Q9650 Overclocking And Feedback Thread

[Tatty_Two]

Hi all, I have just ordered the Q9650 with of course the new E0 stepping, it should be here on Thursday, it's the most I have ever paid for a chip (especially with the price's here in the UK) but I have heard good things and just wanted to find out what she will do initially on good air on my 790i Ultra mobo with that 9x multi. I will probably move to water after a while, specially if I find that temps are really holding her back.

I dont have a lot of time these days since I moved jobs etc but rest assured I will be giving her a severe bashing when she arrives Anyone else with one of these beasts please feel free to contribute, I will have some initial screenies up within 10 minutes of installing her Thursday night............until then, wait out!

Please ignore the "Retired Overclocker" statment above my avitar, I will be coming out of retirement for a week!

 

[trt740]

Hi all, I have just ordered the Q9650 with of course the new E0 stepping, it should be here on Thursday, it's the most I have ever paid for a chip (especially with the price's here in the UK) but I have heard good things and just wanted to find out what she will do initially on good air on my 790i Ultra mobo with that 9x multi. I will probably move to water after a while, specially if I find that temps are really holding her back.

I dont have a lot of time these days since I moved jobs etc but rest assured I will be giving her a severe bashing when she arrives Anyone else with one of these beasts please feel free to contribute, I will have some initial screenies up within 10 minutes of installing her Thursday night............until then, wait out!

Please ignore the "Retired Overclocker" statment above my avitar, I will be coming out of retirement for a week!

here is a thread for you tatty. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=197802

 

[Tatty_Two]

here is a thread for you tatty. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=197802

Thanks Tom, I read that one earlier, looks like he got just over 4.1gig, that will do me (although I would prefer 4.2+ )

 

[trt740]

Thanks, I read that one earlier, looks like he got just over 4.1gig, that will do me (although I would prefer 4.2+ )

I had a hard time getting my 2 Qx9650 past 4.0ghz stable (they were not e0 stepping), but It seems from what I read the E0 stepping really did not help the E0 quads frontside bus as much as the duals. I would not exspect more than 4.0ghz Tatty.

 

[r1rhyder]

Theres is suppose to be a liquid metal cooler appearing on the scene soon. The company reports that it should be better than water cooling. But I havent seen it yet.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I had a hard time getting my 2 Qx9650 past 4.0ghz stable (they were not e0 stepping), but It seems from what I read the E0 stepping really did not help the E0 quads frontside bus as much as the duals. I would not exspect more than 4.0ghz Tatty.

Hey, if he got 4.1.....I will! I like a challenge, there again, knowing my luck I'll probably get another dog.

 

[WhiteLotus]

Subscribed! I want to see how far you can push that thing!

 

[DOM]

Hey, if he got 4.1.....I will! I like a challenge, there again, knowing my luck I'll probably get another dog.

lol didnt he say it was the mobos fsb limit the guy on XS ?

 

[Tatty_Two]

lol didnt he say it was the mobos fsb limit the guy on XS ?

Your right....he did! Not tried this 790 with a quad much tho, as far as a duellie is concerned she will do 600FSB tho.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Well it has arrived at my work, S_Spec SLB8W......Batch # L820B036......Pack date 31st July..........Trt's earlier link to Xtreme Systems forum showing the guy who got to 4.1gig (but may have been limited by his mobo) by coinsidence is the same batch.........lets hope my mobo dont limit me at 3.8gig!

 

[Tatty_Two]

.....Well so much for playing with my new toy.....I updated to the P06 BIOS on Sunday in preperation for the Q9650 arriving, flashed it and all went well, used the puter for a couple of days with the E8200 in it, then took out the E8200 as I had sold it, before I did that I set to "BIOS defaults" in preperation for the new chip going in.

Well to cut a long story short, I put the Q9650 in tonight (very carefully!) and started her up to the dreaded "beeps" of death..........basically I have a "BIOS Rom checksum error" come up and it wants a floppy with "AWD Flash.exe" on it......now I am guessing for whatever reason the BIOS is now corrupt and therefore the board is knackered and I will have to RMA it

The only thing I can think of doing is to see if the AWD Flash program is small enough to fit on a DOS Boot floppy (nothing else such as CD Rom has kicked in at this point) and also see if I can also fit the poxy old BIOS P03 from XFX's website on the disk as well and see if that would work, I say P03 because only that one and P06 are available on the website for some odd reason and P06 only comes in a 2MB ISO file which of course is no good......what you think?

Also, you know me, I cannot have this baby CPU for 4-6 weeks waiting for an RMA replacement board to arrive without trying it so any suggestions for an interim cheapish board would be useful, I want PCI-E 2.0, not bothered about SLi or XFire but it has to have a reputation of overclocking 45NM quads VERY well.........any idea's?

Edit: Forgot to add, it must support DDR3 also.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Crappo! If you weren't across the pond, I'd loan you my GA-X38-DQ6! At least you are familliar with it!

