overclocking my q9300- help needed

[philbar71]

ok well my specs are in sig i have all ready been playing around in the bios a little bit and learning it. i have the latest bios for my board, so i'm covered there.

but the first thing i am seeing is that my ram does not like to go over 1600 mhz the cpu seems fine at 1600 fsb with my mem divider at 5:6 ratio with the ram running at 960mhz timings are 5-5-5-12 the CPU is at 3ghz exactly. but this is where i seem to hit a wall. any thing over 425mhz fsb on the cpu and it locks up immediately. so i'm stuck. i have tried loosening the timings and it still locks up. i wish these p45 were like nvidia boards where you can run the mem and cpu fsb unlinked. it would make the overclocking a whole lot easier.

any thoughts on how to hit 3.5ghz with this thing. i ran a super pi run and got 16.7 sec at 3ghz so i'm on the right track. right now i'm running at 3ghz on cpu and mem is at 960mhz, it seems rock stable.

 

[Evolv]

Try a different FSB Strap.

 

[philbar71]

FSB strap? these new bios options are confusing.

 

[Evolv]

Yea, it might be hidden within your bios maybe. I think yours might be something like 2.000A, 2.000B, 2.000C, and 2.000D. Which stand for 200, 266, 333, and 400 straps. I would try the C or D strap since you're trying for 400Mhz+

 

[philbar71]

ohh i see what youare talking about. i think i'm on a b strap like 2.000 or something. that acts as the FSB : DRAM bus ratio correct?

 

[Evolv]

Correct, you get different ratios. And they also loosen the north bridge timings, I think, not positive.

 

[philbar71]

north bridge timings? do you mean ram timings?

 

[Evolv]

Ah, yup I know for certain that the north bridge's internal latencies loosen to allow greater stability.

 

[philbar71]

hmm what might that option be called?

 

[Evolv]

Your north bridge has an internal clock speed and latencies just like your CPU and memory. The FSB of your north bridge can be found by dividing your original CPU multiplier by your set CPU multiplier and then multiplying by your FSB.

7.5/7.5 x 400 = NB FSB 1600Mhz

The higher your NB FSB gets the higher the strap you should use. So in your case I would use the 2.000D (400) strap.

You'll have to mess around with the memory multi to see what works for the FSB DRAM ratio though.