Q9550 and Gigabyte DS-P965 DS3 3.3

[kvanryn]

I am having a real problem. I just purchased a Q9550 Processor, but on my Gigabyte board with F13 BIOS, I cannot get the processor to overclock at all. It works fine at its stock speed, but if I raise the FSB by 5 points, the machine just reboots and loads the original BIOS settings. This is very frustrating. I had no problems overclocking the E6600 Duo Core, but cannot get it to budge with the Q9550. Does anybody know why I am having this problem? Is it a limitation with the Gigabyte Board? It has been a good motherboard for me. If it is the board, can someone recommend a motherboard that would work well with the Quad? Thank you very much!

 

[Mondoman]

I think you're probably pushing your (now very old) MB a bit too far. Remember, the e6600 was already around when your MB came out, but the q9550 is very recent.

 

[jsc]

Check the Gigabyte site and see if the Q9550 is supported.

The Gigabyte P35, P43 and P45 boards will work with Q9550. I have my Q9550 running at 3.6 GHz. in a GA-EP35-DS3P.

 

[freeman70]

That motherboard is a bit finicky with overclocks. I had the exact same board with an e4300 CPU that ran stable 24/7 for months at 3.0GHz (FSB 333 2x1GB DDR2-667 with 2x RAM multiplier). I bought 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM and tried a basic overclock of 2.88GHz (FSB 320) so I could match the DDR2-800 RAM frequency with a 2.5x multiplier and the machine wasn't stable and wouldn't run superpimod or orthos without errors. Strangely, I set the FSB back up to 333 which slightly overclocked the RAM to 833 Mhz and it ran beautifully. After a few months, I bought a Q6600 and quickly found that the CPU and/or RAM voltage regulation of these old boards just couldn't really handle overclocking a quad core due to greater overall power consumption. I bought a new Gigabyte EP45-UD3R board (P45 based) and overclocking became easy. I didn't even have to set voltages. I just set the FSB, CPU multiplier and RAM frequency divider and presto my machine was overclocked to 3.2GHz. It passed the 24 hour memtest, orthos, prime95, and superpimod gauntlet and I have run it 24/7 for a couple of months. After so many years overclocking different CPUs starting with a P166MMX overclocked to 233MHz, I was pleasantly surprised that it was so easy with this motherboard. I can't guarantee anything but I think a newer motherboard like mine will provide better voltage regulation which is a must for overclocking.

 

[kvanryn]

That motherboard is a bit finicky with overclocks. I had the exact same board with an e4300 CPU that ran stable 24/7 for months at 3.0GHz (FSB 333 2x1GB DDR2-667 with 2x RAM multiplier). I bought 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM and tried a basic overclock of 2.88GHz (FSB 320) so I could match the DDR2-800 RAM frequency with a 2.5x multiplier and the machine wasn't stable and wouldn't run superpimod or orthos without errors. Strangely, I set the FSB back up to 333 which slightly overclocked the RAM to 833 Mhz and it ran beautifully. After a few months, I bought a Q6600 and quickly found that the CPU and/or RAM voltage regulation of these old boards just couldn't really handle overclocking a quad core due to greater overall power consumption. I bought a new Gigabyte EP45-UD3R board (P45 based) and overclocking became easy. I didn't even have to set voltages. I just set the FSB, CPU multiplier and RAM frequency divider and presto my machine was overclocked to 3.2GHz. It passed the 24 hour memtest, orthos, prime95, and superpimod gauntlet and I have run it 24/7 for a couple of months. After so many years overclocking different CPUs starting with a P166MMX overclocked to 233MHz, I was pleasantly surprised that it was so easy with this motherboard. I can't guarantee anything but I think a newer motherboard like mine will provide better voltage regulation which is a must for overclocking.

Did you do a clean reinstall of the OS, or were you able to upgrade the motherboard and keep your OS and programs intact? Thanks for your input...I agree with you...I believe I will have to upgrade the motherboard, but it is running just fine at the stock frequency. I was just curious if you did a complete reload of everything. Thanks.

