o/c for core2quad q8200?

[Ru5ty_t00l]

hey all,

I had never thought to overclock my cpu until I joined this forum.

I always thought that overclocking is too risky for its benefits

now that I have ordered new parts (cpu,mobo,ram and cooler)I would like to find out how much I could stress my old cpu.

so I would like some advise from u because I have no idea at all for where to start and how will I do this.

please be patient with me , I'm totally noob

mobo : ga-n650sli-ds4l

cpu : intel core 2 quad q8200

cooler : bequiet dark rock

psu : xfx650 pro

ram : 4x2gb ddr2

thank u!

 

[mihapiha]

You happen to be in the OC section for graphic cards. I wonder if this was done intentionally, since we're talking about a CPU overclock...

But ok it's not a big problem. I copied one of my guilds for overclocking in here and I've not yet heard from the staff whether to topic will remain or get deleted. Either way it will be really helpful for you.

Here's the link: http://forum.overclo...pus-socket-775/

I suppose you could read through it, and once you've read it it will be quite easy for me to help you. But we can get started right away.

My questions:

What memory do you use? What frequency I mean. What temperatures do you get while stress-testing and the CPU being idle. Programs to stress the CPU would be Prime95, LinX, IntelBurn, etc. and to monitor the Temperatures you can use CoreTemp, RealTemp, CPUID Hardware Monitor, etc.

Please chose a stress-test program, monitor the core temperatures of your CPU with a program you like and run CPUz at the same time. After about 10 minutes I'd like you to make a screenshot, and post it here.

We'll go on from there, ok?

 

[marsey99]

hi dude, ocing is not science but more like cooking as you need to learn how all your bits go best together.

first things first, the q8200 is a hard cpu to max out as it already has a high fsb and low multi. depending upon your ram you might not be able to oc it all tbh but if you have some good 800mhz sticks or faster that will make it easier. also its stresses the mobo alot and tbh the nf650 isnt the best for high fsb as they tend to run out around 450 fsb if you are lucky.

best place to start is either your bios or easy tune 6, i would say easytune is best to start as you can make many changes in windows and not spend most of your time waiting for post and booting into os.

use easytune to test how high you can go with your fsb on the current voltages and then once you know where you are you can then edit the bios so its always like that.

you might find that some things you can only do in the bios, like i know with some of my 775 boards they would run upto a fsb but i needed to reboot it and load up higher from bios as it changes straps and that makes windows crash. anyway i think i am overloading you with info and thats not what we need.

tl dr

get easy tune 6 and use it to test a small oc and once you get stuck post what you have changed and what is stable and we can help you from there.

also post what options you have in the bios for clocks and volts.

prime 95 to test stability, small first for cpu testing and then blend for ram.

we have our own temp monitoring software which you can find on the forums

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

memories frequency : 800mhz

have in mind that the 1st core sensor is always stuck at 49c and can only show only higher temps than 49c

idle



full load

 

[mihapiha]

right. You stressed the CPU with Prime95 or something like that I suppose. Your Cores shouldn't pass 72°C while you're doing this.

Since you have a board with N650 chipset, you don't necessarily need to worry about the memory. The memory frequency can be

unlinked from the FSB on nVidia chipsets. You might have read that in my guide already.

I haven't done this in quite a while and it would be really helpful if you could make some pictures of your Bios. I forgot how some of

them settings were called back then.

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

yeap, prime95

I need some time to read the whole "how to" of yours because most of it seems "chinese" to me

could u guide me through the EasyTune method that marsey mentioned?

btw marsey@ thank you too and congrats for ur win!

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

here's my bios

 

[mihapiha]

In the advanced bios features you'll find C1E, EIST/Speedstep etc. These I'd deactivate first, and reactivate once you found a stable overclock, for now it is best that you have no temperature security downclocking options running. You'll find the reason for this in my guide under 3.1.1

Anyways once you've finished doing that, you should find the rest of the OC features under Motherboard Intelligence Tweaker (MIT).

Now you can overclock in the System clock settings and control your voltages in under MIT. We will take it slow. I want you to take your time. Do NOT jump the gun and do something to hasty.

First I need you to tell me exactly what memory you use. DDR2-800 MHz I got. But what's the stock voltage and what are the timings. You can check that with CPUz or you can look at the sticker on your memory modules. Once we have that information we will copy it into the bios manually and make the first stresstest again

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

freq: 333.3

FSB : dram 1:1



stock voltage : 1,8v

 

[mihapiha]

That's good. Ok then lets try them new bios settings. I want you to go to System Clock Settings and set FSB - Memory clock mode to "unlinked" if possible. I don't remember whether it's there or you have to set this to manual and you find the "unlinked" deal under FSB - memory clock ratio (which would be more logical). Either way: The idea is to get access to more settings.

If I remember correctly the clock mode has to be set to manual and the ratio to unlinked. Then you can access both frequencies.

The CPU clock frequency should be at 333 and the memory at 800. But if I remember correctly the nVidia chipsets did use the full CPU FSB not the motherboard FSB. So instead of 333 MHz you may be forced to use 1333 MHz. But you'll be able to tell by looking at the stock setting the bios offers. If it's 333 leave it and if it's 1333 Mhz leave it like it is. Should be stock anyways.

The important thing is that both frequencies are "unlinked" and that you set the memory to 800 MHz.

Then we're gonna set the timings manually to 5-5-5-18 and 2T and lastly change the memory voltage to the stock 1.8V.

This you do by changing the System voltage control to manual and change the DDR2 Voltage control to 1.8V.

now save and restart the rig. You will now run your first stress test.

