E6600

[Simon1987]

Hi

Just got an old core2duo system.

If i remember when these came out in 06/07ish these chips were highly praised for going well past stock rating without much work on stock cooling

so, how easy it to push this with stock volts?

here (http://www.mike65.ukfsn.org/main/uploads/files/cpuz6600.htm) a cpuz dump. I know nothing about overclocking intels or duel cores, only early athlon chips like the 2500 barton.

So is my ram okay for getting a decent performance overclock>

[Andrew Moore]

Well your board is fine for overclocking, and as for the ram. it doesnt matter.

Just go into the bios and set the ram so its "unlinked". That way the ram remains at say 800mhz and the fsb can then be increased from 1066 (266x4) all the way up to what ever is stable. The chipsets pretty solid here and can cope with 2000mhz to be fair.

I would go straight in at 333mhz (1333) and see if its stable at that. I should think it would be ok which would in turn give you 3.0ghz. You may need to increase the cpu voltage by 0.1v or so. thats about it on that chip with a p35.


Andy

[system7]

There may not be an unlinked setting on this bios, Andy. More of an NVidia thing.

On a Gigabyte P35 board, I'd think you set the CPU clock to 333MHz, or FSB 1333 and up the volts from 1.3 to 1.4V. I think Gigabyte offer a similar FSB strap idea to Asus, so you set that to 333 also, which should run memory at a rate appropriate to a 333 MHz E8400 CPU, which is DDR2-667 or DDR2-800 in your case. As ever, it is important to appreciate that DDR2-800 is a memory clock of 400 MHz. It may be necessary to lock the PCIE bus to 100 MHz. Not sure.

If it goes wrong, you remove the CMOS battery for 2 minutes with power unplugged to reset. Start testing gently with a game or such and see what your load temps are like in Hardware Monitor. If you get lost, just load bios defaults and start afresh.

[antz123]

Well I will tell you what I got to 3.2ghz on my E6600, it might help you out.

First I set my RAM ratio to 1:1, then I knew that the ram wasn't going to be a problem. Then I raised the FSB in slow increments till I eventually reached 333mhz (this gave me 3.0ghz speed and my RAM was now at its correct speed.) (using ddr667 ram)

Recently, I pushed the FSB further to 355mhz giving a cpu speed of 3.2ghz. I have not tried to go past this speed as my temperatures reach 60C under load.

However, I never once needed to raise any voltages! This might have something to do with the board im using so im not sure, but I'd defiantly still raise the FSB in very slow increments.

[clanger]

I got an E6700 to 3.2GHz on stock volts. Going above 3GHz got it a bit warm on core diode in prime testing but I used just a basic cooler.

Reputedly most of those series of cpu will hit 3GHz at least if your board will pull the FSB needed.
9x333 would be good with ram 1:1 4-4-4-13 2T

[Simon1987]

Right guys

My ram is rated at

4-4-4-12 6400/800mhz 2.1v

as far at the moment its running slack at 5-5-5-18 for some reason.

Should I change it to my rated settings?

I'll post a picture of my bios up later.

[dave8691]

DDR2 memory operates nominally at 1.8v, anything above this is overclocking it. With bios optimised settings, JEDEC timings of 5,5,5,18 will be loaded by your bios from the SPD data on your Corsair memory modules. To operate it at 4,4,4,12 you must manually adjust to this within your bios and increase the DRAM voltage to 2.1v (save and exit).

The only advantage of doing this will be slightly better performance in some benchmarks, in practice I doubt if you will notice anything. If you intend to overclock your board, personally I would leave the timings at 5,5,5,18 (or 15) and adjust the DRAM voltage to 2.1v. This will give your memory greater overclocking headroom and stability over 800mhz.

[NathObeaN]

I've still got one of these babies :)

I did hit over 4GHz on it once, however I can't get it to post past 3.8 now, can't remember the config that I used lol. Still, not that im bothered, be getting a new peice of kit come christmas :)

I think my CPU could take a lot more punishment, just the mobo is on its last legs and refuses to cooperate :(

[Simon1987]

http://www.mike65.ukfsn.org/main/uploads/files/DSCF3120.JPG

in this pic can i enable my cpu host clock control and then start upping my host frequency(intel fsb i guess?) And then bench, mem test, check temps etc

I'm not sure what to do (if anything) with system memory multiplyer. I think thats for dividers.

http://www.mike65.ukfsn.org/main/uploads/files/DSCF3121.JPG Here are some more settings


http://www.mike65.ukfsn.org/main/uploads/files/DSCF3122.JPG

In this one I tighten my memory to its specified settings.

[system7]

Looks like you have to set CPU Host Clock Control to manual, then up the CPU Host Frequency to a modest 300 MHz for starters. Then look at what it does to memory clock and timings with CPU-Z to decide if you should change RAM ratio or just adjust timings and DRAM volts.

System Voltage control is more predictable if you set it up manually, but CPUIDs hardware monitor is fairly accurate for Vcore and such. Temps are best measured under load. I'm not very sophisticated and just use 3DMark06 for a rough stability test on sensible clocks.

The trick is to try small changes and see how it pans out really. Every bios is different. But I'd think you need an extra 0.1V on VCore here, for sure.