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Overclock my Q6600

D

darksonic

Gawd
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
677
Hello there. Long time lurker, just now registered (yet again) to make this post (yet again) because I can't take it anymore. My Q6600 refuses to overclock at all and I've decided that I'm just doing something wrong. I know you guys here know what you're doing when it comes to overclocking so I figured if everyone here can't get my stupid processor to overclock then it just must be a crap CPU. My system is as follows:

Thermaltake Tsunami
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L
Q6600 (B3)
Thermalright ultra-120 eXtreme
4gigs (2x2)OCZ Reaper DDR21066
Diamond Radeon 4870 512mb

Now I know the B3's are known for horrible overclocking but I figure I should be able to get to at least 2.6 but no, everything I try will not let the computer boot. I figure I'm just retarded. There's gotta be someone with the same mobo as me that has overclocked here, right?

Thanks guys!
 
Gigabyte has this stupid dummy mode on it, it doesn't let you alter the bus speed even 1mhz, I'm pretty much clueless on how to eliminate this feature on that board though.
 
RADEoN said:
Gigabyte has this stupid dummy mode on it, it doesn't let you alter the bus speed even 1mhz, I'm pretty much clueless on how to eliminate this feature on that board though.
Click to expand...

You're kidding? Well no wonder I wasn't able to get anywhere with overclock. I actually was able to get it to 2.43 but for some reason my PCI wireless card started acting odd when it was set to that.
 
I'm almost 100 percent certain it's gigabyte that does that, search around in the motherboards subsection of the forums to find the answer. I think you need to clear the CMOS before you do anything, but like I said I'm not totally certain.
 
That's just unfortunate. Read around Tom's and some people claim that it overclocks just fine. It would be my luck to get a bad board. :(
 
i think i have the same board as your or a similar and i am able to overclock. Its been awhile since i have looked at the bios but there has to be a setting your are over looking.
 
I have before, although I just updated the bios so I'll try that again. I'll be back home on Monday to try this stuff out. Anyone have recommendations on what I should set my RAM to?
 
If all else fails pull the cmos battery, unplug both 24 and 4 pin connectors and let the board sit for a good 30 minutes. That'll ensure a complete reset. Sometimes that works with correcting the Gigabyte "protection" mode, sometimes not.
 
I have an EP45-DS3L currently, and it has that nasty little 333 MHz bug for the FSB. If I set it for 333 exactly, no dice, won't even POST, just resets 3 times then restarts back to stock settings. However...

If I set it for 334, or 332, it works fine, like a charm. Slightly higher temps of course, but it's stable with Prime95 for 2 hours at 3.01 GHz, with my Patriot Viper DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 then pushed to ~1002 at 5-5-5-12 and no issues.

Not sure exactly what the OP is doing, but if he's shooting for 333 x whatever multiplier, try changing the FSB to 332 or 334, don't use 333 exactly.

I had no luck for 2 days with this setup till I saw someone make mention of it - because I remember a similar little glitch from years past with some Abit and Asus boards. I thought "It can't be that simple" and set it for 334 and never looked back. That was 3 days ago, it's been running 24/7 since then without issues at 3.01 GHz/1002 MHz.

The EP35-DS3L might have that same little bug, it's worth looking into.

Can't hurt to try it. :D
 
The B3 Q6600 are just fine for overclocking, they just run hotter and might not OC as high, but 3.0ghz should be reasonable for any Q6600. My B3 did 3.6ghz stable, needed close to 1.5v in BIOS to do it and ran up to 70c under load - but it did it.

To enable the "advanced" overclocking features of the Gigabyte BIOS, you need to hit "Alt-F1" (at least on my EP45-UD3P board). Without doing that, you'll get FSB adjustments but not the full run of options for ram timings, MCH voltage, Vcore, etc, etc. I've never worked with an EP35, but my plain old P35-DS3L had no problems at all running a Q6600 at 3.0 or 3.2 ghz.
 
Thanks for the help guys. My issue right now is it won't take any overclock. 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, no dice on any. Does what Joe Average said - restarts three times and then defaults everything.

@HydroBudz - I'll try that, thanks.

All of my settings are visible actually. Although I have to manually set my RAM's timings - should I leave it at auto if I'm overclocking? I must admit the last time I truly overclocked anything it was my old Athlon 2500+ Barton. Back then it was much simpler.
 
Manual timings are fine as long as you're also manually setting the RAM speed ratio and using it to keep the RAM freq low so you can rule out that's not what's holding you back....
 
Do let me know if that fixed your issue. I know a couple other people with the same problem and it worked for 2 but not for 1.

Damn Gigabyte and their crazy ass motherboards. LOL
 
Set your FSB to 333, set your RAM multiplier to 3, set your timings manually to the memory spec, set PCIe frequency to 100, set GMCH & FSB to +1, increase the DDR2 voltage to the higher end of your RAM's voltage range (it starts at 1.8v, so go from there). Also increase your CPU voltage to 1.35 (for now, can lower it as needed once it's stable).

Give that a shot. Should work, no problem. If you still have issues I'd say it either the motherboard or CPU.

Also, is that 4GB of ram in 4x1GB sticks or 2x2GB stick? If you have 4 sticks in there try taking 2 out.
 
Wow, it booted right up. Awesome! Thanks guys! My temps are exactly the same as they were before too.
 
darksonic said:
Wow, it booted right up. Awesome! Thanks guys! My temps are exactly the same as they were before too.
Click to expand...

Now you can start to tweak your voltages as I'm sure the CPU probably doesn't need all of that 1.35v. Also, if you hit F11 in the BIOS I think it is you can save those settings to a profile. Should the OC become unstable and revert back to stock you can go into your BIOS, hit F12 and load those settings back.

You might not even need the +.1v to GMCH or FSB. I know I didn't at 3Ghz. Like I said, start testing for stability and adjusting voltages as needed.

good luck and congrats! :)
 
You won't notice any difference between 1000 and 1066. You'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between 800 and 1066, only in synthetic benchmarks. It just gives you more headroom to OC while keeping memory synced. But with a Q6600 it won't matter anyways.
 
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