EZ Overclock advice for E6700

U

UltimaBoB

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 24, 2006
Messages
215
After reading the OC guide above my head hurts a bit.

I have an E6700 CPU at 2.66 ghz stock speeds. I have a copper heat sink, Antec P180 case, 9800Gx2 GPU. I have only the 3 stock fans in my case and no extra cooling aside from the aftermarket copper heat sink & fan + thermal paste on the CPU. All were put in by a tech - I'm clueless.

Is there any way to do a very easy, simple and LIGHT OC of my CPU like to 2.9 GHZ or 3.0 Ghz. I'd like to add as little heat as possible while dealing with as few variables as possible. I'd prefer to avoid dealing with say memory timings altogether etc...

My board is a gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L .

Any help is appreciated.
 
State exactly what heatsink you have. Knowing what it's made out of does me approximately zero good. Failing a make/model, take a couple pictures of it.

That said, an E6700 should be good to 3Ghz even on the stock cooler, so you should be fine.

....wait for your head to stop hurting. Re-read the OC guide.

In short, you want to raise FSB, maybe raise vcore a little bit (~.05 to .10 over stock, if that, stock being the VID of your chip which the OC guide should tell you how to find) and make sure that the FSB/RAM divider is set so that your RAM doesn't run too fast. That's about it.
 
Be nice to the newbie please :)

Thye reason I didn't give out much info. is that I was hoping that for such a small overclock, there might be a simple way to do it without having to get into voltages and playing with the memory.

Apparently, unless you have a multiplier that can go higher (and apparently I don't) ther is no fast and dirty overcolock. All involve the same processes - just small ones tend to be stable off the bat and involve less playing around with the settings to find stability. Do I have that correct?

IOW to get to even 3.0 I am going to have to understand all the processes in the guide, learn about my BIOS, find out what kind of memory I have, etc...I got that right too?

Quick question then: If I am at 1920x1200 rez using AA and AF with a 9800GX2, will a stock E6700 be slowing me down or bottlenecking me? It has been suggested to me that it isn't that simple and that even at high rez, CPUs below 3.0 ghz can slow your FPS in RPG games that I am playing when you get lots of AI controlled monsters on the screen or during other places in the game. On the other hand, many say that a 2.67 GHZ CPU won't bottleneck my games at all at high rez with my settings.

All I care about is the games. If I won't benefit from an OC much then it isn't worth it.

My after-market heat sink is small and I only have the 3 stock fans in my Antec P180b with default settings + thermal paste. I tend to feel that in general I might not have enough cooling for my 9800Gx2 so I'm kinda worried about heat even at stcock CPU speeds. With my GPU fan set to 80% I'm already idling at 51 degrees core CPU temp according to Speedfan I think.
 
I'd just leave it at stock. 300Mhz either way isn't going to make a substantial difference in any title, and will just add a little more heat in a case that's apparently having minor heat issues already.

You will at least need to understand how FSB and RAM speeds are connected, and possibly a little about vcore, to OC, yes. In short, you will need to understand the OC guide.

Until you get a bigger/better heatsink (or at least learn exactly what heatsink you have) I'd leave things at stock.
 
How do I find out what kind of memory I have? It is OCZ and DDR2 but not sure about the speed.

BTW do you agree with the thrust of this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1298647

It suggests that the common wisdom that says that CPUs won't bottleneck in games at high rez is in fact untrue. I'm wondering if I need more CPU.
 
Here's another guide that might help:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1169366

And OP, that IS silent-circuit being nice. LOL! :D

BTW what HSF do you have? Don't you have the original receipt, box, or picture of it? People do have different definitions of small.

Also, use CoreTemp to confirm the CPU temperatures given by Speedfan. Use Orthos or OCCT to load your CPU. Then check CoreTemp and Speedfan for your CPU temperatures under that load.

And no a game does not count as a heavy load. At least most games anyway.

Use CPU-Z to check out what RAM you have. Look under the memory tab. Please post a screenshot for us as well.

Still reading through that link. Might want to read this link as well:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI2MiwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
 
I'm playing NWN2 (Neverwinter Nights 2) right now and it has very poorly optimized code. No one, not even I, can run the game on max settings. So I'm wondering if boosting my CPU might not help me. That is the first thing I guess I need to find out.

