Not so New, Newb asking for OC input. on newest rig.

immagikman

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Ok, yes I could spend a couple more weeks hunting for answers to ALL my questions, but I've done a fair bit so far and thought I would give anyone who wished to help a chance to do so.

Here is the new build and where I have gotten so far with over-clocking it.

Dual Boot Vista Ultimate/XP Pro

CPU: Q6600 G0
Memory: 4GB 2x2gb Corsair CM2X2048-6400C5
Mother Board: XFX Nforce 680i LT
Video: Evga 9800GTX

CPU running at 3.2GHz
Multiplier = x9
Bus Speed = 356.3 MHz
Rated FSB = 1425.3MHz

Memory Timings
tRAS=4 tRCD=3 tRP=7 tRC=22 tCL=5 tCPC=0
tWR=5 tRRD=3 tRWT=5 tWTR=9
tRDRD=3 tWRWR=2

Video Card running at Stock Speeds
GPU = 675MHz
Memory = 1100MHz
Shader = 1688MHz

All the above is set in Bios.
In nTune I have the following set:
SPP = 4000MHz
MCP = 4125MHz

My questions are,

I cant seem to find the proper settings to enter for the
PCIe bus and the SPP/MCP settings in the 680i bios. (Phoenix ver. 6.00 PG 1/22/2008)

And nTune (I know has problems) doesn't seem to like me trying to OC the Graphics card. I have heard of Riva Tuner but frankly that is one scarey beast with far more to it than just simply upping the GPU, Memory and Shader clocks.

So advice for bumping the Video would be appreciated.
Im not looking for max speeds here (I know I could wring more out of the Q6600) just moderate OC's that dont require me to up the voltages or go radical on the cooling side, Im just using a CPNS7000 (I think) Cooler on the CPU and the stock cooling option on the 9800GTX.

Also any thoughts on upping the settings I already have or any other helpful advice is appreciated.
 

Evilonigiri

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The 8800GTS out performs the 9800GTX clock for clock, so it's it may or may not be a good idea to go with the 9800GTX.

Refer to the OCing guides here, they show you the most basic things, including RivaTuner.
 

immagikman

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Ohh Im soooo amazed at your wit Lupiron think you could maybe do something really tricky and post something useful? I am well aware that the 680i / q6600 combo can be clocked much higher. Im working to balance safety and longevity with bang per buck. 3.2 is quite high enough for my pruposes.

You should read my post a bit more carefully.
====================================

Thanks for the suggestion Evil but Im already using the 9800, this is an actual build not a prospective one. One of the things I was really hoping someone knew was how to set the SPP and MCP clocks in the Bios instead of using nTune.

Id prefer to set these things up in the Bios and only OC the Video card via software after boot. Not really interested in modding the 9800 video bios to my prefered settings. But the 680i Bios is kind of sparse on info about OCing the SPP and MCP as are my findings on the web. As I said, I have done some looking around but havent found the little bit of info that I need. The SPP and MCP settings are easily found in the Bios but what I don't know is what the base freq. is, without that I dont know what to set the multiplier to to achieve my desied end frequency (4gig SPP and 4.125gig MCP)
 

Lupiron

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LOL! No, really! Amazing! As you are NOT aware, 680i and q6600s RARELY clock over 2.9ish! There may be higher OC potential! But only 10% of 680i boards over clock, like yours.

Sooooo... Useful information. Gotta think! I guess I really only know about the chip itself. Pretty sad, huh?

Wanna know anything about yer quad?

--Lupi!

 

dagger

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Lol, yeah, 680i is one of the worst chipsets available on market for overclocking, almost as bad as 650i. Those are really high numbers. Good job. You should keep an eye on chipset temperature though.
 

Lupiron

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He thought I was making fun of him, hehe!

Hey Dagger, ever try and get a 1 clock cycle command rate? Man, I am having one hell of a time trying to do that. Its way fun, and in theory, your 2 tick command rate means you waste a extra cycle. As in, if you can eek out a 1 tick command rate, it technically doubles your ram speed.

