Is my ram limiting my OC on a q6600?

[ahnirv]

So heres my system:
Q6600
GA-x48-DS
2x2gb Muskin DDR2 800Mhz blue
Saphire 4870HD 1gb

Water cooling on CPU, NB, mosfet, GPU.
I need bigger fans, I hit about 65*C fully on prime95 test, ambient ~26-27*C, but its acceptable for now.

I can run stably at 3.61ghz, 1.504v on vcore.
I can get it to post at 3.85ghz, but not get into windows.
It seems like my ram is my limiting factor, as I cannot change even one ram setting without it not being able to post. Any time I boost the DDR2 voltage even 1 increment it crashes. I cant loosen the timings of the ram to help them operate at a higher speed without it crashing hard.

It seems like my (g)mch and fsb voltages are happy with about 2-3 increments up each, anything elseand it becomes unstable.

I guess it is possible that i could just have a funky chip(i have the B-G0 chip so it should be fast and cool) and i just need to really stretch it on the vcore. Maybe even up to 1.60v to hit 4.0ghz.

Would going with a faster set of ddr2 sticks be a likely solution to this?

Any thoughts?

 

[grieve]

You have a 1.2GHZ overclock and you want more? Draw the line somewhere.

If this were my rig i would reduce the OC to about 3.2 as there is VERY little benefit above this mark except bragging rights. Do some benchmarks @ 3.2 and 3.6... you'll see.

 

[ahnirv]

Really? you took the time to post that?
I asked a question and what you posted was a pure troll response.
thanks.

 

[ahnirv]

Also, heres some pics of the computer.
The case used to be an Antec 1200, but it was kinda cramped and that top fan, wow are those things a bad idea.
Considering I made the case panels myself out of aluminum and polycarbonate on an NC mill, yeah I am going for some over the top performance from this thing. The blue is powder coated aluminum, again, done myself. Its pretty obvious that I dont have much experience on the equipment I was using, but it was a good learning experience, being an ME student.
put a sign on it that says "pour beer here=>"

 

[Fruity]

ahnirv, just a thought, but my system was limited by RAM as that was capping my FSB speed. I was operating 800MHz RAM which wouldn't OC much over 850MHz, hence capping the FSB to 1700MHz.

As soon as i put in 1066MHz RAM I was able to run 2000MHz FSB with no issues, along with the processor at 3.5GHz @8x mult.

You CPU voltages for the speeds you are getting actually seem quite high, although that could just be me.

Food for thought.....

 

[ahnirv]

Thanks, ill have to try a set of 1066 or 1200.

 

[jsc]

Raising the RAM voltage a couple of tenths and loosening the timings should let the RAM run fast enough to check if the RAM is limiting your overclock.

ANyway, DDR2-1066 memory is just DDR2-800 memory that has been tested to run at the higher speed.

 

[lucuis]

Can you not unlink your ram from the FSB? I'm running 3.6ghz 8x multi, therefore a 1800FSB, and my 800mhz RAM is still running at 800mhz.

Also i'm running this speed at 1.38v idle according to cpu-z, about 1.34v 100% prime small fft load. Ran Primenet worker threads overnight as well, so i'm fairly certain it's stable. It becomes exponentially more difficult to achieve a Prime stable overclock much past 3.2ghz for most Q6600 chips, some manage fine till 3.6ghz. After 3.6ghz on almost any Q6600 chip requires tons of voltage to be Prime stable. It takes quite a bit just to bench past 3.6ghz, lol.

If your RAM is hard linked to your FSB in some form, then yes faster RAM will let you raise your FSB more.

EDIT: Typos

 

[ahnirv]

jsc: I have tried lots of tweaking to my ram voltage and timings, and anything other than manual setting to stock timings, and zero overvolt past 1.8v works at 3.6ghz or above

Lucuis: On the gigabyte bios, it appears that i can only set my fsb-ram ratio to about 12 different settings, and the lowest setting it puts the ram at 800mhz at 3.60ghz cpu speed, but it is still linearly linked to my it.