P5WDH and E6600

[Aholland]

Hello everyone,

Here comes another question that has probably been answered a hundred times. It's almost a pity that someone has not created a sticky post on it.

I recently bought the P5WDH motherboard, OCZ Platinum memory (2 x 1GB, 800MHZ) and a Intel E6600 processor. I added a Zalman 9000 series heatsink for cooling and sound quality. Here is my question.

Once I got the system all loaded up with the newest drivers and the 1901 bios I started to look at overclocking...don't we all? Pretty much right out of the box the system is buggy. I have put together probably 100 or more systems over the last bunch of years so I am not new to assembly. I also work in a cusom electronics design and manufacturing company so I am not unfamiliar with all the proper handling and assembly practises.

I started out using the Wusy?? guide for voltage settings and ran the board at a FSB of 333. The system repeatedly craps out under the OTHOS stress testing (prime 95 + anotehr test wrapped together). Can some post the bios settings they are using for overclocking this board. Understandably we all can get different overclocks, but there must be a minimum level I should be able to get with my setup.

FSB:RAM = 1:1 (333:667 MHz)
Vcore 1.325, 1.375, 1.40 all tested with no success
voltages for memory as follows: http://www.bleedinedgesupport.com/ocz/staff/steveocz/p5w6400r2v.jpg including 2.1 and 2.2

Nada, nothing zip....crash and burn.

Temps did not go that high: idle 28C, load 43C

Thanks in advance for any pointers or links.

As I said, it would be nice if someone posted a sticky thread with conservative bios settings for a conservative overclock (maybe, 3.0 GHz)

Alex Holland

 

[darkstar782]

I got alot of crashes with the 1901 BIOS, reduced them significantly with the 2001 beta BIOS, and then went back to the 1602 BIOS and solved the lot

1602 is regarded by many as the best BIOS atm.

When you say orthos crashes, what do you mean? Blue screen? If so, what error message?

I run at 3.7GHz (370x10), 1.5875v vCore, 1:1 FSBRAM, 3-3-3-12 latencies, 2.4v vDIMM, 1.85v vMCH, 1.5v vFSB.

Thats with an e6700.

Oh, thermal paste on NB and SB replaced with AS5, the silly copper covers pulled off and a 40mm fan stuck to the NB. The optional radial fan is also attached.

 

[Aholland]

Thanks for the feedback. I am going to take a novel approach to this problem. I originally loaded the drivers that came with the install disk. I am going to do a reformat and use the drivers I downloaded and used for updating. I will roll back to the 1601 bios as suggested. If I'm not mistaken that will require me to use a dos boot disk and afudos. No problem. The reason I am doing a complete reload is because I never felt particularily satisfied with the way the board ran after the initial load. It's one of those things you get a feeling for having done this a lot of times.

I see you are using a lot of settings that I would not normally see suggested, ie quite high voltages and very low latencies (must be the memory you are using).

In any event, thanks for your efforts on my part. I will be back here in a couple of days to report how it went. Also, I do remember using AS5 on the CPU, NB chips. Not sure if I used it on the SB chipset or not. I will check.

 

[darkstar782]

My RAM has Micron D9GMH chips, which are capeable fo high voltages and low latencies

Yeah the CPU voltage is high, but when you hit the limits of the CPU you have to crank up the voltage....


My previous stable settings were:

333MHz FSB (CPU @ 3.33GHz), vCore 1.425v, vMCH 1.65v, FSB:RAM 1:1, RAM timings 3-3-3-12, vDIMM 2.2v

(This is the RAM at stock speeds, 666MHz 3-3-3-12 2.2v)

Yeah the BIOS doesnt like flashing down from 1901 or 2001, the sheer number of posts you can google for showing people trying to do it should be evidence as to how much they suck however

 

[Aholland]

I will probably start tonight and be ready for testing again monday. I hate loading up all the preliminary software. At least I'm bright enough to use some restore points.

Regarding your memory settings, how come you did not try to run the memory at a higher frequency, say 800-900 MHz. Was it because you then had to increase your memory latencies to something like 5-5-5-15? I've gone back and forth on what is better: latencies vs FSB. Seems there is really no clear winner. I have been told that my 800 MHZ memory (4-4-5-15) will run up to 900-950. Any comments on which way to run and why?

 

[darkstar782]

My personal opinion is that anything over 1:1 is of limited usefullness.

the FSB runs at 370*4MHz data rate and is 64bits wide. The RAM interface is running at 370*2 and is 128bits wide (dual channel).

Therefore, the FSB bandwidth equals the memory bandwidth.

I know that you can show limited improvements increasing RAM speeds past 1:1, but in my opinion this is mostly where you either have some dodgy Gfx card using TurboCache or HyperMemory that needs some memory bandwidth, in other situations any improvements are down to latencies (as DDR2-800 4-4-4-15 is the same in clock cycles, but longer in nanoseconds, than DDR2-900 4-4-4-15)

I therefore decided that I would stick to 1:1 and keep the timings as tight as I can.

The RAM will run at DDR2-1000 speeds, but with horrible latencies, and I just dont think it is worth it.

 

[curtains]

so whats the story of this board and the 975x chipset. im keen on buying this board. jst have a few things to clear up.

So everywhere(even intel website) says the 975x chipset can only support up to ddr2 667 but read about heaps of ppl using ddr2 800 or even ddr2 1033 whats the story on it? does it work properly or ?? etc?

 

[darkstar782]

The 965 chipset doesnt officially support DDR2-1067 either.

Its pretty much down to memory dividers, unless the dividers are there to use that speed RAM at ALL FSB speeds, the chipset doesnt "officially" support it.

Now, the mobo manufaturers can vary the dividers availible to an extent, but it doesnt matter too much.

While most boards wont support DDR2-1067 @ 133MHz/533MT/s FSB (like a Pentium D 805 or an older P4) as this would mean a 1:4 FSBRAM ratio, they will all do it at 266MHz/1067MT/s FSB (with a 1:2 FSBRAM ratio).

They cannot be said to officially support DDR2-1067 however, as then some whiny D805 owner who has Corsair Dominator RAM will be complaining he cant use his RAM to its potential.

As long as you are running at a deent FSB speed, and all Conroes bar the e4300 are 266MHz at stock, (and the e4300 will EASILY overclock to 266MHz) then you dont need to worry about it.

 

[Aholland]

It seems reasonable to think that the system would run at near it's maximum speed with a 1:1 setup. Having said that, I will try out the different benchmarks running the memory at both 667 and 800 and see what numbers it gives.

I think what people forget it that 667 latencies are usually smaller than 800 MHz latencies. What you gain in running the higher FSB memory is largely lost because you also have to increase the memory timings. I forget where, but there are a number of articles out there which compare the differences between memory speeds and latencies. I think there were cases where each won out, but no clear winner across the spectrum of different tests. I am not going to worry about it right now as I have to get this system back up and running. Once I do, I will run my system both ways and see what it looks like.

For me, I bought OCZ Platinum 800MHz ram because it was pretty much the same cost as 667. That's just my city and I would presume that 667 is generally cheaper in most cities.