FSB limit on GIGABYTE GA-P35-DSL?

I have GIGABYTE GA-P35-DSL(rev 2.0) with BIOS version 4. Does it have FSB ceiling? Currently, I can't set anything over 390 MHZ

Can anyone who has this board confirm or dispute this?

here is my system:

Core 2 E2160 @3.51 GHZ (9x390 MHZ) with vcore 1.5v and all other voltages are raised by +0.2v

G.SKILL 2x1GB DDR2 800
Memory vs. FSB Frequency ratio is set as 1:1. so it's only 390 MHZ

To test my FSB ceiling, I choose 6x multiplier. When set at 6x391MHZ, it doesn't boot at all. If I try 6x390 MHZ, it boots and all working stable.

Thanks!

-sharpT

Max I have seen the P35-DS3x go is 560Mhz or so.

Btw, it's a CPU limitation not motherboard. The E2xxx serise was quite a bit limited compared to E5200, still 3Ghz+ is more than enough for most people.

Also try F8f BIOS. (Note: F8f is no longer on Gigabyte website, you can find it on the web though)


GUIDE: Overclocking On EP/P35-DS3L

Sometimes going up by a single MHz can fail, but going up by a bigger jump (say 25 or 50 MHz) will work.
Also, CPU performance is essentially completely determined by the core speed; FSB won't make a noticeable difference.

Ok, I found out why. As others suspect, It's CPU's limitation. P35-DS3L is great. I have nothing, but good things to say about it. It doesn't have FSB wall at @391 Mhz.

I recently bought Q6600 to replace my E2160(@3.51). Q6600 works fine @391 Mhz and even @400 Mhz. I haven't tried anything beyond 400 Mhz FSB yet. Since It's already OCed at 3.6 Ghz, I'm very happy with it.

To my surprise, 8MB cache of Q6600 has huge impact on gaming and much faster than E2160 at the same oced speed say @3.51 Ghz.

Here is old 3DMark 2001 benchmarking results with AMD's HD4850 video card:

Q6600 @3.60 Ghz -> 58129 points
Q6600 @3.51 Ghz -> 56500 points
E2610 @3.51 Ghz -> 43500 points
Q6600 @2.40 Ghz -> 41000 points

-sharpT

Awesome sharpt, and thanks for the benches. I can confirm this- my E2200 has a limit at around 400MHz. I'm also using a P35-DS3L.

Although I've made it run at even 440 FSB with the lowest multiplier of of 6 (unstably), it definitely does not want to work around 400 MHz FSB and beyond. This confused the hell out of me, because it doesn't make much sense..

My testing with the E2200 is that it will sometimes work at higher FSB speeds if I do strange things like increase the PCI-E voltage (this worked at 440x6 with a memory:FSB ratio of 1:1), or at one time with an older BIOS I manually set the lowest possible tRD setting of 6 (at 400x7 with memory at a 1:1 ratio). The results also seemed to be different with different BIOS revisions, which makes me ponder if this is a marketing ploy.