So in theory, that means a 700 Mhz command rate 1 is faster than 1066 junk. :)~ And if you can keep those timings... Woo-Hoo! I bet that means you fly. (Let the naysayers enter their "you'll never notice it" trash, because your computer sure the hell will, especially those of us who trash that Fing slug of a swapfile.)

--Lupi!
 

dagger

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Someone has too much time on their hands. How is that working out? :p
 

Lupiron

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Other than 780 at 4-3-3-10 2 tick, no post! LOL! I havent tried that hard. You'd want a 650ish 1 tick anyways. If it goes below that, you get near normal performance. I guess.

Who knows, once I get it stable at any speed, I'll just double the speed at normal settings and see whats faster, if its at least close, we know it can work.

Got me, two people trying is better than one! So get to work!

--Lupi!
 



Agreed.
 

Lupiron

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Hehe, yeah! And dont you all fret! Lupi will be making an entrance into the competition once I decide on what to do.

I'd just use my p5k-e wifi, but I appear to have damaged the MoBo physically when I spent 2 hours forcing in some Reaper X 4-4-3-15 RAM. Now I get random re boots and mem problems, including the beepbeepbeep memory error, meaning ram is installed wrong or not present.

And it happens at stupid times. Can test Prime blend and small ffts fine, just when I go to click on a link in a web page! Random re boot! Halo 1 = Random Re boots sometimes. Crysis for hours stable, never a random re boot!

Waaahhhh, I hurt my poor MoBo!

--Lupi!
 

immagikman

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My apologies Lupiron, if I misinterpreted.

My wife and I have the exact same setup and we both easily got OC'd to 3.2 and from my meanderings around the web, there seems to be quite a number of people who have hit 3.6 with air cooling and no voltage bumps. 4GHz with voltage bumps and better cooling than we use are not uncommon. Of course you need to have the G0 version of the q6600 and decent memory is needed.

Anyway I will look at the provided links again and thought I had scoured what was available on Toms....I guess I missed something.

Peeking at the Link I see you hit on a question of what is stable.
I don't bother with Prime or any long running stress testing, If I can do what I do, week in and week out without a snag, I am happy.

But Im still not finding what I need to know about setting SPP and MCP in the bios instead of using nTune. (I did first try Riva Tuner for OC'ing the 9800 but eVGA came up with a fairly simple utility to do it for me so that is what Im using now, got it at 775MHZ core and a locked shader which is around 1900 mhz and memory is at 1201Mhz) Now if I can just get rid of nTune fromt he equation I will be happy.
 

immagikman

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Well I checked out the Thread, and didnt find any info on the SPP or MCP clocking in bios. I will keep looking. Again anyone with a 680i mobo who knows how to determine the proper settings to get the SPP and MCP up around 4Ghz, let me know.
 

Lupiron

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When the board is on Auto, it is adding VCore voltage as you up the FSB. So reaching 3.6 on a q6600 with zero voltage is prolly impossible. Since 3.8 or a lil more is near its technological limits.

But yeah, I agree with you as far as stability goes. That's cause alot of programs just cant use a quad at much past 3.6 anyways. Only the fake testing like Prime and Orthos can really find its "stable" vcore.

But I have ran a q6600 at 3.8 for like 2 weeks doing what I normally do. And it had zero errors of any kind. But a min or two on Prime and KBoom!

If you wanna DL and run the newest Core Temp, and tell me the VID of both your Chips, I will tell ya where you can easily overclock them too! And I wanna see how high a stable OC you can get with that 680i. I am guessing that for every 1 you found that OC'd on the web, there are 10 others crying on the forums for help because their board wont go past 2.8-2.9, lol! Like my board I had, and sold.

