How much can you overclock a Pentium D 940?

[Joshwaa]

How much can I OC my PD 940 to? Here is my system.

Antec 900 Case
Corsair 850W PS (Single Rail)
Intel Pentium D 940
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P P45
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1200
POWERCOLOR AX5850 1GBD5-MDHG Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
WD RE3 250GB Sata 3.0gb/s
Windows Server 2008 64-bit

Any help or ideas are welcome!
What should my fsb and ratios be at?

 

[Joshwaa]

Forgot also a ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink

 

[megamanx00]

Depends on your cooling and your stepping. The old dual core Pentiums are rather leaky. You may hit 4.0 on air (with an after market cooler of course). Then there is liquid cooling, and on the extreme end liquid nitrogen. Are you just trying to overclock it for fun at the risk of blowing it, or do you want it to be your daily gaming machine?

 

[Joshwaa]

This is my daily gaming machine. I am going to run 3DMark on it later tonight since it seems that's the standard around here, but I think my CPU is bottle-necking me. With the Zalman Heatsink in never gets close to hot.

 

[megamanx00]

:lol: Yeah, that CPU is bottle necking you all right. Anyway, for the Ratios it's best to start off with a 1:1 ratio. If you leave your RAM timings to auto the motherboard will generally lower them so set them manually as loose as they will go. After you have settled on a final FSB speed, then you can begin to change the ratio in favor of Faster RAM and try tighter timings. Of course, use memtest and other stress tests to ensure it's stable ^_^. Anyway, read some overclocking guides for more info on overclocking the old Pentium Ds.

Just so you know, even overclocked, that CPU will still bottle neck your GPU. Still, at least overclocked it would be more bearable 😀.

 

[Joshwaa]

Ok. I set the mem in the Bios to 5-5-5-15 and 2.1v like the mem states it runs at. Does my FSB have to come up now to get the mem speed up to 1200?

 

[megamanx00]

If you set the Ratio at 1:1, then yes. As you increase your FSB speed, you will increase the speed of your RAM as well. Once you can't raise your FSB anymore, then you can change the ratio to see what you can get out of your RAM. You do it this way to ensure that your RAM is not the limiting factor in your overclock.

 

[Joshwaa]

Thanks for that insight. Helpful. So far FSB 210mhz from stock 200. All Good!

 

[Joshwaa]

FSB now at 230mhz stable. Ran Prime 95 all night. processor max temp 37C is that good or too hot? Do you know how to adjust the ram:fsb ratio on my mobo?

 

[saaiello]

37 is great for a d940 i had an old D940 that was overclocked to 4.2 ghz and after running prime for an hour it used to stay around 55

 

[Joshwaa]

Thanks for the info. Yea. Even squeezing all I could out of the D 940 it was just not enough. So now I have a Q9400. That seems to work well. Cant get my mem to 1200Mhz though for some reason.

 

[Joshwaa]

Best answer selected by Joshwaa.