q9550 OC: What's holdin me back?

M

Mnx4

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2005
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Rig's in the sig. Just got a q9550 today and immediately got it to 3.4GHz (8.5 x 400FSB) on air with no changes in voltage. Temps are around 50C average from IBT and Prime. I'm happy since the speed is still 200MHz better than my e2180 OC, but i've been trying to do a little experimenting to get it to 3.6 or better.

However, I've tried just about everything to get it past 420 FSB but no dice. No change in MCH (+0.3), FSB(+0.3), DDR (+0.2), or Vcore (1.32) seemed to get it to boot past the vista loading screen. I've got most of the basics down, like disabling speed step etc. I'm not gonna bang my head against the wall because I'm guessing it's my ram (ddr-800). Or am I not trying something?
 
There are a million different variables in achieving high overclocks so it's hard to cover everything. However you didn't mention anything about your CPU termination voltage (VTT). This is a critical voltage that needs raising to get the CPU stable at higher FSB's. If your motherboard doesn't have a CPU VTT adjustment then you're probably stuck at 420. Judging by your sig you seem to be a Gigabyte fan. Their GA-EP45-UD3P board is an excellent and inexpensive platform for overclocking the Q9xxx series.
 
Check and see if it's a FSB wall, drop your multi and up the FSB and see if it runs stable, also make sure your RAM is at a 1:1 ratio, and you are probably going to need to give it some extra volts for the RAM and NB (MCH), Make sure you have the latest BIOS also.
 
I didn't notice a VTT adjustment unless it's under some weird name.

I dropped my multi from 8.5 to 8, then to 6. Upped FSB to 425 and it wouldn't boot on either multi. Tried upping voltage on FSB, MCH and Ram by 0.1, no dice. At 415FSB. It would get to the vista loading screen but then wouldn't load vista So yeah, it could be the FSB wall.

Quick question though. I didn't see a 1:1 ratio? Closest I had was 2.0.
 
For GB boards 2.0 is a 1:1 ratio what GB does is the 2.0 means at 420 it would be running the ram at DDR2 840 rated speeds, so if youre using DDR2 800 ram you may be hitting that cieling. At least thats how it works on my older 965P DS3
 
Well, there was an FSB overvoltage control, which i've just referred to as fsb voltage.
 
I'm having a similar problem with my Q9550. I can't get it past 3.45Ghz on my DFI Lanparty P45 T2RS. Anything higher, and it won't even display. I even tried raising the core voltage to see if it'd change anything, and nothing. I'll try the suggestions in this thread
 
List a template of your settings.

I worked on my Q9550 for a few days...at first I couldn't get it to 3.6ghz stable (regardless of vcore) and was about to smash it and get a new chip but found out my settings were off. Now running at 3.8ghz passing Intel Linpack 5000 runs stable. Going to max it out once I lap the true and cpu.
 
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