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Testing Stability

Dougjwjr

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 10, 2007
Messages
274
Well, I've had my Q6600 for about a year and a half now and I love the thing, but it's giving me a little trouble. I have air cooled, 92mm ac7 pro hsf, and reasonable temperatures at 400x8, aka 3.2ghz. All is well, it runs and runs no problem in most cases. I stress tested it as well, and all seemed fine. However there is one problem. When viewing .avi files, it almost always locks up, requiring me to manually shutdown and restart. When I put the cpu back to stock 266x9, this problem goes away, which leads me to believe the OC is at least a little unstable. Up to this point, I always used "Auto" for voltages. I'm interested in finding how to make it more stable, and knowing why it's unstable with .avi files but nothing else (that I'm aware of, at least).


Another thing I have a question about is about the bios and vcore voltages. On Auto, it is at 1.4V according to the Bios. Because of this, I set it to 1.40, saved, restarted, and immedietly re-entered the bios, to see it saying current setting: 1.37, but with 1.40 selected still. Is this variation normal? From looking around, it would seem this vcore is a little high for the 3.2ghz I have, yet it's still unstable? It doesn't seem right to me.
 
Another thing I have a question about is about the bios and vcore voltages. On Auto, it is at 1.4V according to the Bios. Because of this, I set it to 1.40, saved, restarted, and immedietly re-entered the bios, to see it saying current setting: 1.37, but with 1.40 selected still. Is this variation normal? From looking around, it would seem this vcore is a little high for the 3.2ghz I have, yet it's still unstable? It doesn't seem right to me.

No overclock is guaranteed, although 1.4v is a tad bit high for a Q6600, as far as I've seen. Also, it shows 1.37v due to what is known as vdroop, and this is normal.
 
Is there any explanation to this being unstable with 1 video format and nothing else?

I tried lowering and messing with the voltages a little last night but consistently locked up. I might try 333x9 for 3.00ghz and see if it freezes then. Running prime95 now (once again at 3.2ghz 400x8), at least, I'm happy with my temps. Idle was 31,30,28, 29, load 49, 49, 45, 47 with room at 21C. this makes me want to try higher than 3.2, if I could get it stable.
 
It's such a small overclock that I dont know if it really matters, but at 9x300, aka 2.7ghz, according to cpuz 1.248 (on auto), it appears to be fine. Doesnt freeze, temps in low 40's. I tried 9x333 but then remembered my mobo fails on that, always have, havnt tried anything further.

Edit: Just to put the information down, it seems stable at 2.7ghz, but I would really hope so. temps stable at 43, 43, 38, 39 (should I list them all? only the highest? average?). Not sure what to try next, might go 356x9 instead of 400x8 for 3.2ghz, see if that's stable.

At a glance 356x9 appears to be stable, while I also tried both 400x9 and 370x9, both got to the windows login screen and froze on me.
 
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