Can anyone tell me what steps to take to overclock E6600 efficiently. I would like to reach 3.4ghz with air cooling. Thanks in advance..

Specs Below:

E6600
intel 975x bad axe board
crucial ballastix ddr800 pc6400 (2gigs)
zalman CNPS9500 cooler
X1950xtx in crossfire mode
raptor 74gig in raid 0\
ANTEC HE 550watt PSU

Just take a look at the guide above. Make sure youve got yuor bios sorted out then start increasing the FSB until you run into problems.

If you have the Bad Axe, there's a good chance you'll need to perform a minor mod to the board to unlock the appropriate OC options. Intel made this board so that these options only apprear when "Extreme"-class chips are in the socket (at least this is how things are for the 304 revisions... not sure what the deal is for later revisions, if there are any). If you need to know more, I can elaborate.

REV explain plz.

I purchased the board in August. I didnt see to many option in BIOS to overclock.

Thanks in advance

I have an Intel "Bad Axe 2" (D975XBX2) but overclocking is the same (except that your "Bad Axe" only takes DDR2-667 memory instead of DDR2-800. Thats all from OC perspective.

Hit F2 during boot screen to go into BIOS. These are my settings:

Processor Overrides
CPU Core Voltage: 1.3875V
Enhanced Power Slope: Enabled
FSB Voltage: 1.4V
MCH/ICH Voltage: 1.55V

Processor Multiplier Override: Default
Host Clock Frequency Override: Manual
Processor Multiplier x8 (Locked)
Host Clock Frequency 425 <==== This will clock your CPU to 3.4 GHz on air (I use Zalman CNPS9700)

Memory Overrides
Reference Frequency: Default
Memory Frequency: 800 MHz
tCL 5
tRCD 5
tRp 5
tRASMin 15
Memory Voltage: 2.2V

Ghostman, one more thing.

Make sure you have the latest BIOS version before starting the OC. I used Intel Update Center to update the BIOS from Windows. It's quick and painless. You could flash the BIOS the "old" way (with floppy) if you want.

Hey thanks Nomans63 for help.

By the way bad axe 1 does support DDR2 800. I just had to update the bios. Once I updated it does say DDR2 800 in the bios. What is the difference between the 2?

Thanks Again,
Ghostmann

As far as I know, the DDR2-800 memory support is the main issue between the 2. May be some other minor differences but I think they are irrelevant to OC. However, I'm not sure whether any performance diffs between the 2 boards exist because I couldn't find any real comparison reviews on the net.

You're welcome. Good luck to your OC undertaking and hope this will help you achieve your goals somewhat faster.

Well, as I said, there are ways to unlock the OC options in the board, but it does require a minor mod.

Disclaimer: DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! Modding the mobo voids its warranty... (however, the mod is quite easy and low-risk.)

Next to the battery on the board is a beige 2-pin maintenance jumper which is used to connect 2 of 3 pins which either put the board in normal operation mode, or maintenance mode (so you can get to the BIOS to change settings when you have trouble booting -- this jumper will become your best friend as you get into OC’ing, so know it well).

Next to these 3 pins is a similar arrangement of 3 solder pads labeled “OC DEBUG.” In the engineering samples of these boards, the 3 pads were actually pins, just like the maintenance jumper, and you would connect the bottom two pins with a jumper to unlock the OC options in the BIOS.

For whatever reason, Intel decided to remove these pins from the production boards and make it so that only “Extreme Edition” chips unlocked the OC settings.

The simple way around this lack of pins is to complete the circuit between the bottom-two “OC DEBUG” pads. You can do this with either a Circuit Writer pen (as I did), or a touch of solder. Once you do this, the OC options should be unlocked.

Note: If you don’t want to do a hard mod to your board right away, you can do the same thing with a bent staple and needle-nose pliers. Just hold the ends of the staple on the pads and fire up the machine. Once you see it come to life, you can remove the staple and still be able to OC.

OC’ing is a bit weird in these BIOS – you don’t bump up the FSB manually, you just dial in a % OC you desire (0-50%) and it automatically adjusts the FSB for you. Start with a small % and move up slowly.

Good luck!

-Rev

Version 306 of the motherboard can be overclocked without any mods. FWIW

Good to know.

This is the mod he was refering to, plus a few more.

Great to know, this info will come in handy in the near future for me.