OC'ing q9400 D-Quad. How do we determine...

[The_Smoking_Gun]

Hi I have had this q9400 in my Asus p45 MOBO and am looking for the specifics with respects to overclocking this.
Every where i have looked i find people boasting how far they've taken it, and others, providing the all too important cooling information and guidance, but nowhere can i find voltage settings and timing to match or OC the memory as well to produce an overall performance increase.

Can anyone please help?

ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo
Antec Three Hundred Illusion
HIS H465FT1GH Radeon HD 4650 1GB 128-bit DDR3
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) 8GB total
hec ZEPHYR ZEPHYR650 650W Continuous @ 40°
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb
Patriot Xporter XT Boost 8GB Flash Drive Ready Boost for My Win 7 Ultimate 64 operating system
Most recent updated Bios From Asus.com

This is ALL new to me so I hope someone can detail this for me, i have tried the links at the beginning of the thread but they take me to a page stating the posts do not exist!?

Thank you all!
TSG!

 

[Lmeow]

Show us the BIOS screens if you can.

 

[The_Smoking_Gun]

Hmmm, I have been working with computers longer than you have been around, and it dawns on me that my first instinct was ti say that my screen cap doesn't work during the boot sequence, how do you suggest i grab that screen?

I have been out of tech for a few years and only recently have been getting caught up to snuff on everything and prior to this age of processors, we never OC'ed anything, so this is what is all new to me, i am pretty adept with computers in general. I DO build them and am looking at the new 6 core processors in the next couple of months, and am using this recent build sort of to practice, and to have another machine on the network for my web work.

Thanks for the speedy response, let me know how i grab a bios screen though, nothing comes to mind but i wouldn't be surprised to hit myself in the head when you remind of something i may have forgotten!!

TSG!

 

[Lmeow]

With a camera.

If that's not possible, in the main screen, tell us what options there are.

 

[arthurh]

Have you had a chance to read this yet? Might be all you need.

 

[The_Smoking_Gun]

Ok am back to this again finally...man what a run, busy is an understatement.

I checked out this article you convenient ly provided but am running in to the same thing as everywhere else, they all skip the 9500 and go from Q9300 to Q9450 and no Q9400, and as i said doing this for the first time....I need to know more of what i am doing than assuming i can adopt one of those in between models, and expect it to work let alone not damage anything.

I guess what I am looking for is charting out what others have used with what results, using the combination of the AM Bios AI Tweaker and the Turbo V fine tuning or does it work the other way around?

I would like to become more adept at this before I get my next build in about a month.
It is a huge step to take, but I have profiled the hardware to use a 1366 i7 6 core processor on a few possible mb's picked so far and need to narrow them down once there are enough reviews for them to help decide, considering it is no longer small potatoes. Not that this was, in fact it was a huge step as well passing dual core all together (I think, i see my device manager on my older xp machine, has twp Pentium IV processor running @ 3.06Ghz I did not know it was a dual core, or is it just not "Duo" as in the next gen where as it was just dual Pentium IV's?)

So maybe with this clarification someone can point me in the right direction,
So far any attempts i have made blindly at that) using the turbo V under the assumption it would be configured well enough to avoid my using settings that could damage my equipment, but any combination i tried, modeling after other articles i have read but feel i am missing something because none passed the self tests, let alone led me to a new profile worth saving for a quick boost click and i am screaming, no re-boot, or at least that's the impression i got from how this is et to work.

you guys rock, thanks for any additional information that applies to this seemingly stepchild processor.

BTW in my quest i tripped over this for the guy wanting to see my BIOS, here are ALL the bios pages neatly laid out

http://motherboards.org/imageview.html?i=/images/reviews/motherboards/1902_p5_2.jpg

Hope this helps.

 

[jsc]

I checked out this article you convenient ly provided but am running in to the same thing as everywhere else, they all skip the 9500 and go from Q9300 to Q9450 and no Q9400, and as i said doing this for the first time....I need to know more of what i am doing than assuming i can adopt one of those in between models, and expect it to work let alone not damage anything.

They are all members of the same processor family. That means that they will all overclock the same. Higher binned chips tend to overclock higher.

Forget the Windows OC utilities. Learn to use the BIOS.

 

[The_Smoking_Gun]

Ahhh so that's one leg of the puzzle, Either or and not needing to try to get both to match what i have seen as examples, that is huge....as gar as clarifying for me.

