Q9550/4Ghz {The Final Assault} Overclocking (take 3)

[FreedomEclipse]

after doing a little reading on teh interwebz wut voltages ppl were pushing through their NB on their P5Q Pro I decided to have a final attempt at trying to hit 4ghz...

So what I did, - upped the NB voltage to 1.4v (i was running it at 1.3v previously) & upped the FSB till i got to 4.2Ghz & started testing in OCCT, underclocking it by 5mhz each time it failed & playing around with the VTT/FSB Termination Voltage & CPU PLL

I started at around 2pm in the afternoon & I had my final stable overclock around 6-7pm then I spent the rest of the time messing around with my ram, since it was clocked down I tried to tighten up the timings a little.

so heres the result of my days labour.....

Unfortunately i wasnt able to reach full on 4Ghz overclock but I managed to get damn fucking close.

after my Ram past 2 runs of memtest without errors I increased my FSB by 1Mhz to get 4Ghz & went back into OCCT, but unfortunately it wasnt having any of it....

I think my motherboard might suffer from VDROOP/Overvolting im not sure.... but Idle its 1.39v &1.41 when its underload.

so I think its safe to say, I have hit the limit of what my hardware can do unless I decide to up NB voltage to 1.5v - something im definitely not willing to do unless I have better cooling since its sandwiched between 2 hot 4870s.

Ive had enough of this shit anyway. I need some whisky after this not only is my quad stressed - so is my heart.

Let me know what you think - Or dont, i really dont care. but it would be awesome to get some feedback.

yours truely...

Mr. Eclipse.

I you all




.:EDIT:.

forgot to add, default ram timings were 5-5-5-15. I tried it at 4-4-4-12 but it wouldnt post, I maybe able to get timings tighter but thats enough for today i think

 

[stanhemi]

hi nice overclocked,i have a similar problem with my q9550 i finally found

in the bios ''cpu margin enhancement = optimized'' it a no go try COMPATIBLE mode

my volt for 4012mhz

vcore 1,35
nb 1,38
fsb 1.34
ram 2.20

 

[FreedomEclipse]

hi nice overclocked,i have a similar problem with my q9550 i finally found

in the bios ''cpu margin enhancement = optimized'' it a no go try COMPATIBLE mode

awesome!!! I will give that a go right now!!

 

[oily_17]

Redoing my water loop at the moment but when I tested my 9550 it seemed to love NB voltage - had mine up to 1.65V

 

[Bundy]

I found adjusting performance level looser enables much less NB volts to be needed. This gives much lower NB temp and better stability. As it appears you are at the limit with vcore, maybe this might get you over the line?

Consider the NB like RAM with performance enhance being it's timing. Two factors to consider, frequency and latency, and both influence required NB volts.

 

[stanhemi]

let me know if you hit 4000mhz. I can share my bios setting with you if it help you.i have a p5q-e.

ho and i just take 2 month to reach 4000mhz lol (without help i try every F$#&# bios setting)
now i can post at 500fsb and be stable for 5 pass of linpack.

 

[dadi_oh]

I have almost the same system. ASUS P5Q-PRO with a Q9550 E0 and a Vendetta 2 heatsink. My ram is OCZ Reaper 2X2GB PC2-8500 and I haev a pair of 4870 512MB in crossfire.

I am still playing with getting it stable at 4GHz as well. Doing some reading and puttering away at it when I get a chance. At the moment I run stable at 3.8GHz (see attached) with 1.4V on teh NB but I haven't yet tried bumping my Vcore as high as yours. I did discover some stability at 4GHz with 1.35V vcore but didn't test long enough to know for sure.

I am subscribing to this thread and will share what I learn. I will also try whatever else others post to see what I can do to improve.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

stanhemi - a thousand thank you's. I never would have made 4Ghz without you - OCCT stable!!!! but it didnt like going any higher

Redoing my water loop at the moment but when I tested my 9550 it seemed to love NB voltage - had mine up to 1.65V

do you have your NB under water too??

 

[dadi_oh]

I have almost the same system. ASUS P5Q-PRO with a Q9550 E0 and a Vendetta 2 heatsink. My ram is OCZ Reaper 2X2GB PC2-8500 and I haev a pair of 4870 512MB in crossfire.

