OC Q6600 on 790i FTW

[surfsk8snow.jah]

Hey guys,

So with a lot of good advice from TPU'ers, I got my system back up after a mobo crash. Now time to OC (This is my first actual OC attempt on any system btw).

System Specs in Signature - IC7 between TRUE & CPU

I could use a little advice, as this is my first time OC'ing, although I think I did pretty well. After much research, 2hours, and multiple iterations of upping voltage, then fsb, then dropping voltage, I got the following to run stable on this last iteration with Prime95 no errors for 24min (and counting) :


CPU Freq, 2.4MHz: overclocked to 3.6 GHZ (50% OC seems awesome to me)
FSB (QDR), MHz: 1600
FSB - Memory Clock Mode: [linked]
FSB - Memory Ratio: Sync mode
Actual FSB (QDR), MHz: 1600
x MEM (DDR), MHz: 1600
Actual MEM (DDR), MHz: 1600
CPU Multiplier: [x 9]
**System Voltages**
WithoutVDroop
CPU Core: [1.400]
CPU FSB: [1.35]
Memory: [1.9]

Avg/Max Temps Under Load From Core Temp [Core0,Core1,Core2,Core3]: [67/72, 65/72, 57/59, 57/59]
IDLE Temps: [45-50, 45-48, 37-45, 37-45]
The TempDelta on those Cores of over 10C seems a little high to me... is this normal? How do these temps look overall?

Also, with Prime95, as of current test, the cores are at very different progress levels [14 Tests , 7 Tests, 3 Tests, 20 Tests] -- This discrepancy seems odd as well, most especially that Core 3 is stuck on 3rd test for 20min. Just stopped tests and 0 errors, 0 warnings, but still odd. Thoughts?


Advice from here using this setup? I'm thinking about the following: Decreasing voltage further to decrease temps, Increasing FSB to go faster, tightening timings on memory (I'm least familiar with this process). Anything else I should think about? Thx!

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

You might be able to lower your VTT by adjusting your GTL reference voltages.

I think you are pretty much done though with your temps where they are at. (you might be able to go 3.8 or so with same VTT and Increase GTL.. but I think you will be pretty much happy where you are at. An extra 200Mhz isn't going to make any difference in games and only add 50 or so points in 3dmark._

Look into tightening up your ram timings.

Good OC. YOu could push it further, but really no need.

I had a Q6600 on watercooling and it topped out around 4.2Ghz @ 1.5v. The stepping in voltage becomes very big after 3.6Ghz.

 

[Bo$$]

more CPU FSB voltage, 1.4v is absolute max
That will help you push FSB more if need be

 

[DiogoCDS19]

If you want to reduce the temps you should disable load line calibration if its enabled, i know it helps stability but makes the cpu run like 3-5C hotter so you'll need to increase the vcore a bit but will for sure lower the temps in full load

 

[PopcornMachine]

Also, with Prime95, as of current test, the cores are at very different progress levels [14 Tests , 7 Tests, 3 Tests, 20 Tests] -- This discrepancy seems odd as well, most especially that Core 3 is stuck on 3rd test for 20min. Just stopped tests and 0 errors, 0 warnings, but still odd. Thoughts?

Congrats on the OC. I can't get mine to do more than 3.4 stable.

But what you are seeing with Prime95 is very strange. I've never seen the tests more than one step apart. Surprising to say the least. Would be interesting to know if anyone else has seen this.

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

Just as an update, I was getting insane temps on my graphics card at load at stock speeds (>104C!!) even though I had a Thermalright HR-03 with fan. So I decided to reseat my HR-03, and flip the heatsink portion to the underside of the case, and put the fan in a push config instead of pull (there was a lot of congestion between all the heatsinks & fans, and I think airflow was a little TOO focused on the CPU area).

After these changes, not only did my GPU temps go down to 60C on load, with a core & memory OC now, but even my CPU temps went down by 4C, max is 68C now. So I'm pretty stoked on that.

Seems like I'm fairly happy with my OC at this point. I may decide to squeeze some extra speed out of it later, but its really really stable with a CPU & GPU OC.
Thanks again everyone.

 

[RadeonProVega]

I have a q6600, but i don't OC. I can't anyway, i have some cheap model HP MB LOL
if you are at 3.6, that is awesome.

 

[Funtoss]

Awesome OC! i can only get 3.2 stable on mine and the temps are too much

i can try 3.6ghz but that'll be too much as i will have to give it a lot of voltage which will result in HEAT :\

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

Repost from alt thread (but I know diff people read diff sections/threads):

Ok, so my setup has been doing great for the past week, running everything faster than ever before, SC2 settings on max, medium temps same as above, no problems, I've been stoked.