Do you know how to CMOS your bios - just in case?

 

[killablade]

On a side note: my Q8200 wouldn't go any further than 3,0 Ghz. Will be interesting to see how far you can get yours.

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

I have to say that Mihapiha not only helped me through these posts and his guide but he also provided me his assistant via skype .

difficult to find people so helpfull nowdays

really apreciated!

thanx again fella

 

[Neuromancer]

Been a long time... but p45 for q8xxx series chips is best. I managed to run 530 FSB on my q8200 as maximum clock (not claiming 24/7 stability) after not having much luck past 400 on previous boards.

IIRC nForce chipsets still had holes in their FSBs so not hitting say 400 MHz it might work fine at 433 MHz. Only other thing I can think of is do not over due the GTLREF adjustments. Killed a Q6600 with them

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

tried to increase the FSB clock but at 348 it freezes . I set the cpu voltage higher than 1.25 up to 1.30 but didn't help.

 

[mihapiha]

As you now reached a point where the FSB won't go any higher and you know that it can't be due to the VCore (CPU Voltage) it's up to you to figure out what other voltage you may be forced to raise in order to get the FSB stable.

I never overclocked with the nforce 650i chipset so I don't know whether it will help what I have to say now, but it will give you an idea: The 680 chipset I did overclock with needed more FSB Voltage and I mean a lot more, while the X38 chipset would need more NB and SB voltage to become stable.

I recommend to handle voltages carefully and monitor the temperatures now even more precisely since you will increase the motherboard chipset temperature by overvoltaging certain parts. I suggest to raise the FSB voltage in small steps and being careful with it. But I remember I had to push that to 1.4V from it being stock @ 1.1V if I remember correctly with some of the 680 chipsets. That doesn't mean you jump to 1.4V! The idea is to get it working with lets say 1.2V. If you go higher and it doesn't help, you slowly try another voltage. First on it's own and then in combination with others. It's definitely only 2 voltages you have to worry and test now: FSB voltage and SB Voltage (while the SB voltage shouldn't make any big impact anyway)

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

nothing seems to work.

increased fsb voltage first, then sb voltage , then both ... f10 to save and reboot and it sdoesn't reboot

sth tha I noticed is that increasing the cpu voltage doesn't really affect the cpu temps (core temps 50,44,44,45)

set it 1.331 volts . shouldn't that produce higher temps ? 50 or 60 maybe?

is it safe to set it higher than 1.33?

 

[mihapiha]

oh you can go higher than that no problem.

But it is a silicon lottery. Unfortunately the staff decided to delete my guide. Otherwise you could read about it. So I'll repeat myself. Actually I'm unsure if it's in there anyways. But here goes: When Intel or AMD produce a CPU they produce them all in the same way. Best example at the moment are 2011 socket CPUs. So they make a ton of them, not knowing as what they will sell them. After the CPUs were produced, they go into testing. Intel then finds out what their produced CPU can do. The best become Intel Xeons with 8 cores, the bad ones become Intel Core i7s with 4 cores and low clocks. If they produce a whole lot of great CPUs, they generally have a problem, because they no that there are just not enough people out there who are willing to spend that much money on a CPU. So what they do, is to lock down some of the cores maybe or lower the clock although the know the CPU can handle way more, just so they have a bunch of cheaper CPUs they will be able to sell. That's why we call it a silicon lottery. When you buy your CPU you don't know what could possibly be limit of your CPU, because you might have gotten one of the CPUs of the bad bunch or one of the expensive ones which was downclocked by Intel.

It can be that you have a bad CPU and it simply won't do stable clocks 348 anymore. This is unlucky though. I would recommend just trying a little higher VCore voltages to test, and maybe making a bigger FSB jump. It can also be that your CPU has a FSB-hole. What I mean is that your CPU won't do 350 FPS +-5, but it may run perfectly stable with 366

Yorkfield CPUs (meaning Core2Quad Q8xxx and Q9xxx) have the tendency to become "unstable-ish" between the FSB of 360 to 370. So that would not be that surprising, but 350 is kinda low... As long as your CoreTemps remain under load somewhere in the 65°C neighborhood, you shouldn't worry about voltages. Your air cooling will never allow too high voltages which would really endanger your CPU (which start at about 1.6 to 1.65V)

 

[Ru5ty_t00l]

I think I tried almost everything. nothing seems to stabilize it.

I give up. I assume it's a "bad" piece . no worries , I'm expecting a new cpu to arrive these days (i5 2500k sandy) so that was kinda training in ocing .

thank u all for ur help, much appreciated!

t.c

 

[mihapiha]

The 2500k overclocking is so easy. This was really hard and not much training anyhow. On the 2500k, you will activate XMP (Extreme memory profile) and jam up multiplier and VCore accordingly. Usually it's a really really easy process, since you can't really change the BaseClock and you can't deactivate stuff like EIST/Speedstep etc. because it then locks down the Turbo-Mode, with which you raise the multiplier of your CPU. It may seem weird now, but it will be pretty obvious what I'm talking about once you get a look into the new bios or UEFI as it's called now

 

[marsey99]

unlinking the ram was shown to cause fsb holes on nf boards.

best way is to manually set the ram at half the fsb so it is 1:1

i think i would give both the cpu and nb 1.4v, your ram 2.1v tbh.

you should be able to get more than that fsb but you also need to keep in mind that the nf650 shipset was not designed for 45nm quad core cpu nor was it built for high fsb.

overclocking 45nm c2quads is the hardest test for any 775 mobo mate and does take luck to get a good oc.