View Full Version : Overclocking, my current results.
Stan's been giving me some hints and tips about getting some extra performance from this motherboard and I'm currently running very nicely:
Core 2 Duo E6600, normal clock speed 2.40GHz, I'm at just over 3.1GHz
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/clock01.png
I've finally got a system with 4Gb RAM in it and the speeds are pretty good. A real speed of 888MHz so a nice overclock at good timings.
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/clock02.png
And to top it off, the Windows ExperienceIndex is looking quite sexy.
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/clock03.png
And the best bit - The only voltage I've had to change is to increase my DDR volts to 2.1 which is within spec of the OCZ stuff. I've got more headroom to play with so once I'm fully happy this is stable (it's passed memtest86+ and Orthos) then I'll see how much further I can go.
Have you orthos'd it?
(it's passed memtest86+ and Orthos)
:D :D :D
How long did you run it for? Oh how I love the Core 2 Duo.
Couple of hours, no nasty red flashy things happened.
Ideally mate you should run it over night, for atleast 8 hours.
8-12 hours, I'd agree with that.
Makes me want to o/c my E6600, especially now Linux 2.6.22 supports the coretemp sensors, so I can monitor temperatures properly.
Aye, I'm going to leave it on overnight tonight and have memtest running all day tomorrow.
I've never yet had a system fail that's run orthos for a couple of hours so I'm quite happy :)
Interestingly, I left vcore set to auto and cpu-z and the Gigabyte monitor are both telling me that it's running below the stock voltage level for the CPU. Either they're telling porkies or it's just being efficient.
While running Orthos? Expected while idle, though I have to admit I've not paid any attention under load either.
The result of an overnight run..
Don't believe the CPU Speed, it doesn't read correctly. The reason it says the time has changed since the start is because I'm anal about clock accuracy and run a utility to sync the clock every hour.
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/3100.png
Temps are rather nice.
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/temps.png
Davey_Pitch
23-08-2007, 08:25
Nice :) I'm looking forward to trying to overclock my E6750 when I get it, not overclocked any of my CPU's for some time.
Nice clock. My E6850 is happy as larry at 3.6Ghz atm but doesn't want to go any higher without major voltage hikes which in turn means daft temps and/or noisy cooling.
Am keeping an eye on the new G0 Q6600s to see what they can do and might switch but, if I'm honest, I have no need for a quad core at the mo, dual does everything I need.
Feek, is that temperature a core temperature or a junction temperature? Core 2 Duo CPUs have three temperature sensors - one on each core and one on the casing (junction).
The reason I ask is because most software that doesn't know about this reads the junction temperature, which is typically 10-15C lower than the core temperature.
To give you an idea, my stock E6600 has Tjunc of 34C, TcoreA of 45C, and TcoreB of 44C. It's not particularly critical though as I believe these chips are rated well into the 70s, if not 80s.
PS - recent versions of SpeedFan seem to know about the core sensors.
Stan_Lite
23-08-2007, 14:41
Nice going Feek.
That's roughly as far as I got my E6600 at stock volts (3.15GHz iirc) - if you get it much further, I'll be jealous and impressed at the same time :)
Mark is right in what he says regarding the core temperatures but as I said in my PM, these CPUs are quite happy up to about 85C and I doubt very much if you'll ever put anywhere near as much strain on it as Orthos does so your normal working temperature will be much lower.
11% oveclock on the RAM with 0.1 or 0.2V to spare is a good result too.
Good work dude :cool:
Anyone prepared to teach me the ways of overclocking the DS3/DS4 boards then? I only have cheapo PC6400 RAM in mine so going beyond stock RAM speeds is out, but everythine else is fair game. :)
PC6400 is good up to 400Mhz FSB speed. As even the latest C2D processors are only 333Mhz and most are 266Mhz, you have loads of headroom to increase your FSB. Basically just slowly crank up the FSB speed in the BIOS, testing for stability as you go with stressing programs like Orthos and Prime95, checking temps too with things like CoreTemp or Speedfan.
Well, it's a Linux box, which means I'd have to find a Linux-based stress tool first, I guess.
lm-sensors (http://www.lm-sensors.org/)?
Stan_Lite
23-08-2007, 15:38
The E6600 is 266MHz BUS speed with a 9X multiplier. If you have a recent BIOS version, you should be able to lower the multiplier (you won't be able to go above 9 but you should be able to go as low as 6).
If you want to keep your RAM and FSB in sync, I would drop the multiplier to 7 or 8 (if your RAM won't overclock) and start upping the BUS speed as Vertigo1 suggests. If you raise the BUS speed to 400 to match the spec of your RAM you would get a clock speed of 2.8GHz on a 7X multiplier (should do that no problem) or 3.2GHz on an 8X multipier (probably pushing it a bit).
lm-sensors (http://www.lm-sensors.org/)?