Except, after a full probably 12hrs of playing today (not straigt, hr break here, 1/2hr break there - I'm training for a competition) it all the sudden started crashing while I was playing. The first crash, the monitor went black & read No Input, but the comp was still powered on, & g15 LCD was still litup, tho frozen. I figured it was GPU, maaaYbe getting too hot? I toned down graphics settings in SC2, toned down my GPU OC from 15% to 10%, tried playing again. Played 2 games, then right in beginning of 3rd one, comp froze again, this time it was making the stutter sounds, & I could move mouse w/ heavy delay & extreme stutter, but it was frozen for all intents & purposes.

Any idea what could be happening? Is my CPU OC having errors? The temps on my CPU upon crash were like 55±5C, temps on GPU were same, I don't believe its overheating? Air flow in my case is very good, & I have AC on at 70F.

Upon boot this morning (I left it after crash overnight), windows automatically performed a startup repair, and repaired some disk errors. I'd assume these are as a result of the crashing; or do you think the errors caused the crashes? Just extra details/thoughts.

I'd like to fix it stable so it doesn't crash on me anymore. Thanks guys.

 

[DiogoCDS19]

Repost from alt thread (but I know diff people read diff sections/threads):

Ok, so my setup has been doing great for the past week, running everything faster than ever before, SC2 settings on max, medium temps same as above, no problems, I've been stoked.

Except, after a full probably 12hrs of playing today (not straigt, hr break here, 1/2hr break there - I'm training for a competition) it all the sudden started crashing while I was playing. The first crash, the monitor went black & read No Input, but the comp was still powered on, & g15 LCD was still litup, tho frozen. I figured it was GPU, maaaYbe getting too hot? I toned down graphics settings in SC2, toned down my GPU OC from 15% to 10%, tried playing again. Played 2 games, then right in beginning of 3rd one, comp froze again, this time it was making the stutter sounds, & I could move mouse w/ heavy delay & extreme stutter, but it was frozen for all intents & purposes.

Any idea what could be happening? Is my CPU OC having errors? The temps on my CPU upon crash were like 55±5C, temps on GPU were same, I don't believe its overheating? Air flow in my case is very good, & I have AC on at 70F.

Upon boot this morning (I left it after crash overnight), windows automatically performed a startup repair, and repaired some disk errors. I'd assume these are as a result of the crashing; or do you think the errors caused the crashes? Just extra details/thoughts.

I'd like to fix it stable so it doesn't crash on me anymore. Thanks guys.

The crashes caused the errors. About the crashing just try to lower the fsb to see if it still happens. Also did you set the pcie fsb to 100mhz or 101mhz right ? Or did you let it on Auto ?

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

The crashes caused the errors. About the crashing just try to lower the fsb to see if it still happens. Also did you set the pcie fsb to 100mhz or 101mhz right ? Or did you let it on Auto ?

I left it on auto, should I be playing with the PCI FSB?

I'll drop the FSB by maybe 5MHz? Or 10?

 

[DiogoCDS19]

No no, you should set it to 100 or 101, if you let it on auto it will increase with the fsb(cpu) and may damage your card.
Set it to 100mhz and try playing normally to see if it still crashes.

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

No no, you should set it to 100 or 101, if you let it on auto it will increase with the fsb(cpu) and may damage your card.
Set it to 100mhz and try playing normally to see if it still crashes.

Can I have confirmation by one or two others of this suggestion? I only ask because I've seen other people with it set to auto. Who knows, they maybe should change it also.

 

[DiogoCDS19]

Can I have confirmation by one or two others of this suggestion? I only ask because I've seen other people with it set to auto. Who knows, they maybe should change it also.

Hmm you can check it here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30480

Just to make things clear, I'm talking about the PCI-E Bus, not the PCI.

 

[Bo$$]

set PCi-e bus at 100mhz, only touch voltages and FSB settings, what are your current settings and clocks?

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

Update:
I've continued to get crashing, 1-3times per day, always while playing Starcraft2, never during stress tests or normal windows operation. It happens at random times while playing too - sometimes after 30min, sometimes after 6hrs; sometimes at beginning of a game (few models), sometimes at the end (a lot of models).

After some googling, I've found that many others are having issues with the 790i chipset combined with the 8xxx & 9xxx graphics cards with many different games - random crashes similar to mine.

Attempted Fixes:
- Reduced OC on CPU
- GPU back to stock settings
- Decreased Graphics settings to low everything in Starcraft2
- PCIe to 100mhz
- Decreased/Increased NB & SB Voltage
- Added (2) fans pointing directly at the NB & SB heatsinks - these have dropped in temp by 5C with fans.
- Changed timings & voltage on RAM to manually match factory specs
- Changed BIOS settings entirely to a full list of settings posted on a forum that some people were having success with.
- Swapped out the 2x4GB 1866 G.Skill Ripjaw for 2x2GB 1066 Crucial Ballistix
- Reseated all cables
- Unplugged mini-card reader (this was suggested in another thread, and actually seemed to help some people oddly - not me tho).
- Flashed BIOS to most recent version SZ17
- updated to most recent graphics and chipset drivers
- Back to all stock settings (no OC at all on CPU or GPU) w/ the 2x2GB Crucial Ballistix.