That being said, I'll use some of those programs you mentioned to evaluate my heat situation + post the specs on my heat sink. I might still try the OC - but I guess the first step is to see where my heat is at @ stock speeds since if that is an issue, you can't OC at all until it is solved.

3 Qs

1. How do I print screen in the Bios to show settings?

2. What are the best temp measuring programs? Should I measure after gaming for awhile to check load? Or will the good programs simulate load and check temps?

3. Is there any way to increase the fan speed on my Antec P180 case fans?
 
Thanks for the help so far.

Figured out how to set my case fans. But turns out the CF900 heatsink that my tech got me sucks. The most I can get the fan to spin is at 1200 RPM. That is using P95 and I get to 67 or so degrees average at load with it sometimes going to 69. This is with all 3 of my case fans on the high setting and my 9800Gx2 @ 95% speed. (machine is fairly loud). Supposedly the thermal paste that comes with it that the tech used sucks too. Idles is 44 or so degrees - also too high.

So no OCing for me until I get new paste, a proper cooler, and maybe new case fans and/or a PCI-E fan to sit below my 9800Gx2.
 
Makes sense. I'd recommend the Xigmatech Rifle 120mm HSF, the ZeroTherm Nirvana NV120, or the Noctua HSF that [H] reviewed not long ago. Any of those should do very well for you, and aren't crazy huge.

To answer earlier questions:
1. You can't print-screen in BIOS you must either write it down or take a picture with a camera. Yes, I know this is annoying -- I wish they'd sort something out to allow printscreen to work.
2. You can use Prime95 to load your CPU ("Torture Test" with "Small FFTs") and CoreTemp or RealTemp to read temperatures. Prime95 will give higher temperatures than pretty much any game though -- it gives true 100% load numbers. If your machine is stable under Prime95 Small FFTs load you don't need to worry about in games.
3. If you're still using the original Antec TriCool fans, connect them via molex to the PSU directly rather than via the fan headers on the motherboards, and set the little switches on them to "high". That said I'd recommend you buy a new set of fans -- the TriCools are not very good, and replacing them with $3-5 a piece Yate Loon low speed 120mms is not very expensive. I would get 5 or 6, just to have a spare. That's what I did with my P180 when I had one and it worked well.

And yeah -- what Danny said -- this is me nice. ;) (Seriously, I didn't think I was that bad...)
 
Thanks a bunch. Nah I was just joking before - mostly I was making the point that I knew I wasn't offering much info. or trying to understand the OC guide very hard because before I got into that I wanted to know if there was a simple way to do a slight OC. Unfortunately, no hehe.

I opened up a new thread on my heat issues so as to keep things more focused. I'd really appreciate any input there such as what you think about the HS I have and also, how to set up the fans in my P180 - which slots, blowing in or out, etc... The tri-cools on high are pretty noisy when the Gx2 gets going lol. And no idea how I'd set up 5 fans in that case.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1299041
 
Man, you really need to pop your hardware cherry! I remember popping mine by taking the cooler off of my old AMD athlon XP processor to see what the cpu looked like. I didn't even replace the paste when putting it back on, heh. I remember when you were posting about your x1950xtx troubles, I see you solved that with a 9800GX2! Now go ruin something on your computer :cool:
 
lol I totally do need to get my hands dirty.

But I'm working in Korea and don't speak the language. I use the one Korean tech I know who understands high-end stuff and speaks English. But I spend a significant amount on service fees to him. But he knows where to find all the stuff here. He isn't really very good at all the details. I'm always catching stuff he missed after I post on forums and investigate things. But right now I still need him.

When I get back to Canada where I speak the language I will definitely start doing more stuff on my own since it will be a lot easier for me to get help if I screw up. That being said, I've been learning a lot lately.
 
Just a note here. I have my E6700 running at 3.5 using a Zalman 9500. I've bumped the voltage a couple of clicks but all in all it runs fine at 3.5 ... Oh and Orthos stable for hours as well. Temps run from idle at 28c to 45c under load.
 
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