Help with overclocking

[Jim Beam]

ok so I haven't over clocked a machine in quite some time but I wanna do a little overclocking. here are my specs can someone steer me in the right direction.

Processor- intel E6600 core 2 duo
Mobo- asus striker extreme
ram- 4x 1gig OCZ ddr800 platnium
video- evga 8800 gts 640 superclocked

I tried to over clock but when it restarts all I get is one real long beep then I have to restart.

[NightrainSrt4]

Hey Jim,

How are you trying to overclock? I will lay out the basics for you, I wont go into hard core overclocking stuff because I'd rather not have someone make a mistake based on what I say and have a fried computer or something crazy.


But what you want to do to get a pretty decent easy overclock on that cpu is raise the front side bus.

I dont have that asus board in particular, but there should be a frequency control setting.

Go into that (in your bios...sorry I assumed there that you knew that) and you should be able to choose a setting for overclocking.

I would recommend the manual setting. Don't do the setting where it automatically overclocks 5/10/15% or anything. You want to set the frequency manually.

Under manual there should be different settings for control. Here you can raise the frequency of just the cpu, just the memory, or both in sync with one another.

I prefer to overclock one piece of hardware at a time, so I can see what each components limits are without having to question which is causing an issue with booting.

So, lets go with the cpu.

What you want to do is raise the Front Side Bus, or the frequency as it will most likely be refered to in your bios, a few Mhz at a time. I wouldn't go much more than 5Mhz, although some people will tell you that you can just go for it, I would stay small if you haven't done it in a while.

So your stock frequency should say 1066Mhz, so raise it to 1070Mhz, then save the bios settings and reset. If it boots into the bios your good (for the most part, I will explain in a sec) if not then you know you probably went to high. You probably won't hit that limit for quite a while on that cpu and board.

Then every once in a while you want to make sure you can actually boot into windows stable. If you can then your good to go back to the bios and up the frequency some more.

Once it gets to the point that it won't boot either into windows or the bios than I suggest backing off a few Mhz and then booting into windows and running Orthos or some other cpu intensive program and letting that run for a while once you are satisfied with the overclock.

Now you can go back and overclock your memory if you choose. This will most likely be a little more sensitive than your cpu. Just take it slow and keep trying to boot. Back off a bit once you hit the top and run memtest or other similar program.

This is just a basic easy overclock method. I would start with that before I went on to more complex techniques, like raising voltage, and lowering multipliers.



Just so you know, for the most part with these new intel cpu's you cant really kill them if you just raise the frequency, thats why i am recommending this first. The danger is when you start pumping more voltage into the cpu. You get more speed, but you get more heat, and that can cause issues.

Start with that and let us know how it goes, then report back and I can try to give you some pointers on more complicated techniques to get a little more out of that combo.

[NightrainSrt4]

Hey Jim, how did it go? Have you gotten a chance to try it? I just got my new mobo and finally went from a max overclock of 2.3ghz to not a max of 3.0ghz. I haven't reached the top, i just overshot my goal so I am testing right now. Then I will see how high I can get it.

Just wondering how your overclocking adventure went.

[Scotty]

If you need anymore help

Guide 1 (http://www.cpcff.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4)
Guide 2 (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/newbie-oc-guide.html) - Newbie guide :)
Guide 3 (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1198647) - Specifically for C2D, C2Qs

[NightrainSrt4]

Well for me, with minor adjustments I reached cpu-z verified at 3.7 Ghz on the e6300. Booted into windows, but the memory wasn't stable. The cpu only tests it flew, ran fine. The memory intensive tests were the issue.

But it wasn't the cpu holding me back, it was the ddr2 800. Right now I am at 3.325Ghz orthos stable for 5 hours. This is without any real changes. I will go through when I have time and try to leach some more out of it. Wish I had the money for some seriously fast ram...but you cant argue with $60 2gigs of ram hitting ddr2 1000ish speeds. So far stable at 950mhz, will try and up the voltage and suck some more out of it, maybe loosen the timings a little just for benchmarking purposes.

[Spawn-Inc]

well i'm glad this thread was started because i've finally gotten my new pc running and i want to oc the cpu a bit.

Specs

LG H26N SATA DVD Burner
EVGA-NF68-A1 680i (P30)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250gb
Enermax 850watt DXX
Patriot 512mb PC2 5300 PSD251266781 (will be replaced with mushkin 2GB PC2 8500)
Intel Celeron D 420 Processor - 1.60GHz, 512KB Cache, 800MHz FSB (will be replaced with Core 2 Quad Q6600)
EVGA e-GeForce 7300GS (will be replaced with EVGA 8800Ultra)

pics

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/4475/systemclockspw7.th.jpg (http://img514.imageshack.us/my.php?image=systemclockspw7.jpg)

here is a screen shot of the current test, its the "Torture test" testing both ram and cpu
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/2910/systemclocks2ak8.th.jpg (http://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=systemclocks2ak8.jpg)

new prime95 w/ cpuz
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1082/newprimenr9.th.jpg (http://img233.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newprimenr9.jpg)

i've managed to get a stable, have been running prime95 for 3-4 hours with no problems, oc of 1.8Ghz from 1.6Ghz. i want to go up to 2.5 or more but i'm not sure i can with the ram i have and i don't want to fry anything.

EDIT: i am testing 2.4GHz right now.
EDIT2: staying at 3.1GHz.

[Jim Beam]

um went alright furthest I could go without any voltage changes was 2.7 ghz and 850 ddr on the ram

[Spawn-Inc]

going to bump up the voltage and get some more out of it? i went from 1.272 to 1.28 and its still cooler than my dads P4 3.0GHz w/ HT chip.

is there anyway to up the voltage on video cards?

[NightrainSrt4]

Honestly I haven't played around with voltages on video cards...for some reason Ive always been a bit more wearisome playing around with the video card than just the processor. I know you can raise the frequency pretty easily, I just haven't ever tried anything more than that and haven't even looked at a vid card overclocking app or anything in such a long time, maybe one of the other guys can add something to that question.

But for the voltages, now that your getting into that, I would start by having it set manually at the upper end of the recommended voltages, and then going up by small increments from there. Just be weary of the temperatures, with more voltage pumping through there your going to be creating more heat, and need a way to get the heat off that cpu.

[Spawn-Inc]

i saw a screen shot of ati tool with a 2900XT ati card and it showed voltages. i use the ati tool for my card (works for both nvidia and ati) and i couldn't find it so i think it depends on the card. i'm not too too worried about this card as i will be replacing it, i just need it to last until then. as it says in my sig i've bumped it from 450/666 to 558/866 and i can play hl2 with everything on low/off accept for model and shader details, there on medium.

[crenn]

Normally for video cards, you have to do a hardmod to adjust voltages.