Q9550 @ 4Ghz on a 780i EVGA board. Need some help

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Spitfire7

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Jan 18, 2007
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I am somewhat new to Overclocking, but I have been able to do it in the past for several computers and stable. If anyone has an EVGA 6 or 7 series mobo with default BIOS please help. So what I did to OC my Q9550 to 4Ghz was I increased the FSB to 1885 or something close to that to get 4002Mhz. Then I left the voltage on auto and so far it seems to be stable at 1.35v. I also made it unlinked but when I increased FSB speed my Ram went down from 800 to 797. can someone help me do this correctly, because I am not noticing a difference in game play. I know my GPU maybe a big bottleneck right now, but at least am I doing it correctly for when I get that new GPU?

My temps in Crysis go up to about 60C when at 4Ghz on air. My volts on auto are at 1.35V. So can someone please give me a step by step for the EVGA 780i mobo BIOS including speed, volts, ram, etc? My specs are below.

My Specs:
Quad Core Q9550 2.83GHz 1333Mhz 12MB cache 45nm
EVGA 8800GT 512MB Superclocked (Core 650, Mem 950)
4GB Corssair XMS2 DDR2 800 (4-4-4-12) 2.1 volts
EVGA 780i Mobo
700w OCZ GamerXStream PSU
320GB Hard drive 16MB cache 7200RPM
Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Windows XP
 
um first i would say get the latest bios update and flash it... then put the vcore to the max intel lists on its website (just google q9550 and the first one should be intel website...) for VID, so it keeps a long life :)

but seriously... why would you need more than 4ghz? thats pretty extreme for a quad...
 
No its not that I want to go higher then 4Ghz, I just want to make sure I am doing it correctly. Like I said, when I went from 2.83 up to 4Ghz, I didn't notice a bit of difference. Thats not right and I think my GPU is at fault, but I thought I would at least see some improvement or I am doing something wrong.
 
I noticed a difference going from 2.85 to 3.85... its clearly your GPU

I'm going to go water and then see how far I can push t... i haven't yet messed around with any of the fancy voltage controls on my p5q yet though so i'm sure i COULD push it farther on air

Also... are you actually stable? I did 24 hour prime95 testing on mine... but are you sure yours is stable? At 4 ghz on mine it failed in under .1 seconds so i'm not sure yours is stable f it can play a crysis benchmark :na:
 
I noticed a difference going from 2.85 to 3.85... its clearly your GPU

I'm going to go water and then see how far I can push t... i haven't yet messed around with any of the fancy voltage controls on my p5q yet though so i'm sure i COULD push it farther on air

Also... are you actually stable? I did 24 hour prime95 testing on mine... but are you sure yours is stable? At 4 ghz on mine it failed in under .1 seconds so i'm not sure yours is stable f it can play a crysis benchmark :na:
Click to expand...

Hey Thogrom good to see you again.

Yeah I OCed it to 4Ghz with the case open and a fan on it and I played Crysis for about 20 minutes, then flight Simulator for about 30. No crash, no lock ups or anything. I just got frustrated with it, because there was no increase in performance. Then I did normal windows and internet stuff for about an hour. Then down clocked it back to 2.83. I never ran a Prime95 test because I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it that way. I just wanted to see performance.

So I got the RMA number and ready to ship it back to get the E8600. Will the E8600

1. be a wise choice?

2. OC very easy and stable at 4Ghz without any problems for someone new to OCing running on air?

3. And will it still beat the Quads for at least a year or so with games such as COD4/5, Crysis/Warhead, Grid, FSX, and the new GTA4?
 
Heya,

As others pointed out, your GPU can only do so much. At 4ghz, you've eliminated the CPU bottleneck and found the GPU bottleneck.

If you want to see your CPU's difference in Crysis, drop all the eye candy and lower the resolution to the floor. Then benchmark it at stock core with your CPU and then again overclocked to 4ghz. You should see a marked difference in FPS, because at the low end of things graphically, it's the CPU that is almost always the bottleneck. So you should see the difference there. At higher resolutions and quality settings, the GPU will bottom out very quickly vs. Crysis; that game cripples even modern cards at high settings. So to test it for your CPU, again, lower it all and drop everything to the minimum, then test, it will reveal more about your overclock's yield.

Cheers,
 
Cool thanks Malveaux. So, Malveaux, should I go get the E8500 and OC to 4Ghz right away or keep the Quad and run stable at 3.4Ghz on air. I am able to get it up to 4Ghz now, but not sure if its stable and definitely not temperature wise. I was reaching 60*C with case open and fan on it.

Will the E8500 and E8600 reach 4Ghz no problem on air?

People keep saying games wont utilized full Quad potential for about a year or so.
 