Nothing is fixing it. This is really getting difficult; I've spent tons of time now researching, tweaking, adding, changing, and I have to go back to work next week so I won't have as much time.

- Prime95 runs on all levels of my OC with no errors for over an hour.
- ATITool runs with no errors below a stable OC for my GPU.
- Running memtest for 20min no errors, but I'm going to run it all night tonight - although it does not seem plausible that it would be memory errors on both sets of memory sticks.
- Temps never get above 60C on CPU, MCP, SPP, or GPU at full load. That is the ultimate max temps it reaches when it crashes, but it will sometimes crash at 50C CPU, GPU, 55 MCP, 45 SPP, so I feel like it can't be overheating either.

I'm really at a loss now. Any help/thoughts/comments?

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

My instincts really do tell me its a graphics issue, considering the screen turns off for most freezes. Graphics driver could definitely be it, I'm going to use DriverSweeper to clear the current drivers and reinstall the most updated geforce drivers. If that doesn't work, I'll try reverting to an older revision of the drivers that some are having success with. I'll also update the sound card drivers, and see if there's an update for the chipset drivers yet too (although I did this when I first setup the board).
Question there: Can I use DriverSweeper on the chipset drivers or can that cause instability?
---
I MemTest'd my 2x2GB Ballistix for >8hrs overnight, 192% coverage w/ 0 errors.

I'm also going to try doing a full scandisk on all my drives with repair to be sure there's no HD corruption causing this somehow someway.
---
I've done more research as well, and if the drivers don't do it, it's either the 790i board (as a lot of people have problems gaming with this board), or the Starcraft 2 game itself (a lot of people are having issues with this game locking up on them). There are some suggested attempted fixes for the game itself I'll try too.
---
If none of this works, I'm just going to spring for a new GPU and pray that solves it - If it doesn't, then I know it's not graphics, and I'll return the card, and maybe re-RMA the board. I've got a gift certificate for best buy, and they've got a good PNY 560Ti on sale for $250 (matches newegg & microcenter's prices).

Any other suggestions or thoughts?

 

[OneMoar]

disable flash hardware acceleration

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

disable flash hardware acceleration

How does one go about doing this? I'm game to try for sure.

 

[Bo$$]

sounds like driver troubles, try updating nvidia drivers

 

[OneMoar]

right click on any youtube video and select settings > disable hardware acceleration

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

right click on any youtube video and select settings > disable hardware acceleration

I found this out, but I'm wondering how this will affect anything in the game? Does the game utilize Adobe Flash programming?

sounds like driver troubles, try updating nvidia drivers

Ya I tend to agree. I do think I may have pinpointed it that it started happening right after I installed the windows 7 x64 sp1. I tried to do a system restore this morning to right before that, but it screwed up somehow, and then when I restarted windows in safe mode to try it again, it had deleted the restore point completely. So now I can't possibly go back without SP1??

I've got a medium sized list of stuff to try, I'll let you guys know once the crashing stops, and let u know what finally may have fixed it.
Thanks for all the advice and help.

 

[OneMoar]

some games use flash for ingame rendering and menus its known to reak havoc on certain setups Probably wont do anything but it wont hurt anything to turn it off for now

 

[surfsk8snow.jah]

Hey guys, just wanted to 'close' the thread with my final resolution for anyone curious, or anyone searching the web finding this thread.

I further tried in addition to above:
- turning off background CPU/GPU Samplers and all other bg progs (some people were saying that evga precision or coretemp had some stability issues with Windows 7 SP1).
- Disabled hardware flash acceleration
- uninstalled windows SP1 and all windows updates from that day via control panel -> programs and features -> view installed updates (top left corner of window) -> r-click desired update to uninstall it.
- repair install of SC2
- disk check
- update all drivers multiple times (both installing directly over current, and also using Driver Cleaner AND Driver Sweeper) - Video, Audio, Chipset
- reverted to older editions of drivers.
- all in-game settings to low.
- uninstall and reinstall AVG

None of these worked. Still crashed at least 3 times a day in the middle of a game.

So, I just went ahead and bought a new video card. PNY 560 Ti - very nice card from Best Buy for $250 which matches newegg's prices.
Installed it all good - IT CRASHED AGAIN!! I reinstalled video & audio drivers. Still crashed!!

Final step: Reinstall Chipset drivers directly over current.
SUCCESS!! No more crashes. Thank God! I even OC'd the 560 ti by 15%. Still perfect.

So I let it be for three weeks to test it. No crashes. Period. So I thought "Hm, maybe it wasn't the video card after all, I can swap back and get my $250 back."

Swapped back to 8800GTX. BOOM crashed. Swapped back the 560ti, all is well again.

So I'm thinking that there's some kind of weird new driver/software incompatibility with my 8800gtx, or the components are wearing down on the 8800 and they're not quite as resilient anymore. Either way, the new video card and then update on chipset drivers did it.

Not our favorite type of fix, but its working now at least.

Many thanks again to all who put in their effort to help me out.

 

[Bo$$]

card must have been on it's last legs