couldn't touch 3.7GHz... nice result.

What FPO/Batch?

[whe3ls]

L745A i think

[elite.ire]

nothing special, but ill post never the less , havnt really tried to overclock it to its maximum, but its fast enough for what i need it to do atm

[whe3ls]

not bad. i guess any thing is better than stock

[Ol'Baditude]

Wheels, nice clock and temps. I assume you're using 95 as TJMax for Coretemp? What was the ambient temperature at the time of that screenshot? Is the CPU the only component in that loop?

My temperatures after about an hour of Prime are very similar to yours, except with the overclock @ 3.6GHz. But I am running a dual rad, not a triple. I imagine if I ran a triple, I would be mid 40's at 3.8Ghz.