I am still playing with getting it stable at 4GHz as well. Doing some reading and puttering away at it when I get a chance. At the moment I run stable at 3.8GHz (see attached) with 1.4V on teh NB but I haven't yet tried bumping my Vcore as high as yours. I did discover some stability at 4GHz with 1.35V vcore but didn't test long enough to know for sure.

I am subscribing to this thread and will share what I learn. I will also try whatever else others post to see what I can do to improve.

Well I tried the recommendation to change CPU Margin to "compatible" but that seemed to give me the same results.

Maybe someone can help me with a question however. I can get Prime95 to run indefinitely at small FFT which means to me that the processor cores themselves are happy. It is only on teh 1024K tests that I run into almost immediate problems. This suggests to me that it is the interface from the CPU to the NB. I know the memory is happy at much higher frequencies so I am positive that it is not memory related. Any thoughts? See screenshots below.

 

[dadi_oh]

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n210/FinalFreedomEclipse/4Ghz-1.jpg

stanhemi - a thousand thank you's. I never would have made 4Ghz without you - OCCT stable!!!! but it didnt like going any higher



do you have your NB under water too??

Congrats! Was it the CPU margin enhancement that did it for you?

Could you share your bios settings with me? You are using quite a bit higher voltage than I have tried but wondering if there are other settings that may differ from mine.

Also, what are your temps under load at that voltage. You have the same heatsink as I do so I would expect similar results.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Well I tried the recommendation to change CPU Margin to "compatible" but that seemed to give me the same results.

Maybe someone can help me with a question however. I can get Prime95 to run indefinitely at small FFT which means to me that the processor cores themselves are happy. It is only on teh 1024K tests that I run into almost immediate problems. This suggests to me that it is the interface from the CPU to the NB. I know the memory is happy at much higher frequencies so I am positive that it is not memory related. Any thoughts? See screenshots below.

try a custom P5Q Pro bios - thats what im running.

Custom Bios's can be found >Here< its also a club so, you can join that too since you have a P45 based motherboard

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Congrats! Was it the CPU margin enhancement that did it for you?

Could you share your bios settings with me? You are using quite a bit higher voltage than I have tried but wondering if there are other settings that may differ from mine.

Also, what are your temps under load at that voltage. You have the same heatsink as I do so I would expect similar results.

ummm I get around to posting my bios settings up in a bit. but temps generally werent too bad, around 60-65'c which is pushing it a little but its still safe. So long as it aint hitting 70-75'c its fine.

 

[SonDa5]

Improve your cooling to get your CPU under 50 degrees celsius during full load and you should be able to lower your voltage some and maintain the same speed. Either that or increase speed with more voltage only when you improve CPU cooling.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Improve your cooling to get your CPU under 50 degrees celsius during full load and you should be able to lower your voltage some and maintain the same speed. Either that or increase speed with more voltage only when you improve CPU cooling.

Impossible - I already have 5x120mm & 1 200mm fans running if not at full whack then at medium speeds - It wont get any cooler unless i shell out abouther £50 on a new 'better' cooler

anyway, here are my bios settings....


--------

FSB Freq - 471

FSB Strap to NB - Auto

Dram Freq - DDR2- 943Mhz

Dram Control - Auto/Manual (depends if you want to tweak your ram)

Cpu Voltage - 1.40 (yes I suffer from Vdrop i think)

cpu GTL - Auto

CPU PLL - 1.54v

FSB Termination voltage - 1.60

NB Voltage - 1.40

Load Line Calibaration - Enabled

CPU margin Enhancement - Compatible

-------

C1E setting - Off

Hardware Virtualisation - Off

Execute Disable bit - Off

-------

Pretty much 'my' settings but theres no garantee that you will be able to run the same settings as your not using the same bios as me. (special thanks to alexp999)

 

[stanhemi]

@freedom eclipse can you try to lower your fsb before i found the margin enhancement setting my fsb voltage was at 1.52 now i only need 1.34 and nb 1.38 for me this is good for 8.5 x 500 and it stable under occt (4 hour)and linpack(10 pass)

 

[FreedomEclipse]

@freedom eclipse can you try to lower your fsb before i found the margin enhancement setting my fsb voltage was at 1.52 now i only need 1.34 and nb 1.38 for me this is good for 8.5 x 500 and it stable under occt (4 hour)and linpack(10 pass)

thats because your water cooled lol. Ive had enough sitting around while its been testing today so I will play around with it more 2moro.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

been testing all day again, & I put all my overclocks that were 1hr OCCT stable though 4hrs of OCCT to make sure they were stable. some failed within 30mins, some failed after 2-3hrs. so i was forced to play around with the set up again.

