Overclocking for the noob

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Eagle156

2[H]4U
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Jan 21, 2006
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I feel like o/cing my E6600 since it runs pretty cool, but I've never oced a cpu before, so what do I need to know? Should I do it in the BIOS or use easytune that came bundled with my mobo? Should I increase the FSB or the mulitiplier or what? How do I know when I've pushed it too far? I know you get artifacts when you o/c a vidcard too much but what about CPUs?
 
Overclock from the bios. In bios find the speedstep option and Disable it. speedstep is an option to throttle your cpu frequency down to save some power but it can cause your overclock to be unstable. Go in the voltage option and set your cpu vcore to 1.35v. The stock vcore for your cpu is around 1.300 to 1.350v. 1.35v is pretty safe to start with.

I see that you have DDR667ram. By default your cpu runs at 266fsb x9 . your ram is Double Data rate so it runs at 333mhz x2 (667mhz). So by default youre ram / fsb ratio is 4:5. witch means your ram runs 25% faster then your FSB. When you overclock you want to work on the cpu and the ram separatly, you dont want to overclock both at the same time because if you wont be able to tell witch hardware when you will run into unstability.

There is artifact for 3D video card overclocking, this is where you know you pushed too far. For cpu/ram overclocking, the limmit would be random reboots, blue screen of death, temp too high (over 70c in coretemp) Altough if you run into those problems it doesnt mean you can go higher, it simply means you have to tweak some settings in the bios, ram voltage, cpu voltage, ram timings.....

I dont want to go too deep here but id say a good start would be:

cpu vcore 1.35v, set ram on 1:1 with loose timing (5-5-5-12, leave the rest on auto) and start raising the fsb. 6600 depending on the chip can overclock between 3.2 to 4ghz on air with good cooling. Start at 300mhz x 9. Now to test if your cpu is stable, run 3dmark, run Orthos, run superpi32m......

if it reports error it means youre settings arent good.
 
i strongly suggest you do some research on how to overclock, read read read and read:

read that

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=57148

when i started overclocking, i tried, and learned from my errors, i overclocking my amd 3000+ with a cheap msi k8t neo fsr board, wich isnt made for overclock. so when i was raising fsb, i was also overclocking my AGP and PCI frequency, wich resulted in burning my radon 9800XT and my hard disk. THATS why you need to read :p
 
shogos got it. be sure that you keep your ram in comfertable zone when your overclocking. so yeah, set it 1:1, but if you start pushing on 340MHz FSB, find some other setting that will lower your total Ram speed (3:2 or something).

after you've found the speed that your cpu is comfertable at, try changing FSB:RAM to 1:1 again, you could try for higher but, i wouldnt recomend it. after you have 1:1 stable, try reducing timings.

note: timings are one of the thigns that most commonly causes post failure, if it happens to you, dont freak out. bust out the manual, and look for the clear CMOS jumper. if you cant find it, what you can do is pop out CMOS (man i keep wanting to type CMOST lol) battery and connect the two contacts together via a screwdriver or something. hold it like that for a few secs, and then pop the battery back in with the black (or red) ring downward. if this does happen to you, set CMOS to the last known good settings.
 
I'm having some issues here, I dont understand terminology I think.

When I set my memory to LINKED 1 : 1 with an FSB (QDR) of 1330mhz, this means my memory is running @ 1330? or is it 665? I'm so confused trying to overclock this 680i.
 
Ok, so if I set my FSB to 333mhz then it'll be 1:1 with the RAM and I'll get better performance?
 
That's it... Just set the FSB to 333 so it runs 1:1 ratio with your RAM.

Anything higher than 333 might cause problems if your RAM doesn't overclock so keep than in mind...

Now, 333 FSB X 9 CPU Multiplier (DEFAULT VALUE), RAM 1:1 @ 667 mhz = 3ghz

If you have a good E6600 it might just do it without much more on your part.

If it fails, then you will need to raise the the CPU voltage a bit (1.3V or 1.35V)
 
Thanks. Do I have to deal with a PCI lock or anything like that? I don't want my videocard/hdd to burn up.
 
YES YOU DO!

Set the PCI LOCK 33.33 and the PCI-E TO 100MHZ (100 TO 105 SHOULD BE FINE)
 
your on a 680I mainboard, you dont need to go thru this

under ram somwhere theres going to be the option for "asynconous ram overclocking". select that, and put your ram at its default speed.

now when you oc the FSB nothing happens to your ram speed, it will stay the same.

this is one of the features that makes 680i such an awsome overclocker. the memory controller on this board is higher quality then the memory controller on even intel chipsets. And it allows for asyncronous ocing
 
orion23 said:
YES YOU DO!

Set the PCI LOCK 33.33 and the PCI-E TO 100MHZ (100 TO 105 SHOULD BE FINE)
Click to expand...
Shit, my mobo only has the PCI-E freq and not the PCI. I could have sworn the DS3 had it somewhere.... Is this bad?
 
put the pci-e frequency to 100mhz, im pretty sure you have a pci freuqency too. i i tought you had a AGP board, didnt read all so dont bother with the agp frequency, you dont have agp :p, just set pci to 33 and pci-x to 100
 
I think i read somewhere that Gigabyte boards don't have the option for the regular 33:33 setting

Just call gigabyte if you have to, but I believe this isn't a problem since it just doesn't get pushed over its limit!
 
