ok. I'm new to this overclocking business, so bear with me. Last night I tried to overclock my processor/ram. I have an e6600 and 4gb (2x2gb) corsair xms dhx ddr800 ram. theyre on a gigabyte s-series sli mobo ( i think its a 650i chipset not sure cuz im at work). my processor was set to a 6x multiplier (default >.< ) and a 333 fsb which would mean I was barely running at 2ghz. so I changed the multiplier to 9x and pumped it to 400mhz at a 1:1 ratio linked to the ram, which woudl make my ram effectively 400mhz dual channel = 800mhz (if im not mistaken). so i was looking at cpu-z and my fsb still read 6core at 333 mhz, and then it would jump to 9core 400mhz for a second then bump back down for 10 seconds and so on and so forth. not sure why, but could it be that I didnt set a high enough voltage to my fsb? I upped the voltage on the ram to 2.1v because I read that at 800mhz thats a viable voltage for that ram. I didnt touch the voltage on my fsb. i think its just shy of 1.3v stock.

Have u disabled C1E and Speed step?

Yea, what Maziar said. Speedstep will lower the CPU multiplier when the CPU is idle to save power and lower temps. Under load, the multiplier should go up to 9x.

But I believe the stock FSB for the E6600 is 266 MHz, which when multiplied by 9 gives 2.4 GHz. So the FSB of 333 MHz was already overclocked. I think a FSB of 400 MHz is way too much for that CPU as that would be 3.6 GHz or a 50% overclock.

Yes Stock FSB is 266 and the multiplier is 9x not 6x (I have an E6600 too)

You have 2 choices
Either disable C1E and Speed Step in bios
or run Prime95 while CPU-Z is running and see how reading will jump to
FSB 400
Multi 9
Core Speed 3600
Cause Prime 95 will force all cores to run at full speed
At the same time run Real Temp to keep an eye on your temps
Personally After I got my rig stable I enabled C1E and Speed Step
So processor E8500 is running at 2.4(6X400)
But when extra horse power is required it is ready and will start working at once