 

[erocker]

Since P35's aren't PCI-E 2.0, I guess that leaves you with the P45 chipset. I had such good experiences with OCing on my DFi P35, I guess I would recommend the DFi P45.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Since P35's aren't PCI-E 2.0, I guess that leaves you with the P45 chipset. I had such good experiences with OCing on my DFi P35, I guess I would recommend the DFi P45.

Yes, I thought of the DFI but I did say "cheapish" at the end of the day I am going to have to sell it once I get a 790i back and TBH I love the 790i, it's just so good at everything it does which means I am already going to take a big hit with whatever board I buy, probably the more expensive the board, the bigger the hit!

Are the 45's really that good at quad overclocking......better than a decent x38?

 

[Tatty_Two]

Just thinking about it, I suppose it couldnt be that the CPU is seated incorrectly? I am sure it isnt and in my experience I wouldnt get to even a command on the screen if it was.

 

[erocker]

I've seen that the Biostar TForce TP45HP is a good overclocking and inexpensive board. Didn't think of a mis-seated cpu. Check the pins in the socket with a magnifying glass for anything bent.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Just checked....CPU is seated correctly and I removed CMOS battery after googling the problem and it remains the same, my googling seems to show that the BIOS is bad Have done a support ticket to XFX to see what they say.

Just checked the Biostar T45, sadly it's DDR2......seems all the good Foxconns are DDR2 as well.

 

[TheScavenger]

I can't imagine you would have a tough time hitting a 450FSB with a Q9650. With the x9 multiplier that would put you just over 4.0GHz.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Any further idea's on a good but cheap DDR3 overclocking board for 45nm quads?

 

[Tatty_Two]

Lol XFX have even less hardware knowledge about their own motherboards than my 1 year old grandaughter has!.....anyways, waiting for an RMA number but it could take 6 weeks I cant go that long without a puter! As DDR3 boards seem to be expensive no matter what you get, I think I am going for the Biostar T45 TPower board and I will be some reasonably fast DDR2 2Gig kit to see me over till my board gets back, probably the GSkill PK 8500's, unless anyone has any idea's on some cheap 2gig DDR2 kits that will do 1200+.

 

[trt740]

Lol XFX have even less hardware knowledge about their own motherboards than my 1 year old grandaughter has!.....anyways, waiting for an RMA number but it could take 6 weeks I cant go that long without a puter! As DDR3 boards seem to be expensive no matter what you get, I think I am going for the Biostar T45 TPower board and I will be some reasonably fast DDR2 2Gig kit to see me over till my board gets back, probably the GSkill PK 8500's, unless anyone has any idea's on some cheap 2gig DDR2 kits that will do 1200+.

by the time you add the ddr2 it will be as expensive as getting the ddr3 board tatty you might aswell forget that and get the ddr3 board. These are decent boards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128348

ram 2x1gb kits http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227230

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227347 they will both do ddr2 1200 but not much more if you can find them in the UK they aren't axe ram but the best I could find.

 

[Tatty_Two]

by the time you add the ddr2 it will be as expensive as getting the ddr3 board tatty you might aswell forget that and get the ddr3 board. These are decent boards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128348

ram 2x1gb kits http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227230

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227347 they will both do ddr2 1200 but not much more if you can find them in the UK they aren't axe ram but the best I could find.

Thanks Tom, the flex are still pretty expensive over here, as for the boards, thing is to do the chip justice I want a monster overclocking board, the Biostar has just broke the world record for the highest acheived FSB overclock......700mhz I think and it's lke a $100 cheaper than the Gigabyte you have linked, although that is also an option as I was looking at that but reviews only show 520-550FSB. The GSkill will do upto 1250mhz on a good day.......why cant Crucial still make the high quality D9 Micron Ballisitx they used to? I used to get 1325 outta my old Ballistix Ohhh and the Biostar is pretty cheap! thing is, when my board comes back I will keep with the 790i Ultra.....I absolutely love it, the best I have ever owned.....and that includes my old beloved Gigabyte x38 DQ6 which was a monster, plus I could never now go back to DDR2 perminently.

 

[TheScavenger]

I want a monster overclocking board, the Biostar has just broke the world record for the highest acheived FSB overclock......700mhz I think and it's lke a $100 cheaper than the Gigabyte you have linked...

Are you talking about the BIOSTAR TPower I45?

 

[Tatty_Two]

Are you talking about the BIOSTAR TPower I45?

I am yes, thing is, all the reviews show just how good it is inacheiving huge FSB's, but that of course is with a duellie, I need to know how they do with 45nm quads.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Well whilst the Biostar looks like a fantastic deal I have decided to save myself the price of DDR2 memory as I already have the DDR3 from my 790i ultra so whilst that is being RMA's I think I am going for the Asus P5QT i45 Deluxe, hopefully I will be up and running by the middle of next week so I can test this damn chip, just hope these PQ's overclock as well as the reviews say they do.