E8400 4.0 To Q9550 4.0

on the road (not driving), but friends want to go out so i might not be able to play with my q9550 tonight :(


p35... check my sig or profile for exact mobo if it isnt showing
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Finally, I have found settings that work with my 4.0 OC and Prime95.

471x8.5
cpu vcore 1.360
cpu termination 1.300
mch core 1.300
cpu pll 1.500
dram voltage 2.00

Stock vid 1.23

Ran pretty stable for 10 hours, crappy temps with my ziggy 1284 66 degrees maximum for core 0 and 60 maximum for the rest. And now that i've actually found some settings that work with the 4.0 with a decent prime95 running time i'm gonna try going lower.
 
BETA. said:
Finally, I have found settings that work with my 4.0 OC and Prime95.

471x8.5
cpu vcore 1.360
cpu termination 1.300
mch core 1.300
cpu pll 1.500
dram voltage 2.00

Stock vid 1.23

Ran pretty stable for 10 hours, crappy temps with my ziggy 1284 66 degrees maximum for core 0 and 60 maximum for the rest. And now that i've actually found some settings that work with the 4.0 with a decent prime95 running time i'm gonna try going lower.
Click to expand...


Hey, are you running your ram at 1:1 with stock voltages on the ram and stock timings?
 
SnowBeast said:
Your P35 board will probably end up being a limiting factor like my Gigabyte P35 DS3L. It could overclock and be stable at 4Ghz on my E8400, but no matter what setting I have tried with this E0 Q9550, I can't get it stable above 3Ghz.. Going to drop a P45 board in for $85 and hope for 3.8Ghz and be happy if I do.
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Amen to that, I'm contemplating going P45 as well. I just grabbed an E0 at Microcenter too and running the same board as you, for the life of me I can not hit over 3.1 and change.

I'd probably have the bump the MCH up a bit, but I'm not comfortable at all with that because of the puny heatsink, and the massive vdroop concerns me as well.

Not a complain though, seeing as how I'm coming from an E2180, but I think a P45 is a good investment.
 
In my experience these processors EASILY will take 4.0 or even 4.2 Ghz. It's the northbridge/ram that makes it difficult to overclock these things. Make sure you have some really nice ram as it helps out quite a bit. I was limited to ~3.85 Ghz on my old Q9550 because of this. Too bad the Q9650 is so much more expensive, that extra multiplier would have been handy. I was on a Asus P45 board .. P5Q-E it was.
 
Time to uninstall the e8400 and install the Q9550! Finally!!!!! I don't even care if it's an outdated CPU! :D
 
extide said:
In my experience these processors EASILY will take 4.0 or even 4.2 Ghz. It's the northbridge/ram that makes it difficult to overclock these things. Make sure you have some really nice ram as it helps out quite a bit. I was limited to ~3.85 Ghz on my old Q9550 because of this. Too bad the Q9650 is so much more expensive, that extra multiplier would have been handy. I was on a Asus P45 board .. P5Q-E it was.
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I dont see how you could really have a hard time oc'ing a q9550 due to ram. if you buy ANY 1066 it will be fine, at 4.0 your ram is either sub 1000 or 12** which you can't hit.
 
crawlgsx said:
I dont see how you could really have a hard time oc'ing a q9550 due to ram. if you buy ANY 1066 it will be fine, at 4.0 your ram is either sub 1000 or 12** which you can't hit.
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At 1:1, 4Ghz isn't even full 1066mhz, so it's unlikely it's the memory holding you back. The 470+ FSB on the board is what's going to limit you.
 
Installed, but yet to OC it. Here are temps at stock speeds. Using AS5 and it only has about an hour running. Hopefully it'll drop down a little more before I OC it tomorrow after the AS5 sets in.

CoreTemp-Scr.png
 
^^^ What cooler? Temps seem kind of high for stock settings as that's about what I get at idle with 3.8Ghz (runs 2.7Ghz with speedstep).
 