When I increase my fsb to 333mhz will my ram get oced as well to keep that 4:5 ratio and blow up? Or does it stay at 667 the whole time?
 
orion23 said:
YES YOU DO!

Set the PCI LOCK 33.33 and the PCI-E TO 100MHZ (100 TO 105 SHOULD BE FINE)
Click to expand...

Where is the PCI Lock located in the evga 680i bios ? And as for setting the PCI-E to 100mhz are you referring to the PCIe x16_1, 2, 3 ?
 
Arcygenical said:
The ram will increase with the FSB... But will have the 4:5 divider applied to it
Click to expand...
So I have to change this divider somewhere? I thought the ram frequency didn't actually increase until you go over the 1:1 ratio.
 
You set your own ratio.

If you have good, fast ram, you can have it run faster than the FSB

If your RAM is crappy (667mhz) you will need a ratio to run the RAM below your FSB speed (if available), and your system will take a performance hit.

1:1 will take your RAM speed together with your FSB and in your case, 333 FSB is as fast as your DDR2 667 mhz will take you unless you are able to use a devider.

Time to get better, faster or overclocable RAM!


And about the PCI Express lock......All boards have different names for all these settings.

I am not familiar with the 680i boards...
 
Well I don't want/need to go over 333mhz. My mobo has this weird ass thing in the BIOS called "System Memory Multiplier" and has settings for 2, 3,4, etc. This is what it says about it in the manual: for FSB frequency = 1066 "2.0: Memory Frequency = Host clock X 2.00. 2.5: Memory Frequency = Host Clock X 2.5", etc. and then "Auto: Set Memory Frequency by DRAM SPD data (default)". I don't know what the hell all this means but I think it's something important, judging by the next section: "Memory Frequency: The values depend on CPU Host Frequency (Mhz) and System Memory Multiplier setting." Is this the divider you are talking about? I haven't found any ram/fsb freq setting in the BIOS and I don't think there is one. Ie, if I turn off all the cpu thermal throttling stuff, set PCIE freq to 100mhz (there isn't a PCI lock), leave the rest on auto, and start increasing the FSB a little it won't blow up now will it?
 
Those are the dividers...

X2 means 2 X FSB (DDR2), so FSB 333 = DDR2 666mhz 1:1 Ratio

2.5 and 3 would mean that your RAM would be set to run faster than your FSB (But we now your RAM can't do that)

Some motherboards allow for a different divider which is to run the RAM below the FSB.. (not good really)
 
Thanks for that orion. I tried o/cing it today, I set the PCI-E to 100mhz, set the timings in manually (4-4-4-12), and started increasing the FSB. However my mobo wanted to set the ram way above 667 because of the raised FSB, and if I set the divider in manually then it was supposed to run too slow. So I just set it to 333mhz, the divider to 2 ( with an effective mhz of 667) and it booted fine. I tried out 3dmark06 and got 6104 marks (about 400 increase). The temps only increased about 3-5C as well, with the bios reporting it at 35C. So far so good, right? Not really. I tried out super pi 1m, and it worked fine. But with 32m it would error out for incorrect rounding in the first few seconds. I then tried every vcore option up to about 1.43 volts and it still failed. I didn't wanna try 1.5v. So then I disabled all of the onboard temp throttling thingies for the CPU and tried again with no success. Is this a bad cpu or something else? I could try increasing the memory timings, but I don't think it really matters if the ram is at 667 mhz? :confused:
 
To be honest, it's probably a RAM thing. In your setup, your RAM is the only thing holding you back or else you could really make that CPU shine...

I'm not familiar with Super PI but until recently, I wasn't able to run 2 instances @ once...

I then learned that I had to make to separate folders and delete all files except for the SuperPI.exe. That solved my problems (even though I always thought it was my system that was not stable)
 
I tried raising the latency to 5-5-5-13 but then it would BSOD every time my videocard driver tried to load. I also tried increasing the vdimm +.1v and the PCI-E freq to 101mhz, but it still wasn't stable. I think my RAM is a piece of shit but I'm not gonna buy something else for it; hell I wasn't planning to o/c at all when I was building this. This system doesn't seem to like 333mhz FSB. But I have one question, if I set the FSB to something like 300, what should I set the memory multiplier to? 2.0,2.5,3.0...? None of those options give my ram 667mhz so I'm not too sure what I should be set to.
 
Well I've done some more testing and the max it can do is 300mhz. Even if I set it to 310mhz the system is unstable. Does it make any difference If I run the RAM at 1:1 and get 600 or so mhz or set it to 4:5 and get 750mhz? I haven't noticed any difference either way. Also, easytune reports my vdimm at 2.1v whenever I oc anything, while my ram is rated at 1.8v even though I have vdimm set to normal in the BIOS. Is this normal?
 
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