Can P35 based mobo go above 400MHz FSB?

[Stupido]

I have Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard with Q6600. I played a bit to overclock the system and I got stable @356 MHz on the FSB... I would like to go beyond 400 MHz, but I was not able, regardless of the voltages to the CPU and the chipset... Is this limit of the motherboard(chipset) or I do something wrong?
Any advice / help, is much appreciated.

Thanks.

P.S.
I was wondering if going to P45 based motherboard (I somewhat prefer Gigabyte...) could help me get to higher FSB speed? But I wouldn't like to go with something very expensive. I'm willing to go as much as 140-150 euro at most...

 

[kamkal]

should be able to, did you set your memory to 1:1 with your fsb
so your mem should be at 356mhz (since it is ddr, it is x 2, which gets you 712mhz)

you may also look at your chipset voltage

i have a p35 based asus p5k-e @ 425fsb with an e8400 so the chipset is definitely capable of going that high

 

[Stupido]

Thanks for the reply
Yes, I set the memory to 1:1 but still no luck... Anyway I don't think the RAM is the problem because it is rated for 1066 (currently runs stable @ 2:3)...
I tried the over voltage on the chipset to set it +0.3V (max allowed from BIOS) but still was not good... I didn't try higher voltages because they were colored in red, so I thought that wouldn't be wise to go higher... Maybe I should try it?

 

[roadrunner197069]

P35 is can go up to 420 or so if you are lucky.

Dont hold your breath.

Try updating your bios.

For 400+ it is wise to invest in a p45.

 

[Huttfuzz]

Did you try lowering the Multiplier of your CPU and then trying to higher your FSB. Still, you should be able to go higher than 3.02 GHZ (8.5 * 356)

Anyways, try that.

 

[kamkal]

what about your cooler on the cpu? aftermarket or stock?

 

[Stupido]

To be honest I don't recall if I lowered the multiplier on the CPU... I guess so but not really sure... Anyway, I can try that again (but later since I'm abroad right now)...

Currently the CPU is @3.2 GHz (356*9) and it is on after market cooler (Thermalright IFX-14).
In fact I was able to go 390 MHz on the FSB but not very stable. However never above 400...

My ultimate goal would be between 500 - 533 (than the RAM will be @1:1 and still max speed)
Than I guess for such overclock, I'll need much better board... Any advice on this? P45 or X48 based? maybe nVidia 780? Asus or Gigabyte? Oh, yes, is 500 MHz FSB a "day dreaming" for a Q6600 (or any quad)?
But than probably I'm looking in higher price range... I'm bit reluctant to throw much money right now, because I'm very tempted to just jump to i7+x58... So if I can achieve nice FSB on (relatively) cheap motherboard, I'll be perfectly happy to wait for the next build. 😗

 

[Stupido]

@roadrunner - I have the latest BIOS from the gigabyte website...

 

[one-shot]

My FSB on my P35 DS3L is @ 463MHZ x 8 for a final clock speed of 3.704Ghz. My board is stable and it works great. I have the F7 bios, or whatever came with the board. It's not broke so I'm not going to fix it. I updated my Bios on my old MSI board and I couldn't overclock after that.

 

[RyanS2000]

My GA-P35-DS3L w\ E8400 runs 4.0 ghz @ 445x9. 24hr stable prime95, orthos, and mem-test; however, it does not pass linpack(using LinX) testing, it errors about halfway through. Bios ver F8a

 

[Stupido]

OK folks. Thanks for the responses!

It looks like I'll have to do some more learning how to overclock (this is my very first overclock and second PC I build)...

So I have another related question - should I be happy with my current result or I should go as high as possible? What are the gains of the overclock in the gaming?
For the CPU to overclock I can understand that higher freq. means faster system, but the components (CPU, Memory & GPU) are interconnected through FSB. So I guess higher FSB means better throughput of the system? Or am I wrong?
Also from reading different articles, forums, etc, I was with impression that P35 should be capable to have FSB@400 to 430... On the other side one can consider P45, but it looks like that there was not too much of overclocking potential in that chip?

 

[Stupido]

any hint on voltage levels is much appreciated...

 

[Stupido]

OK, my final result:
FSB @ 426 MHz
CPU @ 3.4 GHz
so I guess I'll keep it like this...

huttfuzz, thank for the hint. It worked...

Probably I could go higher with the CPU since now it is on x8... But I'm afraid that would be too much for air cooling... Right now is ~60 deg Celsius under prime95