Chosing motherboard to overclock a Q6600

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driftingcris

driftingcris

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Hello bois.
So i built a PC for my brother(mostly from spare parts), so he can play games like Overwatch, Witcher 3 and CS GO.
Of course, the Q6600 is an ancient chip, and doesnt perform very well in any of these games. I managed to overclock it to a MASSIVE 2.8Ghz.
I cant get it stable on anything faster than that. It is a G0 chip, so i am sure that it can do waay better than that. Worst case scenario, i can pull it out and install it on my personal PC and check it's limits on my P5Q Deluxe(thank you 771 xeons for extending my PC's life :p).
The motherboard in the system right now is a Gigabyte GA-73VM-S2 , which is a nforce 610i based motherboard.
I have one more motherboard that is compatible with the rest of the system, and it is a Gigabyte GA-946GMX-S2 , which is based on the 946GZ chipset.
I do know that both motherboards are terrible, especially when it comes to overlocking, but does anyone know which one is supperior when it comes to overclocking?
I am Greek and poor, so spending any ammount of money is out of the equesion.
Thanks in advance!

ps. Because i am sure that someone is going to ask, here are the rest of the system's specs:
Q6600 G0 2.8Ghz right now (I dont remember the model of the cooler, but its a low end deepcool tower style cooler. CPU doesnt go above 55C when stressing with prime95)
4GB's of Kingston Memory running at 800Mhz
GTX650TI (Which is getting bottlenecked really bad)
Thermaltake TR2 550W
 
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TwilightRavens

TwilightRavens

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Really since that cpu is multiplier locked I don't think it will make much of a difference, pick the one that has more of the features you need. But honestly try both and see which one gets you further, that's really all I can suggest.
 
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driftingcris

driftingcris

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As far as i know all s775 cpu's have locked multipliers.
I am guessing that you werent arround when they were new. We used to overclock only by increasing the FSB :p
My problem is that i dont know which motherboard can handle the faster FSB speed. But i guess that not a lot of people actually tried to overclock on those chipsets. I ll have to try myself
 
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TwilightRavens

TwilightRavens

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Not quite, the extreme series i.e. QX6700 is multiplier unlocked. My first built was with a E6700, but was never able to get it stable above 3.0GHz. But that was with an ASRock board.
 
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driftingcris

driftingcris

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Well yeah, but they were very overpriced, and very few people had them.
Asrock had very few overclocking friendly mobos back then(atleast i think so), so it does make sense that you had issues.
I used to run an other g0 q6600 at 3.8Ghz on my p5q deluxe(P45 chipset). And i am now running a modded x5460 at 4.3Ghz. As long as you have a motherboard with a decent chipset, overclocking chips with locked multiplier isnt that much of a deal.
Anyway, this is getting offtopic. I'll just try out the 946gz mobo when i have enough spare time.
Thanks
 
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TwilightRavens

TwilightRavens

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Yeah that's the only thing you can really do, seeing as any articles about it are way outdated. Anyway, good luck!
 
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william p

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The Gigabyte supports 1333fsb. if you can set that in BIOS, and raise Voltage a little you'll be at 3GHz.. You might be able to set higher fsb. 400 will equal 3.6GHz. Which with good cooling would be a good goal.
If you can't set it in BIOS then Throttlestop software will get Voltage control, and a BSEL 266 to 333 BSEL tape mod will get you the same. A Q6700 will go to 3.3GHz if you can get one.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2125877/tape-mod-bsel-mod-intel-q6600.html
 
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driftingcris

driftingcris

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You are saying that it supports 1333fsb, so i m guessing that you are talking about the nforce one.
I did try, but it wont stay stable above 2.8ghz(310fsb). I have a decent ammount of experience on core2 overclocking, and i am pretty sure that this is the motherboard holding the cpu back.
I could try the tape mod, but i think that the chip cant run 3ghz on stock voltage.
 
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william p

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Some Nvidia chipsets had trouble making the stock 1333 bus.
The QX6700 was a B3 stepping, the regular Q6700 was the newer G0 stepping. The QX6800 SLACP is the best unlocked.
If 1333 bus works then QX6850 becomes an option or the QX9650. Since you asked about the Q6600 I assumed you didn't want to spend very much.
 
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william p

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The 2nd MB is good for OC. be sure and flash the latest BIOS, that adds support for CPUs and bus speeds that didin't exist when MB was introduced. Proably faster DDR2 also. It supports up to QX9770 which has 1600 FSB and 135W. Run the Q6600 @ 400fsb. 9x400=3.6 Ghz. You will need about 1.5V. for that speed. You will need a good heatpipe cooler. Coolermaster 212 is cheap.
That old MB is like the one in my sig. It supports Pedntium D and P4. So it won't break a sweat wiyh an OC Q6600.
 
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driftingcris

driftingcris

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i think you are a bit confused. none of the two motherboards support the qx9770.
the nforce one cant overclock past 310fps.
i also tried the 946gz just now. it wont run the q6600 stable enough to boot into windows.
and yes, both of them have the latest bios installed.
 
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william p

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I got that information from what you posted about the 2nd board under CPU support.
GA-946GMX-S2
http://ee.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-946gmx-s2/#support-cpu
Look at all the capacitors on that board. That's from back in the era when there was a huge bad cap problem. Not the aluminum ones by the CPU socket. The ones with labels, and an X, or K scribed on the top. The scribe is so they can release pressure if they fail. Bad caps will be swollen, and have brown tar seeping out the lines. Caps are cheap, and a TV repair guy can fix them easily.
 
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driftingcris

driftingcris

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yeah i think you made a mistake. the faster cpu that the board supports is the QX6800. which is a 1066fsb chip.
there is no point. as i said i tried the motherboard(which as i said, has the latest bios installed, and is in pretty good condition), and its not even stable enough to boot into windows.
 
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william p

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Some sites don't get their CPU lists updated, or memory support for that matter. Dell is bad about that. Even with a 32bit OS you should try for more RAM. The video card will use addresses from the top down to store textures. So a 2GB GPU will leave just 2GB for the OS. You should try for 6G. 8gb with 64 bit OS. The 4GB rule was true back when GPUs had 512mb.
I hope you can get that board to work for you.
 
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