Also makes the attach article from arthurh seem more sensible with no mentions of the windows oc'ing utilities Asus provides, so learning how to do it via bios I will, since that article (after going back to it and seeing half of what missed stopping at the point of not seeing my processor in the list) has very clearly marked the process out,

Can i ask WHY the manufacturer provided OC utility or "Turbo" buttons are inferior or you reccommend the bios mething instead? I rally started there because I HATE having to restart my machine LOL! I just cannot stand to be "disconnected" for even that short boot sequence period,as well as impatient for it to be up again, as they do take some time to go through the ox load process after the bios is done loading it's extension.

Plus i am too lazy to re-start more than one or twice a week and sometimes, month!

Thanks so much I'll look forward to understanding what is lacking in those utilities!

TSG!

 

[arthurh]

@ The_Smoking

My M/BD will automatically OC my Q9550 from 2.83Ghz to 3.2Ghz if I change "Auto" to "Crazy" for CPU. The only other settings I have to make are for ram.

My goal was a 4.0Ghz OC and the only way to do that was to learn how to use the OC settings in BIOS while staying within heat tolerances and Vc.

There in lies the rub. I had to take the time to learn how Vc, PLL, VTT, N/B and GTLs worked together allowing a high OC and stability within Intels heat specs for my CPU. Intels 775 C2D are really 2 dual cores on one die and they have to remain in sync during this process.

An important note for you is that even if we had the same hardware our BIOS settings would not be identical due to tolerances used during mfg of that hardware.

Lastly the hardware you choose to build a OC'n PC can and will limit how sucessful your OC will be.

Remember that the more you put in to this "Adventure" the more satisfying your results will be.

Good luck to you.

 

[jsc]

Intels 775 C2D are really 2 dual cores on one die and they have to remain in perfect sync during this process.

One example. I have a Core2 system with a Q9550 in just like arthur's - almost. I will bet that he has a CPU with an E0 core. I was unlucky enough to get one with a B3 stepping. It's not as good of an overclocker. Best I could do with stability was 3.6 GHz.

Another example: I recently put together an inexpensive office system using one of the new E6500's. Mine has a relatively high VID - one of those "tolerances used during mfg" things that arthurh was talking about. That is "luck of the draw". I describe it as winning or losing the CPU lottery. In this case, it didn't make any difference because I deliberately chose to put it in a G41 motherboard. The G41 is an economy chipset with a relatively low maximum FSB frequency. So it is "only" running at 3.66 GHz (333 MHz X 11). With that motherboard, the max I could get was 3.77 GHz. Even so, I don't expect it to drop out of SpeedStep and go to full speed very often.

 

[The_Smoking_Gun]

@ The_Smoking

My M/BD will automatically OC my Q9550 from 2.83Ghz to 3.2Ghz if I change "Auto" to "Crazy" for CPU. The only other settings I have to make are for ram

Lastly the hardware you choose to build a OC'n PC can and will limit how sucessful your OC will be.

Remember that the more you put in to this "Adventure" the more satisfying your results will be.

Good luck to you.

With all this said, and in lieu f the other mention od the "CPU lottery" what would be the nest way to go as i consider my component andidates for the afore mentioned new build using intel 6 core processor, on an ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with a Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition Gulftown 3.33GHz LGA 1366 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor and twin Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive and I'll start with 12Gb ram and work up to the 24 total.

I'll probably go with the illusion case again, love the five stock fans and with the psu making it seven, not much more should be needed, unless i go nuts swapping the heat sinks already in place with an after market cooler.

Or are there no specs worth searching for that will give me the inside peek to reduce that difference between those two tolerance start points.

Careful guys, once i get this down in my brain, my next help will be understanding WTF RAID arrays are how they work and what the numerical representations of configuring them are, as well as any pros or cons vs standard Sata drive set ups!

I appreciate all the info so far, and Arthur's article is probably going to be my study course if i can keep patient enough to work through all the references made and their meanings.

Thanks foor sticking with this thread all, i appreciate all the input!
TSG!

 

[blackpanther26]

why don't you wait a couple of months becuase SB and AMD's BD cores should be out by then and you can pick the best CPU for the money. As for overclocking. you should use the BIOS I have the Asus P5Q pro motherboard with the Q9650. I had it at 4GHz. 1.36v FSB termination I think was at like 1.22v if I remember correctly. Also you need to raise the NB voltages with. and Don't forget to keep you're ram around the Speed of 1066 because overclocking a locked CPU will result in an increased speed on the ram.

oh and another thing is you can't overclock really far on a stock Heatsink and cooler. you need to get an aftermarket cooler. Like the Tuniq tower