My Q6600 (non G0)

trixdout

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Feb 1, 2012
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So I believe I have a basic B3 chip, but am not really sure. Through CPU-Z, it says I have a B3 but with a revision G0. So in reality I don't know what that means. I also ust have a basic P5k motherboard, not the deluxe. On the white label on the mobo, it has green in parentheses. I'm running OCZ 4gb ram DDR2, a Cooler Master V6 GT cooler on the Q6600 chip I got, with a Nvidia 8800 GT GPU, with a 650watt PSU.

My question is, is my Q6600 chip a G0 stepping (CPU-Z shows G0 next to revision).
Secondly, can I overclock the Q6600 even if it is not G0 stepping? If so, how far?
Thirdly, how much can my mobo support of the overclocking if anything at all?

Would love to get this info asap. Sorry for some of the noob questions. I was getting the parts 5 years ago kind of in the dark. Also if this helps, the manufacture date of the cpu was 7/3/07seen through the BIOS settings.

ANY AND ALL HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
 
Don't know your overclocking headroom? Only one way to find out: Overclock that bitch.


Seriously, though: You won't damage anything if you leave your voltages at stock. See where you start running into trouble and THEN ask questions. :D
 
My non G0 goes to 3.6GHz. Anymore and it's too hot to be worth it. 3.2GHz is better for long-term operation. You should be able to hit at least 3.0GHz on stock voltage. The biggest limiting factor for you may be your motherboard. The best overclocking results for S775 is usually found on P45 chipsets. Yours is a P35 chipset. I heard of Q6600s that would do 3.8GHz on a P45 and only 3.2GHz on P35 but my memory is hazy on this one. S775 was a lifetime ago.

I own a P5K Deluxe and a EP45-UD3P. The EP45 was miles better in overclocking but that may just be my own hardware and I can't say for others.
 
Alright, I will check that later. Really only wanted to do that as a last resort.

My next question is, how good is the cooler master V6 GT cooler? Especially if I'll be overclockign to 3.0 or 3.2?
 
Alright, I will check that later. Really only wanted to do that as a last resort.

My next question is, how good is the cooler master V6 GT cooler? Especially if I'll be overclockign to 3.0 or 3.2?

What are your current temps?
 
My question is, is my Q6600 chip a G0 stepping (CPU-Z shows G0 next to revision).

I know for a fact mine is. I made sure when i bought it. this is what Coretemp says:

2mweb9i.jpg


i don't know if that helps lol. you said CPU-Z and i thought coretemp for some reason. i don't have access right now to load up CPU-Z and see what it says.
 
At 2100 rpm running at 40C, 38C, 32C, 34C for each core respectively with approximately 5% on each . I also need to place the whole tower in a bigger opening. Its a little tight.

CoreTemp-Scr.png
 
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well it seems coretemp is reporting the exact same thing as mine (as far as CPU details)

you must have a G0 ;)
 
At 2100 rpm running at 40C, 38C, 32C, 34C for each core respectively with approximately 5% on each . I also need to place the whole tower in a bigger opening. Its a little tight.

CoreTemp-Scr.png

Load it to 100% and report. ;)
 
in regard to the OP's question on OC'ing, check out the graysky's guide on C2Q overclocking. it's a pretty detailed howto.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1198647&highlight=core+overclock+guide

most q6600's will do 3.0 - 3.3GHz on stock voltages. now all G0 revisions had different VID's (voltage ID's or stock voltages) that range from low 1.2 vcore to high 1.3 vcore. the stock VID is displayed in coretemp. looking at your coretemp pic, your VID is 1.2625 which is pretty decent. lower VID chips 'generally' oc'ed better than higher VID chips b/c they'll have more headroom.

with a slight bump on vcore, a lot of q6600's did 3.6+ providing your cooling is up to it. you shouldn't exceed 70C during stress testing (prime95/intel burn test). enabling LLC (loadline calibration) will counter vdroop during load so you don't need a higher vcore to keep those higher clocks stable.

so see how far you can go with stock vcore, then if you still have some headroom with your cooler (you haven't exceed 70C), you can look at bumping your vcore to get a higher clock.
 
