Help OC an E6600

[Hando567]

OK, so I am trying to OC my old E6600 but am running into a few road blocks. I guess I should post my system info first.

Mobo: Gigabyte P35C DS3R rev 1.1
CPU: C2D E6600
RAM: Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1333 7-7-7-24 @ 1.65V rated
Video: ATI HD 5770
PSU: OCZ 720 W

I suppose thats all that matters really

For cooling I have a swiftech porcupine style cooler with a 92 mm silverstone fan (80mm holes), a 92mm case fan blowing directly onto that, another 92mm side fan about where my video card is, 2 120mm case fans (front and back) and the 120mm in my PSU, all of this is in a mid tower case, all cables out of the way.

As of right now I have it up to 333FSB x 9 for 3.0 GHz, running my voltages at 1.375 set in bios, 1.33 idle in windows, 1.31 under prime 95 load. system is stable from what I can tell (have not done an extended prime bench yet), temps peak at about 60 under prime 95 (just under)

My goals for this OC: 3.2 GHz in the way of 400x8, dropping the multi down 1 from 9 as i doubt 3.6 is achievable and I would like to run my ram at 1:2 for a speed of 1600MHz.

From where I am now I tried dropping the multi to 8 and incresing the FSB to 344, I figured this is a small increase, but I lose system stability here, tried to increase my Vcc to no avail. What is next? I have tried +0.1V in my FSB and MCH (I know 0.1 is a bit much but it is the smallest increment my BIOS allows!) also to no avail. I am running the latest bios revision as well.

If it makes any difference I had this same OC rock solid in windows XP but I installed windows 7 64 bit last week and ran into some serious stability issues when I did without changing any OC settings. Also, the chip in question is an E6600 which I got the day of the release, so it is going on 5 years almost now, that entire 5 years was spent at stock speeds.

 

[Hando567]

Got my desired OC, 3.2 by 400x8. Vcc is at 1.4625 in BIOS, 1.41 idle in windows and 1.39 under prime 95 load, stable for an hour of prime 95.

My ram seems to be what was holding me back, it was running at its specified 1333 at the 333 FSB. however now the only thing I can even get my system to post at is a 12:8 divider, running the ram at 1200, I tried dropping it to a 1:1, running the ram at 800, but my system wont post. seems strange to me that it works at higher speeds but fails to even post when I try to down clock. Anyone have any input on this?

Ideally I would like to run my memory at 1600, so any hints on overclocking ram would be helpful. But if I cannot do 1600, I would settle on a synchronous speed of 800, I figured that would be easy to do, but apparently not.

Thanks alot guys, this forum has helped me out quite a bit even though there have been no responses within this thread yet. lol.

 

[4745454b]

How did you get DDR3 to work on a P35 mobo? The x38 is DDR3, but the P35 should be DDR2.

 

[EJ257]

The Gigabyte P35C DS3R supports 4 slots for DDR2 and 2 slots for DDR3.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2551

 

[jsc]

Overclocking RAM will not get you any significant performance increase in a Core2 system. All the faster RAM does is wait for the CPU.

Overclocking RAM:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/251715-29-ratio-myth

 

[Hando567]

Yes I understand that, but I cannot even get this ram to underclock. It runs at one setting, 1200MHz effective, any other speed (even the 1333 it is rated for) my computer will not even POST and my mobo resets itself to default settings.

I tried to get a 1:2 divider (1600 MHz effective) with no success, and a 1:1 (800 MHz effective) also with no success.

When my FSB was at 333 MHz I was able to have the memory running at a 1333 effective speed, or 1:2 divider with the FSB, but now that I am at a 400 FSB it will not change from this one setting. I did memtest 86+ for a good 6 hours at the 1333 speed as well and it passed.

Here are the exact RAM sticks I have.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148323

Thanks for the help. I will be reading that link here shortly.

EDIT: EJ257, nice name, and thank you for posting up that info, yes, the P35C from gigabyte has 4 DDR2 slots and 2 DDR3 slots, I filled up my DDR3 slots when I replaced my memory recently.

 

[4745454b]

Its been awhile since I've heard of such things, but it is possible. Your board might have issues running certain FSB:RAM settings. The P35 was designed to use DDR2, and strange things can happen when your using different ram. It might be that the ratio needed to run 1200 is simply the one thats stable. I haven't heard of such issue since we moved off of 72pin sims, so I'm not sure if this is whats going on.

 

[Hando567]

seems strange that a 2:3 divider would be more stable than a 1:2 or better yet a 1:1 which would actually clock the RAM lower though no?

I did finally get my system to POST using the 1:2 divider (1600 effective), however it would not boot windows. I was able to accomplish this by giving the northbridge +.3 v instead of the normal voltage (this is the max my mobo allows). This leads me to believe that my mobo is simply not capable of running the RAM at such speeds. I am a newb though so correct me if that would be a false assumption.

Changing the voltage of the RAM modules themselves seemed to have no effect (maybe it would on stability in windows, but I could not even get to windows)

Right now I am clocked back to a 333 FSB x 9 for a 3.0GHz system running my ram at 1:2 for its specified speed of 1333. If anyone has any suggestions to get my memory clocking correctly at the 400 x 8 speed please do let me know.

 

[4745454b]

I has nothing to do with speed, it has to do with a divider that doesn't work well. The fact you got some success by bumping the NB .3+ seems to confirm its an issue with the chipset, not the ram.

I thought you had it running at 400MHz? So what if the ram is at 1200 and not 1333. The extra speed of the CPU will matter more then a bit of extra ram speed.