Overclock settings for Q6600

?? Anyone have any input? Building a new PC...probably with Asus Maximus Formula, 4GB RAM

thanks in advance...Im kinda new to OC so go easy on me

Your a little bit sketchy on information here pal. Maybe if you told us what CPU you intended to use etc!

he did say in his title that he was using a Q6600
I assume Intel Q6600 @ 2.4 ghz but he didnt include the stepping or anything.

well im also new to OCing but from what i've read i really dont think you should just look at someone else overclock and try the same setting for you processor, because each chip is different

you should just turn up the frequency bit by bit with constant stability test to ensure u dont fry your chip

interesting, i just picked up an Asus Rampage...will be working on my Q6600 soon....but that completely depends when the next time my OS crashes...otherwise i have too much going on to bother spending 4 hrs setting everythin up the exact same way i do with new hardware

should anythin happen within the week (regardless of what i just said above, will likely format and do it anyway :P), i will prolly work on it startin monday lol

followed with new benchies!! sweet!! benchi forum here i come -yes i know...sad isnt it..im excited about benchmarkin more than anythin else

Well since i finally got my Rampage up and running. Im gona assume you got the B3 stepping like I did. lol

I dont have my Sig updated yet...but this is what ive been able to achieve as my end result...am going to be pushing to 3Ghz.

Asus Rampage Formula
Q6600 @ 2800Mhz (400FSB x 7 CPU Multiplier @ 1.3v)
2 sticks of 1GB OCZ Platinum XTC Revision 2 DDR2-800 RAM @ 400Mhz @ 1.98v
Effective clock of 1600Mhz FSB at a 1:1 FSB to DRAM Ratio

Now what ive been able to do is because of my parts, you MAY or MAY NOT achieve the exact same results. Depends totally upon the stepping of ur Q6600 whether its one of the great G0 or the not so great B3s. ALSO its VERY important to have the right speed and type of RAM.

Can you please list exactly what kind of ram you have?

And yes i realize a lot of what ive got up there MIGHT not make sense, since i dont know how much of whats up there you know about already.

However, this is the steps i took, if you give me the exact specifications of the parts you have then i will prolly be able to help you some more.

First thing to note, my motherboard can support effective FSB speeds upto 1600MHz (400Mhz x 4), by default mine runs around 1066 (266 x 4). This part is tied into both the frequency of your CPU and your RAM. One affects the other, the trick is to know which combination it will work best at.

Heres how it looks like before ive done anything.

Q6600 default speed 2.4Ghz (im gona jus use 2400Mhz from this point onwards cuz its easier to show and explain that way)

OCZ DDR2-800 default speed is 400Mhz

FSB Effective default speed is 1066Mhz

This is how it comes together

CPU speed = 266.666 to infinity lol Mhz CPU Clock x 9 CPU Multiplier (on my motherboard i can set this between 6 lowest and 9 highest)
Which gives us approx 2405Mhz = 2.4Ghz (yes i know, but thats how it is)

FSB Effective = 266FSB x 4 (notice how the FSB and CPU clock are practically the same?) this gives my mobo 1064Mhz on the FSB (again yes i know lol, it jus works out lik that)

Now im not too sure how to explain FSB:RAM Ratio, maybe my peers can help? Heres a link to explain the memory divider, basically its to keep your RAM stable while you mess around with the FSB. In an IDEAL situation you want it to be 1:1 so that the FSB and RAM frequency is identical.

But currently i believe the FSB to RAM Ratio is 2:3. That way the memory runs at 400Mhz even though the FSB is running at 266 approx half the speed.

Now onto my overclock (very crappy job by me indeed but i had to achieve something somehow, simply uppin the FSB only wasnt helping, will be retesting on the weekend again )

What i had to do was change the AI Overclock Tuner to Manual first in the BIOS

Then i scrolled to CPU FSB and set it to 400 (AFTER nearly 4 days of testing different FSB/voltage/multiplier/ram voltage settings, and hours of prime95, memtest, wprime, superpi, all 3dmarks (it would crash on the 3dmark05 cpu test most often even if it passed all other torture tests)...basically dont just jump it up to 400 immediately)

Heres a good way to get started, my default FSB was 266, i increased it by 20Mhz and saved the settings and continued and left all other settings intact. What im trying to do here is see how high of an FSB setting can i do, and still get into windows and sit there for a while.

My first wall was at 340 Mhz, it stopped going into windows at that point at all. But basically i had gone from 2400Mhz and was running just past 3000Mhz, 3.06Ghz to be exact (yes i interchanged the unit deliberately to keep your mind jogging )

Now i would personally discourage doing what im about to do unless you have proper cooling, or are willing to experiment and go ahead at your own risk.

This is where i finally went ahead and increased the voltage going into my CPU manually. The Rampage has increments of 0.00625 i believe, and i finally settled at 1.3 volts before it started loading up windows again. It stayed for a while and then at point i began increasing the FSB again. (yes having to restart, go into the bios and doing it from there, i would advice against using the AI Tuner from ASUS)

Long story short i couldnt go past 345Mhz no matter how much more voltage i put in (NOTE: I was doing this quickly, no way was I being thorough, in example i have yet to mess around with the North Bridge settings and such)

Well i dropped back down to 340FSB, 1.30volts, the ram set to auto (AI Tuner did auto configure it to run faster tho). I couldnt get any of the settings to do any stable stress testing with prime, superpi, wprime or memtest or 3dmark05 (funnily 3dmark05 became my main source of seeing how well the cpu handles software rendering)

NOW This is where im at right now and what i plan on testing when i get some free time.

I figured i should use a different approach, i want the RAM to be as stable as possible, and the BIOS didnt have any option to let me run it at 1:1 Ratio...(dont tear me up on this guys, im used to AMD cpus)

Anyway i figured, if i increased the FSB all the way upto 400Mhz, then forced the RAM down to DDR2-800 (as you increase the FSB, the motherboard will automatically increase the Ram speed on my mobo and show it as DDR2-XXXX where X is a number depending upon the ratio that it used in the last overclock) it was originally set to DDR2-852 or something.

This ensured that the FSB and RAM were running at 400Mhz, 1:1 Ratio.

I then dropped the multi from 9 to 7 (anything higher than 3.2Ghz i couldnt even get it to prime or superpi at all but it would do menial tasks in winxp)

I had to keep the CPU voltage at 1.30volts, but i was forced to up the RAM voltage to 1.98volts (by default on auto it was 1.93 i believe) It wouldnt boot into windows otherwise, i determined that since ive been able to get upto 3200Mhz with only 1.3 volts uppin the RAM volts may help and it did.

So currently i am running at

2800Mhz (400FSB x 7 Multi) @ 1.3 volts to the CPU
Effective FSB is at 1600Mhz (400FSB x 4) @ 1.98 volts to the RAM

What im planning on doing is dropping the FSB to 333, increasing the CPU Multi to 9, then decreasing the RAM speed to DDR2-667(333x2).

Essentially the FSB:RAM ratio will still be 1:1, but i'll be running at 3Ghz instead.

I know this isnt very thorough and im jumpin all over the place but i wanted to share my personal journey into this. Tell me what parts you have and i will make a very simple step by step guide without so many paragraphs :P