I am overclocking my computer for the first time and have run into a few issues/questions that maybe others can help.

1.) Im using CPUz to test my OC settings and for whatever reason, the CPU voltage fluctuates significantly. Not only that but the voltage that I set in the BIOS is not what is reported in CPUz. Why is this?

2.) After enabling CPU host control (and changing the timings) the computer fails to reboot properly. The only way to successfully post is to unplug for 30 seconds and then reapply power. Is this a defect with the motherboard or normal?

3.) I have limited control over memory settings, does anyone know how to set this board into synchronous (1:1) mode for memory? I just have the settings on auto configure for now.

4.) How do you check the voltage going into the RAM, my bios lets me add voltage (+0.1, +0.2, etc) but I don't know what the base voltage is.

I'm using a Q6600 revision B3 on a Gigabyte P35-DS3R revision A2. I have 4x1GB sticks of Crucial Ballistix PC8500. So far I clocked the computer at 2.56Ghz but from what I have read, it should be capable of 2.66Ghz on air cooling.

1.) Vdroop and Vdrop. Should be anywhere from .5V to .2V. Load and idle voltages are also different, so going from idle to load will fluctuate the vcore.

2.) Perhaps unstable settings?

3.) You have a Gigabyte board. Upon entering the bios menu (after hitting delete), you must hit Ctrl+F1 to unlock some settings.

4.) The base voltage is 1.8V. This is clearly stated in the motherboard manual.

Assuming you have the stock cooler, 3GHz should be possible, depending on the room temps.

Thanks for the post, seems you learn something new every day. That tip about CTRL+F1 was critical and now I finally have the memory timings setup for a change. Still not entirely clear about Vdroop and Vdrop, searching the web didn't immediately pull up relevant information. I updated the BIOS, which I was hesitant to do but this solved the strange restart failure behavior.

This article explains Vdroop, VID and Voffset (is that your Vdrop Evilonigiri?): http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipse [...] i=3184&p=5

That's the page where they start in on that stuff... Actually, the whole article is great and is worth a read, though.

Your CPU is almost certainly capable of at least 3.0GHz.

From what I understand, overclocking with four memory sticks can be tricky, though. The "synchronous" setting for the GA P35 boards is to set the memory multiplier (or whatever they call it) to 2.0.

Also, if you're testing your settings for stability, try Prime95. Just google it and get the latest version, then run the stress test. If it doesn't fail after more than 30 mins of running, it's at least sort of stable. Ideally, it should be able to run for many hours without errors to indicate stability.