Quick question on Q6600 overclock

[mwalt2]

I have just started overclocking my q6600 (upgraded from p4c 3.0 ghz, so it's been awhile :)) and had a question about stability testing. I am using Prime95 with all 4 cores loaded and the "blend" test. When I was testing 3.2 ghz (8x400), I was able to run prime and still browse the internet/use other "light" programs. I'm now up to 3.4 ghz (9x378) and things like firefox really chug along while prime is running. It takes forever to just open up while prime is running. Prime is running fine with both overclocked settings and not reporting errors (I do have round off checking option enabled). What causes the different behavior between the two overclocks? Both are running the cpu at 100%, so I would think applications should behave the same. Is this normal? Thanks.

*edit - I was also wondering if it was normal for some cores to be ahead of the others in testing with prime95. For example, I once had 2 cores are on Test 5, while the other 2 are on Test 3. It seems weird to me, but maybe it's normal...

[capreppy]

When testing your CPU OC's, you should use small FFTs. I use blended when I'm testing my RAM timings.

The reason your tests are at different steps, is that you're using your system while you're doing the testing. CPU cycles are used by the processes you've got running that cause each CPU to be tested differently. If you bring up task manager, and you sort by CPU time, you'll notice that Prime95 has most of the time (assuming you started right after a reboot) and there are other processes that have some time as well.