--Lupi!
 

immagikman

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Ok I meant that *I* dont fiddle with the voltages :) I thought I had turned off all the auto settings though. Ill look again. and will look for the core temp appy and run it. The Mobo I got is a fairly new revision of the Bios Jan 28 2008
or something like that.
 

immagikman

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Well since this is a new build and Im not set up anywhere to host images, I'll just post the values from
Core Temp 0.98.1

Rev. G0 Kentsfield
Freq: 3206.25MHz (356x25x9.0)
Platform: LGA 775
VID: 1.2625v
Tj Max: 100c
Core 0: 42c 2% load
Core 1: 46c 2% load
Core 2: 39c 1% load
Core 3: 39c 1% load

CPU-Z 1.44.2
Memory timings are stable at
DRAm Freq: 395.9
FSB Dram: 9:10
CL = 5
tRCD= 3
tRP=7
tRAS=4
tRC=22
CR= 2T
 

Lupiron

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Hehe, I am very familiar with that VID. I had a primary comp with that same vid in it not to long ago. Looks like right around 1.38 Volts while fully loaded is your 3.6ish speed.

Thats not to bad at all, since the voltage recommended max is 1.5v.

I would honestly like to see if you can get it stable at that speed.

Like I mentioned, not to many people get good OCs with that chipset and a quad processor. And even I failed. Though I could prolly beat some OC out of my old board now, if I still owned it!

--Lupi!
 

immagikman

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Well thank you for that. So far it has been rock solid at the above settings, but has only been running on and off for a week or so and I have not yet had a chance to run an extended gaming session yet. I might attempt to bump it up to 3.6GHz at some point. First I want to finalize my build image and get it saved off so I don't have to worry about doing a complete set of individual re-installs.
 

immagikman

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Hey Lupiron, is there a thread where you discuss doing away with the swap file? I've been toying around with that idea once I install another 4gig in my system under Vista, not sure if I can make it work in XP.

I have the system set to Dual boot Vista 64 and XP 32.
 

immagikman

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Do you mean it (The swap file) is slow? Or that not using it and trying to run everything in physical memory is better? :) I actually know this, Im a UNIX admin by profession and we try to always run from the memory and to prevent swapping. Im just not very technical when it comes to these WinTel platforms :)

With the memory limit inherent in Windows XP and the fact that I only see about 3Gig (a little less) of memory, Im not sure I can run without the swap file in XP, but Im pretty sure that with 8gig in my Vista 64 build that I can run swap free...at least for now.

So IM wondering if you had tried running without it in XP 32bit? and what your results were.
 

Lupiron

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Hmm. I dont run it without the swap file unless I have more than 4 gigs of ram. Because it can speed things up for windows when you have less Ram, by allowing in ram but on hold junk to be written off to the disk.

The bad part of that, well, if its written to disk, and the program that was using it happens to look for it, you get yer memory hard fault, because its no longer in memory. And when it searches the disk... well, that disk is like a slug when compared to any type of RAM!

And System ram is like a slug to processor cache memory. So the closer you are to the processor, the faster your memory types.

All on die operations will be fast because the lev 2 communicates with the CPU at full speeds. Then system ram, but it's limited by the FSBs data width. Some chips now have Level 3, still on die though.

And then you have the swap file, acting like RAM, by allowing on hold ram maps to be mapped to the disk area as well. But when ever the original program goes looking for its data, it checks CPU cache lev 1, 2, main RAM, any other cached bios etc.. onward until you have a spinning hard disk with a huge latency. Like 100 x the latency of cheap ram! (Prolly more.)

So when you get rid of it, you no longer has the system looking for stuff on a disk, because it isnt allowed to map it out to the disk to begin with. So every program can find its data in ram. ;)

--Lupi!
 

immagikman

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Yeah, but see my point is, I have 4gig installed in this dual boot system and will end up with 8. However on the XP 32bit partition when I boot from there, XP will only see around 3gb of the total RAM, since the 32 bit system utilizes about a gig for hardware adressing. So windows only reports 3 or so gig (slightly less than 3 usually).

So, question is....is that 3 gig going to be enough? I guess I will have to experiment :)