So my buddy helped me overclock it. Kept the FSB to 334 and it's running at a little over 3.0. Everything is smooth. Ran Prime95 overnight and at 100% fan speed on my V6 GT. With Prime95 still running and fan speed at approximately 55%. My temps don't go above 56C. See for yourself.
CoreTemp-Scr2.png


I'll run this setup for another week or so and then bump it up to 3.2.
 
well it seems coretemp is reporting the exact same thing as mine (as far as CPU details)

you must have a G0 ;)

Hell yes and I'm glad I do.

in regard to the OP's question on OC'ing, check out the graysky's guide on C2Q overclocking. it's a pretty detailed howto.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1198647&highlight=core+overclock+guide

most q6600's will do 3.0 - 3.3GHz on stock voltages. now all G0 revisions had different VID's (voltage ID's or stock voltages) that range from low 1.2 vcore to high 1.3 vcore. the stock VID is displayed in coretemp. looking at your coretemp pic, your VID is 1.2625 which is pretty decent. lower VID chips 'generally' oc'ed better than higher VID chips b/c they'll have more headroom.

with a slight bump on vcore, a lot of q6600's did 3.6+ providing your cooling is up to it. you shouldn't exceed 70C during stress testing (prime95/intel burn test). enabling LLC (loadline calibration) will counter vdroop during load so you don't need a higher vcore to keep those higher clocks stable.

so see how far you can go with stock vcore, then if you still have some headroom with your cooler (you haven't exceed 70C), you can look at bumping your vcore to get a higher clock.

This was the exact response I was hoping for. Thank you for delivering on that.
Everyone who posted in this thread, I appreciate all your help and support. Now its on to gaming.

I also gotta say that this forum is kickass. Great knowledge as been stored in all those threads. Time to start digging in there and find some rare treasures.
 
So my buddy helped me overclock it. Kept the FSB to 334 and it's running at a little over 3.0. Everything is smooth. Ran Prime95 overnight and at 100% fan speed on my V6 GT. With Prime95 still running and fan speed at approximately 55%. My temps don't go above 56C. See for yourself.
CoreTemp-Scr2.png


I'll run this setup for another week or so and then bump it up to 3.2.

looks like you have a decent q6600 with plently of headroom on your cooler for a few bumps in vcore before hitting the 70C threshold. with some luck you should be able to hit 3.4 to 3.6 without rasing the vcore too much.

on a side note, you shouldn't go above 1.45 vcore on your q6600. i doubt you'll get there tho as you would have reached the limits of your heatsink before then. a higher end air cooler or a custom water loop shouldn't have a problem dealing with that type of heat load however.
 
Ok awesome. I'm looking primarily to do 3.2 without running my heatsink 100%. I want my heatsink now to last and I don't want to be replacing the fans at all anytime soon or within 2 years. As long as I maintain them and clean them of dust they should be fine, but wear-wise I rather not run them 100% all the time when under load.

looks like you have a decent q6600 with plently of headroom on your cooler for a few bumps in vcore before hitting the 70C threshold. with some luck you should be able to hit 3.4 to 3.6 without rasing the vcore too much.

on a side note, you shouldn't go above 1.45 vcore on your q6600. i doubt you'll get there tho as you would have reached the limits of your heatsink before then. a higher end air cooler or a custom water loop shouldn't have a problem dealing with that type of heat load however.
 
q6600's were/are great chips, depending on what you do with your PC, @3+ GHz it won't have a problem dealing with most tasks.

regarding your fan hitting 100%, yeah that's pretty rare. outside stress testing, some rendering/video editing and a few game that are actually able to fully utilise all 4 cores (even then the GPU cops most of the punishment outside multi GPU setups), loading up your CPU isn't going to max your fan very often.

having said that, its good to have a nice safety buffer as you mentioned. base on the info you've provided, 3.3 - 3.4GHz should be fairly easy to reach without hitting up the vcore much. @ 3.4 is a nice 1GHz overclock. the q6600 @ 3.6Ghz is a 50% OC and was fairly common. mine did that without much fuss. fairly rare to get a 50% OC now days, not sure we'll see those days again.
 
Bring this back from the grave and also murdering it once and for. Ended up oc'ing it to about 3.4ghz. Crysis was a pain to run and let go of the build.

Plan was to upgrade to a 1080ti, but never pulled the trigger. More cost effective to get a basic laptop to do the simple college workload.

Sucks that the 8800gt that I have is almost worth 4x the Q6600 today.
 
Bring this back from the grave and also murdering it once and for. Ended up oc'ing it to about 3.4ghz. Crysis was a pain to run and let go of the build.