Tuniq tower 120. I really hate this thing now... that and my case for being so small for it.

I almost have to break something to get it to fit and tighten it up. For some reason I always feel that it isn't seated right.

Anyways, I got it to 3.6ghz, but haven't tried to check if it's stable yet. I played L4D2 this morning for about an hour and it played perfectly. I know I tried 3.8ghz and got it booted to desktop, but when I ran the Windows performance test I got the BSOD. I'm gonna have to play with it a lot to try to get the 3.8ghz. I doubt I will ever see 4ghz, lol. On 3.6ghz my vcore is about 1.4v. Is that the most I wanna put into it? My RAM voltage is 2.1 with the divider at 333/667. Max temps on l4d2 were about 55C and idle were about 42C.

Not home now, but later today when I am home I'm gonna mess with it again and reseat it, which will suck because I have to take everything out (including mobo) to do this.

I have a DFI LP UT P35 T2R, which probably doesn't help me, but after looking around online I seen people have gotten 4ghz on this. 6 also.
 
That's an awfully high vCore for 3.6.. your temps will be fine as long as you keep at or below 75'C full load. Threshold for the Q9550 is higher anyway.
 
I don't think it's the board holding you back. It's capable of 500+mhz on the FSB.
 
I've been trying to reach the elusive 4.0+ o/c on my Q9550 (sig). I can get into Windows at 4.1, but as soon as I run Prime95, I hard lock. Sometimes I will bsod with the 124 code.
 
I give up, i've tinkered with a variety of settings trying to lower the vcore, VTT and MCH volts. I started to mess with NB reference and CPU pll and still could not find anything good. I'm just gonna stick with

471 x 8.5
1.36 vcore
1.300 MCH core
1.300 VTT

every other setting set to stock/auto

I wouldn't be so bothered if my temps weren't crap. It's kind of odd because this chip which has a lower stock VID seems to run much hotter than the other chips(@ 4.0 ghz, with similiar bios settings or even higher) I had which had higher stock VID's, the difference is with this new chip with the stock vid of 1.23, it actually gets stable 10 hr in prime.

My core 0 temps reach up to 70 degrees and the other 3 reach the 60's while my CPU temp reads 60. But, during a session of Prime95 the CPU and core 0 have reach 73 degrees! Freakin insane.
 
BETA. said:
My core 0 temps reach up to 70 degrees and the other 3 reach the 60's while my CPU temp reads 60. But, during a session of Prime95 the CPU and core 0 have reach 73 degrees! Freakin insane.
Click to expand...

Thats just fine 70C is acceptable to these chips, as the old AMD's 60C was hot. They have built in thermal slowdown at near 90c
 
friend'scatdied said:
That's an awfully high vCore for 3.6.. your temps will be fine as long as you keep at or below 75'C full load. Threshold for the Q9550 is higher anyway.
Click to expand...

I still need to play with it more, so hopefully I can get it lower. It seems right in line with this review. I'll try to squeeze more out of it anyways at 1.4.
 
Smashed Ixnay said:
I still need to play with it more, so hopefully I can get it lower. It seems right in line with this review. I'll try to squeeze more out of it anyways at 1.4.
Click to expand...

yeah ~1.4vcore with an upped NB/VTT should easily be able to hit 3.8, with 4.0 within reach.
 
on the 3.8ghz i was able to get it stable, but anything more than that I get BSOD. I was able to get to my desktop on 1.45v at 4ghz, but I crashed. I really don't want to go past 1.4, so looks like I'll leave it at 1.4v till I can reseat my heatsink and hope it lowers my temps some.
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kirbyrj said:
At 1:1, 4Ghz isn't even full 1066mhz, so it's unlikely it's the memory holding you back. The 470+ FSB on the board is what's going to limit you.
Click to expand...