I can't not play a game maxed at 1920 by 1200... well... Warhead/Crysis doesn't run with AA, but... AA doesn't really matter in crysis so w/e 😀

Cod 4 I get ridiculous heaping piles of FPS, FlightSim I don't have, Grid... same thing as COD 4 unless I have all the eye candy enabled via CCC, don't have gta 4 but I imagine it would run ok, crysis I get about 40 fps average, witcher I get 60 fps +, assassins creed same deal, unreal 3 100+ fps, left 4 dead 60 + fps, counterstrike I get 343 fps :na:, and in Far Cry 2 I get 40 fps on all very high with no AA

all on a single 4870 😀


EDIT: I'd keep the quad, leave it at a nice 3.2 - 3.4 and just let it chill, its not worth returning it paying for shipping and what not and possibly re-stocking fees, so you can lessen your performance 🙁

I thought about it after I got a quad but I then immediately went... NAAAAA I wanted a fast quad and I got it, and i noticed a difference going from a dual at 3.2 to a quad at 2.85... and then another difference going from 2.85 to 3.85... so I'm glad I got the quad and wouldn't change back to a dual so I can get an extra 500 mhz
 
I can't not play a game maxed at 1920 by 1200... well... Warhead/Crysis doesn't run with AA, but... AA doesn't really matter in crysis so w/e 😀

Cod 4 I get ridiculous heaping piles of FPS, FlightSim I don't have, Grid... same thing as COD 4 unless I have all the eye candy enabled via CCC, don't have gta 4 but I imagine it would run ok, crysis I get about 40 fps average, witcher I get 60 fps +, assassins creed same deal, unreal 3 100+ fps, left 4 dead 60 + fps, counterstrike I get 343 fps :na:, and in Far Cry 2 I get 40 fps on all very high with no AA

all on a single 4870 😀
Click to expand...


So you have a 4870, but what CPU do you have and Ram?
 
Q9550 @ 3.85 ghz and 4 GB ram (well actually 2 now... 2 GB just went wacko and fail all sorts of tests now....
 
Q9550 @ 3.85 ghz and 4 GB ram (well actually 2 now... 2 GB just went wacko and fail all sorts of tests now....
Click to expand...


Thorgrom,

I have the Q9550, would I get better performance if I got the E8600 with the GTX 280?

Also, was it easy for you to get 3.85ghz out of your Q9550 or was there a lot of tuning and time involved? Did you have any heat issues? I dont have that good of airflow in my system so I am skeptical.


1. What would get to 4Ghz easier at lower temps between the two CPUs?
 


That is fairly high, since crysis is far from maxing out your cpu. You should run something like prime95 to make sure your cpu doesn't overheat when being pushed.
 
Does (Do) the game(s) you want to play, PLAY? Overclocking has it's place, but why obsess over numbers that make NO difference in the real world. Does the computer work, do the games play...?
 
^my point exactly! w00t finally i have a friend! i mean my 9600GT plays crysis maxed (no high shader, but everything else on high settings; obviously cant have AA if shader is on medium so...) on max res (144x900), so i COULD oc my graphics card, but what would be the point? no more visible fps for me...

there has to be a place for ocing rather than superpi numbers.
 
No actually I am getting very low frame rate on FSX and have to turn just about everything to low. Also, my performance in Crysis decreased down to about 14-28 FPS with the highest settings when I installed my Q9550. So I also had to turn some things off to get playable frame rate.
 
I have a q9550 and a gtx260 216 core. Cpu is clocked and stable at 3.4ghz and gpu is at 700mhz core clock 1410 shader and 1200 mem. I play crysis at 1650x1050 dx10 VERY HIGH(w.e the highest settings are at) and i get more than 30fps at ALL times.

you should be fine with getting the q9550 and if u go with the gtx 280.
 



That's music to my ears.

Two questions for you...

1. How much ram do you have? For example, is it 2x 2GB= 4GB or 4x 1GB = 4GB? I currently have 4 sticks and I think I am running into some issues with that.

2. With your setup can you play FSX on Max settings, not just default Ultra settings, but manually increasing a step further?
 


Cool, ok it sounds like i will be upgrading to a very similar system as yours. I RMAed my 4 1GB sticks and they are sending me 2 2GB sticks. i was having a lot of issues with 4 sticks and Corsair said that it wont perform as well with 4. Also I will be getting the GTX 280 soon. So, definitely please let me know how your frames are with everything to the absolute maxed out settings while flying in LA. They have the Ultra High settings, but try manually increasing the graphics even higher including max traffic, shadows, Bloom and at 1680x1050 res. LA is a real challenge for the graphics in that game because its so spread out and a lot of textures and also being next to the ocean. Looking forward to your test results. Also, try flying in the Cessna Sky hawk for this test. Thats a good and basic plane to start with. Thanks buddy.
 


Darn, I thought you had it, lol. I think you can only fly in two places in the demo, also the demo doesn't run as well as the real game. I love the game and if you are interested in flying at all it is a definite buy. Its so realistic and pretty fun for the airplane enthusiast. For your common first person shooter fan, reading at the library will probably be more exciting for them. I like the absolute realism side of things and learning to fly and learning some of the basic skills in being an airplane pilot. So I would definitely recommend it if you are an airplane guy or want to fly.
 
i got the demo dude, tried it for about an hr or so. It is REALLY complicated lol. i did as u said with the settings, maxed everything out. i got frames in the 20s. i tried a few places and 2 diff planes. most times it stayed in the mid-high 20s but came into the low 20s as well. hope this helps in making any kind of decision.
(all on the demo that i got frm microsofts site)
 


Thank you so much for trying that. Yeah pretty complicated. Yeah, I think that is about what I am getting in frames. Thanks. I am still curious if a GTX 280 will make a big difference.
 
I keep hearing that FSX is heavy CPU based. I mean at my GPU clock my card is better than a stock gtx280, my cpu is at 3.6ghz right now and I was honestly disappointed at the FPS. I am curious what is needed to run FSX at least 30FPS or higher.

Keep me posted if you can please.
 
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