OC'ing an E6600

[Ryan220]

Just a quick question

would there be much of a performance difference between an OC'd E6600 @ 3.1 and an E8500?

I know my E6600 is stable at around 3.1 (I did a bit of OCing when I first bought it years ago)

My system is clearly not cutting edge lol, but if I can squeeze a few more FPS out of a few games it would put off the inevitable having to buy a new system.

I dont want to OC my GC as Ive done that in the past a cooked them D'oh!

Any thoughts appreciated

Basic Sys Specs

E6600 / Gig 965P DS4
4 Gigs XMS 2 & 2 Gigs OCZ Plat
8800GT

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

Just a quick question

would there be much of a performance difference between an OC'd E6600 @ 3.1 and an E8500?

I know my E6600 is stable at around 3.1 (I did a bit of OCing when I first bought it years ago)

My system is clearly not cutting edge lol, but if I can squeeze a few more FPS out of a few games it would put off the inevitable having to buy a new system.

I dont want to OC my GC as Ive done that in the past a cooked them D'oh!

Any thoughts appreciated

Basic Sys Specs

E6600 / Gig 965P DS4
4 Gigs XMS 2 & 2 Gigs OCZ Plat
8800GT

ive seen people get the E6600 (i think the e6600 is 2.4ghz stock?) to 3.6ghz and beyond on around 1.32v its a matter of cooling when you overclock you want good cooling.i might be wrong but the e6500 and the e6600 are prob the exact same core (conroe?) so they will scale the same. so oc'd to 3.1 will see marginal performance increase over a e6500 @ 2.93ghz<<< if you cant afford an upgrade cpu maybe its worth upgrading your cooler to allow your to hit higher clocks stable giving you a really worthwhile performance bump :)

[Ryan220]

Thanks for the reply.

Excuse any typos ss im postimg from my Omnia

Im sure its a Conroe core @ 2.4

I have a Big Typhoon cooler on it with a far higher Cfm fan than stock but i dont kniw how far i vould go with that.

Also my OC knowledge is limited to upping the clock speed and multiplier. Once ram speed and timings get involved plus voltage changes are required it all gets a bit beuond me. Thats why i never went past 3.1 witj it.

Maybe my best bang per buck for now would be a 4890 or a GTX 275 and a stable 3.1 on my e6600

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

well firstly you need to keep an eye on the cpu temps< see if you can find the voltage rating for the e6600 as this will tell you min and max volts so tells you how much room you have to play. the big typhoon is a capable cooler so im sure you could push it a little as 3.1 is barely tipped over the e6500 speed, im sure there are more people who have better knowledge in clocking intel cpus who can give you some more pointers, and theres no better bang for buck than overclocking ;) free performance boosts FTW

[system7]

Conroe 65nm processors will normally overclock to around 3.3 GHz without issue, but a chipset like a 965P will probably limit around 350 MHz on the oldish North Bridge.

At 3GHz, it will perform very similarly to an E8400 having a comparible 4MB cache. This is a CPU clock of 333MHz, with memory running at DDR2-831 speed on default 5:4 DRAM: CPU ratio. I would add 0.1V Vcore to the CPU at that clock, giving about 1.4V.

Your memory SPD values look like this in CPU-Z, which you should download:

General
Memory type DDR2
Module format Regular UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) Corsair (7F7F9E0000000000)
Size 2048 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC2-6400 (400 MHz)
Part number CM2X2048-6400C5

Attributes
Number of banks 2
Data width 64 bits
Correction None
Nominal Voltage 1.80 Volts
EPP no
XMP no

Timings table
Frequency (MHz) 270 400
CAS# 4.0 5.0
RAS# to CAS# delay 4 5
RAS# Precharge 4 5
TRAS 13 18
TRC 15 22


XMS2 is 1.9V memory, so you could do with manuallly set timings of 5-5-5-18-22 at 415 MHz. Many bioses give you a strap that you can set to 333 MHz which will run the memory at 400 MHZ, SPD timings. Otherwise you should manually set a memory ratio that gets you around those timings at around 400 MHz.

Overclocking is essentially about upping the clock of the CPU with a slight CPU voltage bump for stability, and thinking about getting your memory running within stable spec and timings and recommended DRAM voltage. CPU-Z is your friend when doing this.

[Ryan220]

Thankyou for the info

Your SPD values are spot on with what CPU Z says

I shall perhaps have a go at OC'ing a bit later using your info (I'll have had a few ciders by then and the possibility of burning out my CPU wont seem half as bad)

Ive signed my disclaimer and put it inthe post for you, just in case my machine dies lol.

Seriously though, thanks for the info

[system7]

Ive signed my disclaimer and put it inthe post for you, just in case my machine dies lol.

m8, overclocking is really quite easy and a 25% overclock is really what I would call straightforward provided you learn your motherboard bios and monitor your temperatures with CPUID Hardware Monitor. You are not even going to run very hot unless you naively run fanatical stressing programs like Intel Burn or Prime 95. Gaming is relatively gentler.

Naturally, overclockers get good fans and a good cooler like a £15 Akasa 965 and some spare (cheap as in a quid) heatsink paste.