& Its finally come down to 3.9Ghz that made it past 4hrs of OCCT. Looks like my hardware really cant take it to 4ghz.

 

[dadi_oh]

been testing all day again, & I put all my overclocks that were 1hr OCCT stable though 4hrs of OCCT to make sure they were stable. some failed within 30mins, some failed after 2-3hrs. so i was forced to play around with the set up again.

& Its finally come down to 3.9Ghz that made it past 4hrs of OCCT. Looks like my hardware really cant take it to 4ghz.

Oh well. The 4GHz is really just a psychological boost anyways. Doubt you would ever notice a difference.

I also am running at 450X8.5 (3.8GHz) right now at 1.300V. At least with that FSB I can run a 5:4 RAM divider and use my Reapers at 1080MHz It seems that I am going to have to take my Vcore up in the 1.35V to 1.4V range to reach past 4GHz and I am thinking it may not be worth it.

I am toying with the idea of not selling my watercooling loop and instead installing it on this machine to get the max out of my Q9550. Also, it would get some of the heat out of the case. I have a pair of 4870's in there and fortunately their heatsinks pump their exhaust out of the case. Otherwise I might be melting the solder on the motehrboard

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Ive still got the ram timings though. but its running a 900Mhz@5-4-4-12 which from what I read is slightly better in real world apps. thats not so say that running ram at 1081mhz (which i was) is a bad thing. but thats more for people who love to bench their rigs over n over again. though the results were purely subjective to what processor you had, but they tested a C2D E6300 & it loved the tighter timings. often resulting in a small 2-3% system performance increase in real world apps. for higher speeds though It did improve benchmark scores around 5% on & off so it really depends how you use your pc.

Ive always been told tighter timings are always better then high speeds. but if your ram can run tight timings at high speeds then that certainly is a bonus!

Unfortunately. my reapers cant do 5-4-4-12@1081mhz

 

[SonDa5]

The right ram will do wonders for over clocking.

As a rule of thumb when I over clock my cpu before booting into the operating system I always boot to floppy disk and run Memtest86.
If the RAM has errors I tune it up in the BIOS and run Memtest86 till I get a clean run.
A few clear runs on the memory and then I boot to OS.

 

[BradleyKZN]

Im so glad I found this!

 

[oily_17]

anyway, here are my bios settings....


--------

FSB Freq - 471

FSB Strap to NB - Auto

Dram Freq - DDR2- 943Mhz

Dram Control - Auto/Manual (depends if you want to tweak your ram)

Cpu Voltage - 1.40 (yes I suffer from Vdrop i think)

cpu GTL - Auto

CPU PLL - 1.54v

FSB Termination voltage - 1.60

NB Voltage - 1.40

Load Line Calibaration - Enabled

CPU margin Enhancement - Compatible

-------

Are you still running your FSB termination at 1.6V ??

I would try lowering it to less than 1.4V, just to be on the safe side.
I read somewhere that any more than ~1.5V for a extended period of time can cause these Q9XX0 chips to degrade.

If I find the link again I will post it up for you to read.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Nicely done Freedom!

I'm still stuck at 3.75GHz and gaggin' to get to 4GHz unfortunately everyone seems to have a P45.



Still, nice to see you've hit 4GHz!

 

[dadi_oh]

Well I played around with some settings just to see how high I could bench this thing. I managed to take a few benches at 500X8.5=4250MHz at 1.416V core. I haven't tried for stability at this setting but I kind of doubt it from past experience trying to hit 4GHz. Also a bit nervous about temps since I am on air. Fun for benches though.

3dMark06 = 23644
Wprime 32M = 9.59 sec
Sandra CPU = 70.91 GIPS / 57.85 GFLOPS

 

[dadi_oh]

Well I played around with some settings just to see how high I could bench this thing. I managed to take a few benches at 500X8.5=4250MHz at 1.416V core. I haven't tried for stability at this setting but I kind of doubt it from past experience trying to hit 4GHz. Also a bit nervous about temps since I am on air. Fun for benches though.

3dMark06 = 23644
Wprime 32M = 9.59 sec
Sandra CPU = 70.91 GIPS / 57.85 GFLOPS

Well as I suspected this was definitely not stable. About 1 minute into Prime95 it crashed teh machine. Fun while it lasted...