I mentioned northbridge/ram. Dont really know for sure if it was my ram, or my mobo that was holding me back. My ram was really early 1066, and was a little shady.
 
a Q9550 @ 4ghz paired with an overclocked 4890 running Battlefield bad Company 2 @ 1680x1050 should preform reasonably well right?
 
neokeelo said:
a Q9550 @ 4ghz paired with an overclocked 4890 running Battlefield bad Company 2 @ 1680x1050 should preform reasonably well right?
Click to expand...

yes it will.

I have settings maxed on BC2 @ 1920x1080 with a 4870 X2 and it runs just fine. The game currently has some performance issues that hopefully are resolved before release but I wouldn't sweat it.
 
Well my q9550 came in and wow what a cpu. I got it to 3.2 ghz with everything on auto (just cranked up the fsb) I'm currently waiting to get some 1066mhz ram and overclock this thing to at least 4.0ghz+
 
I wouldn't use auto settings. They tend to overvolt your hardware. I would set your hardware at their default settings. Put the ram at 1:1 ratio. You should be able to hit 3.6 - 3.8 at the default settings. Try for 4.0 and tweak the settings once you get your new ram. Good luck.
 
lodingi said:
I wouldn't use auto settings. They tend to overvolt your hardware. I would set your hardware at their default settings. Put the ram at 1:1 ratio. You should be able to hit 3.6 - 3.8 at the default settings. Try for 4.0 and tweak the settings once you get your new ram. Good luck.
Click to expand...


I'm limited to 3.4 with my current ram if it's at 1:1. I will change everything from auto to default though.


edit: After this I went into the bios and cranked up the fsb up some more and it's currently running at 3.4ghz so far stable. I will run prime 95 for a few hours the leave it on over night.

Setting are
400x8.5
2.0D making 1:1 ratio
All voltages on default.
 
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I have a Question. I bought a Q9550 with OCZ RAM and Asus PQ5 Pro (the same model motherboard which is in my sig). Am I going to have to reinstall Windows going from my e8400 to this new cpu and ram? I shouldn't have to right since im using the same motherboard. Anything I should check beforehand?
 
neokeelo said:
I have a Question. I bought a Q9550 with OCZ RAM and Asus PQ5 Pro (the same model motherboard which is in my sig). Am I going to have to reinstall Windows going from my e8400 to this new cpu and ram? I shouldn't have to right since im using the same motherboard. Anything I should check beforehand?
Click to expand...

Make sure the bios your run supports the processor. Other than that you should be good to go.
 
I have just upgraded from e8400 (fantastic CPU) to Q9550 since I do not have enough money for a new platform. So far so good, I am hitting 3.6Ghz with just 1.2500 and 425FSB. I should not have any problems getting 3.8GHz but 4GHz might be a problem.


Edit - I can hit 3.8Ghz with vcore set to 1.2500 in bios. I am quite happy with the results. (-:
 
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Just wanted to say thanks for the info in the thread.. was able to over clock my new q9550 to 3.8Ghz.
 
loxety said:
Just wanted to say thanks for the info in the thread.. was able to over clock my new q9550 to 3.8Ghz.
Click to expand...

3.8Ghz was a sweet spot for me also. Ran perfectly stable and with a low VCore. Anything higher required a lot more voltage.
 
kirbyrj said:
3.8Ghz was a sweet spot for me also. Ran perfectly stable and with a low VCore. Anything higher required a lot more voltage.
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Ya this is where mine has ran for about a year now. Still going strong.
 
q9550 3.833Ghz on MSI P7N SLI

BIOS settings
fsb 1800mhz
cpu + 0.1625
mem 1.90
vtt 1.50
nb 1.51

IntelBurnTest v2.4 (linpack)
Completed 5 runs in Xtreme stress mode

Temps
idle mid 30's
load mid to upper 50's

Zalman 9700 with AS5

I had a e6400 c2d at 3.2ghz.. this new cpu made the fps in Battlefield Bad Company 2 go from avg of 50 to 80 at 1920x1200
 
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