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Stabilizing OC question

L

Leon_Solitario

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
128
Q6700
Nvidia 680i SLI
Corsair 2x2 DDR2 800
Sapphire HD 5770

current voltage setting:
vcore 1.36v
fsb 1.5v
memory 1.8v
spp 1.55v
mcp 1.5v (can't drop any further)
ht 1.2v

current clocks:
multiplier 10x (max)
fsb 1333MHz
memory 800MHz
pci-e x16 100MHz (not sure what to do here, can't seem to find much info at all)
ram 5-5-5-18 2T (tRRD 3, tRC 23, tWR 5, tWTR 9, tREF 7.8uS)

gpu currently OCed with MSI Afterburner (max settings doesn't hit over 61C)

I'm currently in the process of trying to stabilize an OC on my rig. so far I've brought the CPU up to 3.33GHz@1.36v. I'm still raising the voltage on the CPU to see if I can get it to pass stress testing without dropping the clock speed (3.33GHz@1333fsb), but if that doesn't work I've read that slowing the timings of the RAM can help to increase stability. the problem is I don't know where to start and the guides I've read are vague on the matter, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

currently it seems to fail (reboot) after ~45min of Prime95 blend test stress testing. temperatures haven't exceeded 58C.
 
Very few people get high clocks with quads and 680i boards.

You do have some room on the CPU voltage though, 1.475 is what my Q6600 needed on my 680i to get to 3.6 ..

linked and synced is the way to go if your ram is up to it

you can loosen the ram, but I would bet that its not the chip or the ram, but rather the board itself holding you back.

its been a while for me,gave up on those boards way back... maybe someone with a 680i can add more info
 
thanks for the heads up Cross.

yeah, I've done research on the board and know it's going to be my biggest limiting factor, I just haven't found much info on what it's clock limitations are. the nvidia guide I printed out on it a few years back suggested upping the fsb to 1.5v (already done that), but it doesn't offer very much info on anything other than it's voltage limitations, lol.

I've upped the cpu voltage to 1.37v and am coming up on 4hr mark for prime 95's blend test, looking good so far. getting a max vcore droop of 0.04v (I'm still not sure what's acceptable for this), where as before increasing the voltage it would max out at 0.05v.

I've got some basic knowledge about what's going on, just not the full details of how each setting affects others. likewise, I'd like to hit 3.4GHz, but in order to do so I think I'd have to push voltage past what's rated as 'safe' for the cooling performance I have (even though it's still pretty good and frosty atm).

I'm running the ram unlinked atm (I forgot to mention it's the xms2 series). if I link it what sync. setting should I use? it's rated for 800MHz@1.8v by corsair, and I know it can usually be pushed a bit past that, but 1333MHz seems a bit of a push. I'm still not sure where to even begin with modifying the timings too, lol.

edit in for S&G: I recently tore apart my pc to clean it up before installing the new ram and gpu. I nearly shit my pants when I took off the cpu cooler, there was a good layer of paste about 3mm thick and there was a big air gap in the middle!! I remounted it myself using the thin spread method and it now runs ~9C cooler, haha. this rig was pre-built by alienware with components a friend suggested, now I really wish I had built it myself back then, lol.
 
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that's nearly the same manual as I used for refrence, it adds a few more steps though. hmm, looks like I gotta start over from about half way back and find a celing or two.
 
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I'm a bit more confused than I was before because of this danmed board's layout, does Nvidia mix up the terms for north and south bridges? I can't make heads or tails of their stupid chart. the north bridge normally connects the cpu to the ram and gpu, right? their chart shows the south bridge connecting to the ram and one gpu while the north is connected to another gpu. I'm trying to figure out which is which in this case so I know I'm screwing with the right voltages for the rest of the system.
 
nearly hit my OC celing again. went for linked+synced RAM under board controlled optimized timings, which I can't really complain about since it's stable at 5-5-5-15 1T so far with the CPU at 3.25 GHz (still intend to learn the affects of each RAM timing, but that can wait for now).

I've notice temperatures do some very odd things untill I had to start raising core voltages. the temperatures of all the cores seemed to be similar at specific clock speeds, is that a normal occurance?

it's been tough trying to decide whether to increase fsb voltage or go straight to increasing vcore. at first just raising the fsb voltage was enough for me to reach 3.25GHz@1260MHz, after that I found myself having to run several tests at each increase to determine whether I needed to raise te fsb voltage or vcore. is there any other way to figure out which I should raise? after the first increase, I've tried to stick to vcore increases and only raise fsb when the amount exceeds the scaling trend I see.
 
so far I've gotten the cpu up to 3.3GHz@1320fsb. it passes 10 rounds of IBT w/o any trouble, but when I start up P95's blend test it doesn't last. so far I've just been messing with voltages, but I haven't had much success. what else should I be looking at to try and counter this problem? I don't get any BSOD's or warnings, just straight to a reboot.
 
try loosening your memory timings, try raising your memory voltage, try lowering your northbridge voltage (esp this, I thought it would get worse stability wise if i lowered it, but it got better and in fact, as of right now is 8hr prime stable at .05v BELOW stock voltage (1.05 vs 1.10)
 
I've been messing with all the voltages (raising and lowering), some help to a degree and I even got to 7.5hr mark before reboot.

do you have any suggestions for memory timings? this is the only thing I'm not too comfortable with playing with yet. I know what each does, but understanding and knowing are two different things, lol.
 
Leon_Solitario said:
I've been messing with all the voltages (raising and lowering), some help to a degree and I even got to 7.5hr mark before reboot.

do you have any suggestions for memory timings? this is the only thing I'm not too comfortable with playing with yet. I know what each does, but understanding and knowing are two different things, lol.
Click to expand...

I just go from like 7-7-7-24 to 8-8-8-28 to 9-9-9-32. It keeps it simple. After you get to your final OC and get it stable you can start whittling down the timings one by one. I'd also recommend your download the latest version of Intel burn test (v2.4). It seems to find instability just as well as prime95 but it raises my processor temp like 5-7 degrees higher and it only takes like 8-25 minutes to run it. Much faster than 7 hours.
 
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I think I got it. newer version of IBT was a lot more helpful, was able to test different voltage tweaks a lot faster. I'll probably still run P95 overnight, but things are looking good so far. best part is that I haven't needed to drop RAM timings (yet, lol), thanks Daemas.
 
finally good and stable so far as I can tell. final timings; cpu-3.275GHz@1310fsb, ram 5-5-5-15 19 1T, gpu core-960MHz memory-1445MHz. thanks for the help.
 
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