 

[kvanryn]

That motherboard is a bit finicky with overclocks. I had the exact same board with an e4300 CPU that ran stable 24/7 for months at 3.0GHz (FSB 333 2x1GB DDR2-667 with 2x RAM multiplier). I bought 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM and tried a basic overclock of 2.88GHz (FSB 320) so I could match the DDR2-800 RAM frequency with a 2.5x multiplier and the machine wasn't stable and wouldn't run superpimod or orthos without errors. Strangely, I set the FSB back up to 333 which slightly overclocked the RAM to 833 Mhz and it ran beautifully. After a few months, I bought a Q6600 and quickly found that the CPU and/or RAM voltage regulation of these old boards just couldn't really handle overclocking a quad core due to greater overall power consumption. I bought a new Gigabyte EP45-UD3R board (P45 based) and overclocking became easy. I didn't even have to set voltages. I just set the FSB, CPU multiplier and RAM frequency divider and presto my machine was overclocked to 3.2GHz. It passed the 24 hour memtest, orthos, prime95, and superpimod gauntlet and I have run it 24/7 for a couple of months. After so many years overclocking different CPUs starting with a P166MMX overclocked to 233MHz, I was pleasantly surprised that it was so easy with this motherboard. I can't guarantee anything but I think a newer motherboard like mine will provide better voltage regulation which is a must for overclocking.

Did you do a clean reinstall of the OS, or were you able to upgrade the motherboard and keep your OS and programs intact? Thanks for your input...I agree with you...I believe I will have to upgrade the motherboard, but it is running just fine at the stock frequency. I was just curious if you did a complete reload of everything. Thanks.

 

[freeman70]

Did you do a clean reinstall of the OS, or were you able to upgrade the motherboard and keep your OS and programs intact? Thanks for your input...I agree with you...I believe I will have to upgrade the motherboard, but it is running just fine at the stock frequency. I was just curious if you did a complete reload of everything. Thanks.

No, I didn't do a clean install. I just removed the graphics, sound and chipset drivers before changing the motherboard and so far it has been running fine for a couple of months. I know a clean install is preferable but I have become a little lazy. I use to do clean installs every time I changed a motherboard but I got tired of it. I use to backup my partitions with Norton ghost bimonthly but I found that with so many updates to drivers and other software, every time I needed to reinstall which was a rare occurrence, I needed to update all the drivers and software anyway. It was becoming a pain to back up my system partition all the time just to keep it up-to-date so I decided to just back up my data partitions and drives and took a chance on replacing the motherboard. I was pleasantly surprised that after automatically reconfiguring some USB and other peripherals, Windows XP was up and running fine.

On a second note, you may want to check your power supply as well. I have a Thermaltake Toughpower 600W and only one 8800GT video card so I never stress my power supply. Decent voltage regulation is also dependent on your power supply. If you are using a no-name or low wattage power supply, you may experience small voltage drops at high loads and this could also affect your ability to over clock a CPU. Overclocking increases the power drain especially when you increase Vcore and MCH voltages. These voltages sometimes need to be increased to improve system stability. If your system can't maintain these voltages because of the power drain, it can cause system errors, other system crashes and even cause BSODs (Blue Screen Of Death).

Sorry for being so verbose with my posts.

 

[disasterarea]

I am having a real problem. I just purchased a Q9550 Processor, but on my Gigabyte board with F13 BIOS, I cannot get the processor to overclock at all. It works fine at its stock speed, but if I raise the FSB by 5 points, the machine just reboots and loads the original BIOS settings. This is very frustrating. I had no problems overclocking the E6600 Duo Core, but cannot get it to budge with the Q9550. Does anybody know why I am having this problem? Is it a limitation with the Gigabyte Board? It has been a good motherboard for me. If it is the board, can someone recommend a motherboard that would work well with the Quad? Thank you very much!

Problem ist simple with the 965P DQ6 Board because it's the North or Southbridge which is not able to handle the OC.
Someone in a german forum figured that out.