Plan was to upgrade to a 1080ti, but never pulled the trigger. More cost effective to get a basic laptop to do the simple college workload.

Sucks that the 8800gt that I have is almost worth 4x the Q6600 today.

I had my Q6600 (in my primary system) running at 3.6Ghz for more than ten years. I just replaced it finally when the motherboard died and I had no spare socket 775 boards to use. Best damn CPU I ever owned.

I actually still have a Q6600 running in my server. That one is running stock speeds at this point as I had no need for an overclock. Ironically enough it's running on a 965P chipset board which was released for the dual cores and not quad cores and originally had an E6400. Both my P35 chipset boards ended up dying but the older and arguably worse board is still going.
 
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I had my Q6600 (in my primary system) running at 3.6Ghz for more than three years. I just replaced it finally when the motherboard died and I had no spare socket 775 boards to use. Best damn CPU I ever owned.

I actually still have a Q6600 running in my server. That one is running stock speeds at this point as I had no need for an overclock. Ironically enough it's running on a 965P chipset board which was released for the dual cores and not quad cores and originally had an E6400. Both my P35 chipset boards ended up dying but the older and arguably worse board is still going.
Do you want my chip? For $8.99 on ebay I'll send you mine for free.
 
Do you want my chip? For $8.99 on ebay I'll send you mine for free.

Nope, I still have the three Q6600s and they all work. It's just the motherboards I lack and at this point I'm not going to worry about it. I was long overdue for an upgrade and hadn't done it because of money.

Also, had to do an edit. I should have looked over my post before submitting. I had the Q6600 running at 3.6 for more than ten years. Overclocked it to 3.6 the day I got it and it stayed there the whole time I used it.
 
Up until a little over year ago I was still using a qx9650 at 4ghz in a dfi lanparty board. its something how well the C2q preforms with a good OC.
 
I had 6 Q6600s heh.. not at once though.. Anyways they were all able to do 3600-3800 or so, except one.. I got that from a forum member who won it in an Intel contest somehow.. anyways, that Q6600 did 4000mhz with the same voltage I gave to run 3.2-3.4 on the others. It was ridiculous. The only problem was it was an insanely hot CPU. It was borderline uncontrollable at that speed, even though the voltage was low.. I ended up trading that CPU for my first i7, a 965XE E.S. I miss both CPUs. 5 out of 6 of those chips were G0, I had one B3 and it was good, I think it did 3.8, but maybe it was 3.6.
 
I got a Q6600 in my garage computer, on Windows 10. SSD. 4GB of ram. I think I got a passive HD5450 in it. It's snappy enough to listen to iTunes, watch YouTube videos and open PDF's. And that's about all I need.

It's impressive that a high end CPU from over 10 years ago is still mildly useful today. I would definitely put this over the low power Intel processors of today that operate at similar frequencies. Talking about the N-Series that show up in barebones low end trash computers.
 
The Q6600 wasn't even high end, it was the mainstream quad. I bought all three of the ones I have for $200 back then. That was a damn good price especially for the horsepower they could deliver.
 
It's impressive that a high end CPU from over 10 years ago is still mildly useful today. I would definitely put this over the low power Intel processors of today that operate at similar frequencies. Talking about the N-Series that show up in barebones low end trash computers.

This!!!

It definitely is crazy how it outperformed lots of CPU's at the time of its release and continued to keep up years after. My first ever computer build utilized it, so it definitely has more sentimental value than anything. Now I'm getting a little nostalgic with all this. I might just save the CPU and keep it as a memento.
 
Wow, I am still running a Q6600 in a legacy system. Still going strong.
 
The Q6600 wasn't even high end, it was the mainstream quad. I bought all three of the ones I have for $200 back then. That was a damn good price especially for the horsepower they could deliver.
I would not call a q6600 mid range. At that time you were doing good to have a dual core and most systems were single core still. Now it definitely wasn't a top in quad.
 
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I would not call a q6600 mod range. At that time you were doing good to have a dual core and most systems were single core still. Now it definitely wasn't a top in quad.

That's the point I'm making. As a quad it was midrange. Sure, it was a better CPU than pretty much any dual core but still only a midrange CPU. And it definitely wasn't the first time it had happened that a midrange or budget CPU was the best. I still remember the Celeron 300a I had. Those things like the Q6600s could almost always get at least a 50% overclock.
 
What was better then a Q6600? A QX6850. So that being said what made the Q6600 midrange?
 
