Unstable Q6600 @ 3GHz?

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dave39

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Hey guys, I have been OCing my q6600 and things weren't going too bad but I can't get it to run Prime95 for more than 5 minutes without getting an error. I have the g0 stepping and a P5K mobo along with a Zalman9500 heatsink (temps idle @ 26deg) For ram im using Buffalo Firestix PC2 6400 2GB, great OCing ram from reviews and everything should be just fine.. but nope.. like I said, unstable. I am fairly new to this so could someone please help? I want my cpu @ 3GHz becuz i know it can for a joke with the temps that i get.
 
what speed and timings is your ram set to?

Also, you might need to look up settings to disable/enable in advanced bios settings for that P5K. Some settings will interfere or benefit your overclock. I'm only familiar with the Gigabyte S3 series, so I can't help you there.

Also, could just be faulty ram, I'd do some memory testing, and try Orthos instead of Prime95. Get the version that stresses two cores with one session, and since you have 4 cores, run two sessions of it

I'm assuming with Prime95 you're running 4 instances, right? I wouldn't know, I'm not too familiar with Prime95, I know with the regular version of Orthos you have to open and run a new session for each core. Some people say that Prime95 is Orthos without the GUI, I doubt that, because people get different results from one to the other. I'm sure there's something different about the algorithm that will yield different results. I've heard people say that Prime95 gets errors quite easily, while Orthos will run for a lot longer, when you're right at the edge of your overclocking limit. Plus, you're on air man, don't expect 4GHz, although your should get to about 3.4GHz.

Another important thing is to check your voltages on both ram and cpu.
 
Also, have you boosted the voltage on the memory at all? Most p35 boards set the voltage at 1.8 which is probably at the very bottom if not actually undervolting the memory.
 
alot of my stuff is on auto currently becuz i was hoping that it would just bump itself to watever it needed for the overclock.. that doesn't seem to be the case tho.. im using 333mhz X 9 multi. 1.32 v and Ram voltage is at auto... maybe I should juice it a bit?
 
oh yeah, definitely, but don't go past 2.2v on the ram though, and that vcore looks like it needs a little boost.

as for the settings set to auto, you need to google up your board and find out what other overclockers are putting their settings to. Anything that regulates the clock speed while the computer's idle or claims to give a "performance boost" is generally a no-no.

and always remember, a 1:1 FSB/memory ratio is best for system stability
 
As general voltage settings go, +.2 for memory, +.1 for everything else is pretty safe and should stabilized everything.
 
Merkwurdigliebe said:
I'm assuming with Prime95 you're running 4 instances, right? I wouldn't know, I'm not too familiar with Prime95, I know with the regular version of Orthos you have to open and run a new session for each core. Some people say that Prime95 is Orthos without the GUI, I doubt that, because people get different results from one to the other. I'm sure there's something different about the algorithm that will yield different results. I've heard people say that Prime95 gets errors quite easily, while Orthos will run for a lot longer, when you're right at the edge of your overclocking limit. Plus, you're on air man, don't expect 4GHz, although your should get to about 3.4GHz.

The reason why Prime95 gets errors easily, is probably the settings. If they're using the latest version of it, they have to set to "memory to use", lower. It's default at 1750MB of RAM usage, and it can error, even at stock speeds. I use Prime95, and in my opinion, it's better than Orthos, for quad cores, because it natively supports four instances. Rather than opening two and setting them to two cores each. I set the memory usage to 1024MB of RAM usage, and it's better that way. For Prime95 users, I suggest setting RAM usage to 1024MB, under the custom test option.
 
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