EVGA 780i + q9450, and 9800gtx?

780i chipset runs at 1333mhz fsb natively, and reliably oc to 1600mhz. 1600mhz fsb = 3.2ghz on Q9450 (8x multiplier). You've already exceeded reasonable expectations. Good job.

9800gtx should be good for up to 750mhz core. It shouldn't run into any artifacting or heat problems up to that speed. 9800gtx's performance in general is quite underwhelming though, not worthy of "9800" or "gtx" title. See benchmark:
http://en.expreview.com/2008/04/03/geforce-9800gtx-revi...

The 9800GTX is not underwhelming, it's just a tad slower.  

So the mobo + X8 multiplier is pretty much going to keep me about where I'm at for max overclocking?

I would not have bought a 9800gtx to replace any 8800, but I was upgrading from a 6 series so it was a decent value. My plan was to buy a decent single card now, and wait for the next line of real upgrades to come out and upgrade then, maybe even "step up" if they come out soon enough.

I've read that review before, the comments are pretty funny. The line between truth and decent English really breaks down there.

I am pushing a Q9450 at 3.2 on my 680i board. I was at 3.4 for a week or so, but it is now not Prime stable, so back to 3.2. (3.3just seemed odd).

The 780 board is very similar to the 680 on the fsb side, hence the 420ish fsb wall.

The 790i seems capable of 470-500 fsb, so I have my hopes up for it. My 4 gig of DDR3 is enroute, and the 790 sits in wait......

My temps, using RealTemp, are the same at 2.66 and 3.4. Still at stock voltage. And no, upping the voltage for the vcore or NB or FSB did not help.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I'm going to surrender the notion of getting 3.6 prime stable on this MB. Best I've gotten is about 30 minutes before I get an error or the comp just says no.

However, I am prime stable at 3.4, and now that my gpu fan isn't bugged, I've been testing it out a bit.

After some bumping I came up to 815/2038/1200.

I only ran 3dmark06 and rthbdribl at these settings, and I didn't see any artifacts in that. However I am kind of a noob, so if someone could suggest a good program for testing artifacts, I'd appreciate that. If it turns out that I'm a super noob about artifacts and testing gpu stability, you can disregard the rest of this post.  



I'd like to know if there is a better program to use when checking gpu temps. I run rthbdribl at ~1920X1080 for ~10 minutes and see how hot it gets. Here's what I got for that OC, idle temps were 39-41, fan at 100%.



@3.4Ghz I got this



That's idle vcore. Under load it goes to 1.16v.

Comparing to other scores with one GPU and my processor, I'm pretty happy with this result(top of the 9800gtx pile at 3.4Ghz).

Just for grins... @3.6Ghz



FYI, that's less than 1000 points under they highest scoring 8800 ULTRA in the 3.4-3.6 processor range(per ORB).  


Again, thank you guys for all of your helpful input.

I'm going to revert to stock clocks till I get some feedback on settings/stability testing, but it's been fun tooling around this evening.