Stress tool, not monitoring tool. :p ;D
:embarassed: That'll teach my skim reading skillz!
cpuburn is the only one I've heard of, never used it though You could always loop a kernel compile too - that'll beat a CPU down.
burnP6 got the core temps up to 55 in short order (though a fair bit of sunshine contributed significantly as well). Still plenty of headroom though.
Just for completeness, memtest after nearly 11 hours..
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/memtest.png
Feek, is that temperature a core temperature or a junction temperature? Core 2 Duo CPUs have three temperature sensors - one on each core and one on the casing (junction).
The reason I ask is because most software that doesn't know about this reads the junction temperature, which is typically 10-15C lower than the core temperature.
To give you an idea, my stock E6600 has Tjunc of 34C, TcoreA of 45C, and TcoreB of 44C. It's not particularly critical though as I believe these chips are rated well into the 70s, if not 80s.
PS - recent versions of SpeedFan seem to know about the core sensors.
Interesting..
Both Speedfan and Everest report the single CPU temp sensor (I assume the junction) a few degrees above the core temps. Which is opposite to what I'd expect, but running Orthos with Speedfan running, I'm getting two readouts that are around 50 each (varying up and down a bit separately) and one that's 7C higher and ties up with the readout from GigaByte's own EasyTune5.
But they're all reasonable anyway *shrug*
Bit weird that both Orthos & memtest are showing your CPU speed at 4Ghz.
They're reporting what the speed would be if I'd not dropped the multiplier to 7.
CPU-Z is showing it correctly.
My first overclock...
I got mine up to 9z320 (2.88GHz) in double quick time (lowered the RAM multiplier from 3.0 to 2.5 to keep it at 800Mhz). Only problem was I forgot to disable the automatic voltage tweaks done by the BIOS, so everything got a shot of volts (just a bit too much, as it turned out, but no harm done). Dropped it back to stock volts and temps are now back pretty much where they were before I started.
I'm sure I can get more if I want to, but not sure if I do.
I'm sure I can get more if I want to, but not sure if I do.
Beyond a certain point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Mine is happy at 3.6Ghz but to go any further requires major voltage hikes and thus more heat and noisier cooling which I don't consider worth the effort.
LOL
Is it wrong that diskeeper has just kicked in to defragment the hard drive because the CPU is idle while I'm watching a movie in full screen glorious colour with spectacular 5.1 surround sound?
'cos it has ;D
Meanwhile my old P4 box is struggling with broken-up sound and I have no idea why (CPU isn't far off idle there either). Sadly as it's a custom-designed system it can't be upgraded.
Stan_Lite
26-08-2007, 04:20
Beyond a certain point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Mine is happy at 3.6Ghz but to go any further requires major voltage hikes and thus more heat and noisier cooling which I don't consider worth the effort.
Yeah, beyond a certain point, it becomes meaningless. The small gains achieved do not justify the extra stress on the components.
I only overclock my rigs as far as they'll go on stock volts nowadays. My E6600 could do 3.4GHz stable with extra volts and I can get it to do a 1M Superpi run at 3.6GHz with silly volts and fiery temps. It will happily do 3.15GHz on stock volts which is more than fast enough - a 30+% overclock with little effort is good value for money in my book.
That's roughly as far as I got my E6600 at stock volts (3.15GHz iirc) - if you get it much further, I'll be jealous and impressed at the same time :)
Still on stock volts.
http://www.ukrm.org/feek/3200.png
Memory is at 890 now. I'll Orthos it overnight.
2.5x Multi on the memory then, same as me. Maybe that gives me a little incentive to try 333 or 334 (currently 320), though I think that's far enough for me. :)
Stan_Lite
27-08-2007, 04:59
Still on stock volts.
Memory is at 890 now. I'll Orthos it overnight.
Niiiice. Be interesting to see if that's stable.
S'OK Stan, no need to get jealous or impressed - It failed Orthos 17 minutes into the run! I've gone back to the previous setting which is probably where I'll stay.
Stan_Lite
27-08-2007, 11:16
Pity.
Mine was rock solid on stock volts up to 3.15 then it needed quite a bit more voltage after that - iirc, I couldn't get it stable anything above 3.15 with less than 1.45V, then it was stable to about 3.4. I needed 1.6V to get it to run superpi at 3.6 (only did this once to see how far I could push it). As I said before, I just run it at 3.15 on stock volts - that's plenty fast enough.
Hmmm, thinking about it and looking at cpu-z above, that's actually still undervoltage, the board is set on auto. I may manually set it and try again.
Feek, It's not undervolting (unless you deliberately did that). Even if you set the voltage manually to 1.3250V in the BIOS, it'll still read wrong. Motherboard voltage sensors are cheap parts and don't have the resolution needed to give an accurate result.
I had previously played around and when I manually set it correct, it showed correct in the monitoring applications.
Mine didn't. Maybe if you do pre-set the voltage though the BIOS doesn't turn down the volts as idle. The automatic voltage stuff is great if you're power saving, but it's an annoyance when overclocking.
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