Question Overclocking the Q9450 to 3.2 GHz

[LuKaWin10]

Hello everyone, please tell me if I can overclock my Q9450 to 3.2 GHz, I tell you the needed specs and someone send me the settings
Motherboard: P35-DS3 rev 2.1
RAM: 2X1 Gb Kingston DDR2 333 MHz speed
2X1 Gb PQI CORP. DDR2 400 MHz
GPU: GT 730 ASUS 2 GB GDDR5
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
CPU cooler: Aigo ICE200PRO
Thanks! Show me the settings I can make so I do not risk my PC components dying!

 

[BFG-9000]

Sure, Q9450 has the same 8x multiplier as your E6750 did, so the procedure is exactly the same except you should also increase the MCH voltage, since two things on the FSB is a bigger load on it than one thing (Q9450 is actually two dual-core processor chips mounted to the same CPU package, so is essentially a multiprocessor system on one socket. This limits the speed FSB can be stable at, but 400 should be fine).

Remove your DDR2-333 for now. P35 cannot run the RAM slower than the FSB and you can try overclocking it to 400 later.
Gigabyte boards are very good about telling you what the default VID voltage of the CPU is--simply clear CMOS, boot and go to the Hardware Monitor page in the BIOS and it should tell you what the factory-specified voltage of your particular sample is.
Add 0.1v to this (if your VID is 1.2250v, set the voltage at 1.3250v on the MIT page). Set MCH at +0.1v which is 1.3v
Set memory multiplier at the lowest possible 2.00 so it will run at 400MHz when fsb is 400 (no, I don't know why this wasn't called 1:1). Leave memory timings on Auto for now, but if you will be trying to tighten timings later to something like 4-4-4-12, just set memory voltage now at +0.2v which is 2.0v and perfectly safe.
Set the FSB at 400MHz which is quad-pumped, so the 1600(OC) promised on the motherboard box and maybe even printed right on the motherboard.
8 x 400 = 3.2GHz

Use a burn-in tester such as IntelBurnTest (which is just a handy way to run Linpack) to make sure things are stable and don't overheat. Use a memory latency benchmark tool to make sure memory latency is under 75ns. If possible, 4-4-4-12 with 2T Turbo and tRd 8 should get you down to 67ns, which is comparable to some AMD systems with integrated memory controller and thus without a FSB at all

 

[LuKaWin10]

Sure, Q9450 has the same 8x multiplier as your E6750 did, so the procedure is exactly the same except you should also increase the MCH voltage, since two things on the FSB is a bigger load on it than one thing (Q9450 is actually two dual-core processor chips mounted to the same CPU package, so is essentially a multiprocessor system on one socket. This limits the speed FSB can be stable at, but 400 should be fine).

Remove your DDR2-333 for now. P35 cannot run the RAM slower than the FSB and you can try overclocking it to 400 later.
Gigabyte boards are very good about telling you what the default VID voltage of the CPU is--simply clear CMOS, boot and go to the Hardware Monitor page in the BIOS and it should tell you what the factory-specified voltage of your particular sample is.
Add 0.1v to this (if your VID is 1.2250v, set the voltage at 1.3250v on the MIT page). Set MCH at +0.1v which is 1.3v
Set memory multiplier at the lowest possible 2.00 so it will run at 400MHz when fsb is 400 (no, I don't know why this wasn't called 1:1). Leave memory timings on Auto for now, but if you will be trying to tighten timings later to something like 4-4-4-12, just set memory voltage now at +0.2v which is 2.0v and perfectly safe.
Set the FSB at 400MHz which is quad-pumped, so the 1600(OC) promised on the motherboard box and maybe even printed right on the motherboard.
8 x 400 = 3.2GHz

Use a burn-in tester such as IntelBurnTest (which is just a handy way to run Linpack) to make sure things are stable and don't overheat. Use a memory latency benchmark tool to make sure memory latency is under 75ns. If possible, 4-4-4-12 with 2T Turbo and tRd 8 should get you down to 67ns, which is comparable to some AMD systems with integrated memory controller and thus without a FSB at all

Thanks, but can I put the memory in later or no? And will my slow memory affect OC speeds?

 

[BFG-9000]

Get it running stable first. The 333MHz DDR2-667 is already running at its maximum rated speed at the stock 8 x 333 = 2667MHz CPU speed so no guarantees it will be stable at 20% faster than rated clock even if you lower timings to 6-6-6-19 and raise voltage to +0.4v which is 2.2v and may shorten the life of the other RAM too.

2GB sticks of 400MHz DDR2-800 are under US$6 used now so you could actually upgrade to more memory at the same time. 8GB is kind of a reasonable minimum nowadays and while the board may well accept 16GB (P45 does for sure), 4GB sticks of DDR2 have always been rare and really expensive.

 

[LuKaWin10]

Sure, Q9450 has the same 8x multiplier as your E6750 did, so the procedure is exactly the same except you should also increase the MCH voltage, since two things on the FSB is a bigger load on it than one thing (Q9450 is actually two dual-core processor chips mounted to the same CPU package, so is essentially a multiprocessor system on one socket. This limits the speed FSB can be stable at, but 400 should be fine).

Remove your DDR2-333 for now. P35 cannot run the RAM slower than the FSB and you can try overclocking it to 400 later.
Gigabyte boards are very good about telling you what the default VID voltage of the CPU is--simply clear CMOS, boot and go to the Hardware Monitor page in the BIOS and it should tell you what the factory-specified voltage of your particular sample is.
Add 0.1v to this (if your VID is 1.2250v, set the voltage at 1.3250v on the MIT page). Set MCH at +0.1v which is 1.3v
Set memory multiplier at the lowest possible 2.00 so it will run at 400MHz when fsb is 400 (no, I don't know why this wasn't called 1:1). Leave memory timings on Auto for now, but if you will be trying to tighten timings later to something like 4-4-4-12, just set memory voltage now at +0.2v which is 2.0v and perfectly safe.
Set the FSB at 400MHz which is quad-pumped, so the 1600(OC) promised on the motherboard box and maybe even printed right on the motherboard.
8 x 400 = 3.2GHz

Use a burn-in tester such as IntelBurnTest (which is just a handy way to run Linpack) to make sure things are stable and don't overheat. Use a memory latency benchmark tool to make sure memory latency is under 75ns. If possible, 4-4-4-12 with 2T Turbo and tRd 8 should get you down to 67ns, which is comparable to some AMD systems with integrated memory controller and thus without a FSB at all

Can you tell me what VID and MCH are and where are they?

Get it running stable first. The 333MHz DDR2-667 is already running at its maximum rated speed at the stock 8 x 333 = 2667MHz CPU speed so no guarantees it will be stable at 20% faster than rated clock even if you lower timings to 6-6-6-19 and raise voltage to +0.4v which is 2.2v and may shorten the life of the other RAM too.

2GB sticks of 400MHz DDR2-800 are under US$6 used now so you could actually upgrade to more memory at the same time. 8GB is kind of a reasonable minimum nowadays and while the board can accept 16GB, 4GB sticks of DDR2 have always been rare and really expensive.

Yes, well I could try finding memory that has the speed of 1066 MHz and try getting an 8 GB kit but I need some great RAM that people know of!