q6600 at 3.6ghz?

right now i have an [email protected] and a crappy gigabyte board with 2gb of ddr2-800. I was looking to upgrade to a q6600 and hopefully get it up to 3.6ghz with a DFI board and 4gb of ddr2-800 or 1066

is it reasonable to expect the q6600 to go up to 3.6ghz? The cooling would be something like a thermalright ultra 120 extreme or a noctua

i doubt the board is your problem, what cooling/motherboard/psu/settings are you using to try to get 3.6ghz?

my e6600 (dual core) has an arctic 7 pro (?) / motherboard is a gigabyte 965p-ds3 / psu = 850w zalman settings = 366x9 @ 1.24v.. or something close to that voltage. load is about 59c

But I don't really care about that, I plan on getting a new motherboard/ram/cpu sometime this week. It's either a q6600 or an e8500.The e8500 will run faster but less cores, but going with another dual core this late in the game seems a little iffy.

Seems like a bit of a waste of money no? 3.3 vs potential 3.6? Especially in a time where quads are absolutely not being used to their full potential..

as previously mentioned, you won't see much of a difference between 3.3 and 3.6. but if you have to get it there (i'm that guy) ... I would recommend either an Asus or DFI board, make sure it has at least an 8 phase power management area, you will need it. I also must emphasize cooling. I love the Xigmatek 1283 i'm using and it's much cheaper than the two you mentioned. I recently went from a Cooler Master Centurion 5 to an Antec 900 case. With all things equal, the Antec allowed me to go from 3.42 to 3.6. Not a huge difference, but it also runs cooler at 3.6 than it used to at 3.42.

Last nite it took me about 20 minutes to get a Q6600 + P45-DS3R + Freezer 7 pro + 2 x 2GB Gskill to 3.5 GHz with Vcore at 1.300 MCH at 1.160 and everything else on auto. (333 strap 390 FSB. )

Tried 9 x 400 and 9 x 405 @ 1.325 with 400 and 333 strap and it would not do it.

Also noticed you cannot make huge jumps in FSB without reboot problem but if you start off low and then just give it +10MHz FSB, reboot, rinse and repeat the board will climb right up there. I am guessing during boot it is adjusting all kinds of timing parameters and big jumps or just banging in some numbers makes it choke (constant reboot cycle and revert to defaults. ) .

Customers board so I just backed off to 8 x 410 and it runs like a dream at 1.25V Vcore and is not even breaking a sweat.

Whatever you buy, download the manual and do the math with the available memory multiplers and the speed rating of the memory you intend to buy. I would have likeed to have stayed on the high side of 3.4GHz but I had to either way OC the memory or underclock it. There was no available multiplier to get me just a bit above stock memory speed and as it is CL5 memory loosening the timings was not a option I wanted to use.

Lots of boards have really bad vdroop with quads. Stick with Asus boards that have the line load calibration and easy pencil mods. My GB DS3R was crap for my Q6600 but my pencil modded P5K-E runs it great with little droop.

just don't forget vdroop, in general, is supposed to be there. asus does have the loadline calibration, which is nice, but many will recommend not disabling it. i personally have never messed with it.

Running a GA-P35 DS3R here since last July. In November went with a Q6600 @ 3.6, 400x9 FSB.Not had 1 lick of trouble out of it. Been a really fast, stable board for me.

Just for reference. My non-modded ASUS P5K (p35 chipset) maxed out around 3.4 with my q6600 G0, but my P5E (X38 chipset) can push it to 3.7 with stability.

I had trouble getting good OC with DDR2-800. Once I switch to DDR2-1066. It was no problem getting to 3.5 on air.

I had my Q6600 running a 3.6 24/7 stable for a couple months back last year, on water. It just depends on your cooling and how many volts you're willing to put into it

I have a GA-P35-DS3L and the max I can get it to stable is 3.2 if I'm really lucky. I just run it at 9x333 at 1.285 24/7. The vdroop on this board is pretty bad.

SiG357 said:

I had trouble getting good OC with DDR2-800. Once I switch to DDR2-1066. It was no problem getting to 3.5 on air.

Click to expand...

a 1:1 ratio should remedy that. 800 speed should be fine.

I get 3.6 out of my GO pretty easy on my MSI P35 board and I've ran benchmarks as high as 4.0 on the thing........

See sig.. and I am testing at 3.72+.. been running at 3.72 for almost a day now with no problems.

Time to test higher.