What was better then a Q6600? A QX6850. So that being said what made the Q6600 midrange?

The fact that you could buy them all day long for around $200. That's not the price of a high end part.

There's also the Q6700, QX6700 and QX6800. The Q6600 was the second slowest quad core of that series. The Q6400 was the only quad core which was slower.
 
indeed. A few hundred MHz was the deciding factor. They all topped out at the same place anyways, you just paid for a higher stock clock.
 
Ohhhh man, glad to see this thread! I still have a Q6600 in an old gaming PC, which is now used on my entertainment system for movies and TV shows. Still have my Zelman cooler on it and it's still overclocked to 3.5Ghz with 8GB of DDR2. That PC was a beast back in the day! :) I also have an old Q9450 in another PC my wife uses every now and then, but it only had a modest OC of 3.4Ghz because I didn't have any DDR2 laying around above 800Mhz base speed. I almost want to Ebay some old DDR2-1000 and see if it could go higher now as the RAM was definitely my limiting factor... lol.
 
Nice man! I've got my old Rampage Formula and x3360. The CPU is fsb limited, as I can get 465fsb or 473 out of it.. With my old e8600 I was limited by ram, as they wouldn't do more than 1200mhz, or 600fsb. It was stable 24/7 @ 550fsb. Its been sitting in the closet for about 5 years, maybe longer.
 
Nice man! I've got my old Rampage Formula and x3360. The CPU is fsb limited, as I can get 465fsb or 473 out of it.. With my old e8600 I was limited by ram, as they wouldn't do more than 1200mhz, or 600fsb. It was stable 24/7 @ 550fsb. Its been sitting in the closet for about 5 years, maybe longer.

Whoa! I had a Rampage Formula with an e8400. I completely forgot!
 
Ahhh, the good 'ol Core 2 Quad. In my view these are still quite usable these days. I've been back on a Core 2 system for awhile now as my finances aren't good due to the great fun of aging, and yet I don't find it to be a problem at all for my usage patterns. In fact I just finished Metro Exodus and am now working on Far Cry New Dawn and both games run at 30-40 FPS @ 1366x768 which is good enough for me, though I'm sure a video card upgrade would help me alot. I love seeing what I can get this old and cheap low-end system to do though.

I'm running an Intel DP45SG, 8GB of Corsair XMS3 DDR3 at 1280MHz with fairly tight timings, and a Xeon L5420 (2.5GHz @ 1333MHz FSB, Harpertown core, and 50w TDP at stock speeds) that I did the LGA 771 to 775 mod to (also filed notches in CPU instead of hacking up the motherboard LGA socket). It now runs at 3.0GHz on a 1600MHz FSB which seems to help with the latencies between the CPU cores and northbridge/memory systems. Id push it more but this Intel board really doesn't like anything more. Even at a lowly 3.0GHz the CPU performs well enough that web-browsing, YouTube, and the gaming I do are just fine. CPU runs very cool as well using a low end cooler.

The $15 Dell R7 250 2GB GDDR3:ROFLMAO: has been BIOS modded by me, and is overclocked at 1100MHz core, and 1100MHz memory. I could push it a bit more as well, but then it starts running a bit too warm for the tiny copper cooler to deal with.

Long live Core 2 lol. Eleven years old and still going (the heart of my particular system anyways)! I threw this system together for about $80 or so after selling off my newer parts, using my existing power supply and hard drives so no complaints!
 
Yeah, at work we still have some Core 2 Duo systems running basic office tasks. The real limitation is the painfully slow HDD they are saddled with.

I know of at least one person who did video capture and editing on one up until last year o.0.
 
I threw SSDs in my Q6600 and Q9450 systems a few years back and they run great. :) That platform lasted me until I decided to upgrade when the X99 platform came out. Was probably one of the best and longest lasting intel releases I can remember.
 
I was recently looking to upgrade an old system I recently built that had an E8600 dual core. Was looking for a Q9550 and ended up with a modded Xeon X5460 for $22.
HAL-Xeon-Specs-Copy2.jpg
 
Back in the day when I was big into overclocks, I tested my e8600 at 4700-4800mhz and at those speeds it made about as much overall horsepower as a stock Q6600. In the end more cores won me over. That x5460 is pretty sweet. I was too chicken to mod a CPU just in case I messed up my socket. I should have tried because I'm not terrible with my hands, I just didn't have the confidence I do now.
 
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