E6600 Overclocking Thread

[Some1ne]

c1e support - enabled
max cpuid - enabled (I think...this is the thing that lets you change the ratio, right? If so, then enabled)
vanderpool - enabled
cputm - disabled
peci - left at whatever the default is

and also what is EIST i see people disabling this feature

EIST is SpeedStep, I think. It's like AMD's Cool'n'Quiet, where it tries to tweak your closk speed on the fly to reduce heat/power consumption. I leave it disabled since I'm overclocking anyways, though I'm not sure if it's detrimental to overclocking by itself.

And also, the computer has been resurrected. Everything reinstalled and reconfigured and working great (and 0 viruses this time). I also had time to install a few other games, and also set up my development environment and run a handful of tests, and for work-related things the new system is between 2 and 3 times faster than the system it is replacing (starts the server in half the time, builds the workspace in a bit under half the time, loads the databases in 1/3 rd of the time), and for games it is much faster as well (hard to tell exactly what the scale-factor is, since I'm running at higher resolutions with higher detail levels and still getting smoother performance than the previous system). Overall it seems to be a very successful build.

Edit: One other thing I noticed, the write performance on the RAID-5 seems to be very poor (seems to take about 2.5 minutes to transfer 1 GB of data onto it, even when the source is capable of going much faster than that). I had a seperate 2.5 GB partition on it for my pagefile, but had to move it to the RAID-0 because whenever the system had to page things it would slow down noticeably. After moving it, I can't even tell if/when the system is paging anymore. Read performance of the RAID-5 is great though, and since it's only meant to hold multimedia and other read-only/read-mostly data, it's okay if writing is slow. Still, I wonder if it's a bug in the driver, or if RAID-5 really is that slow for writing data (my CPU usage only shows as 2% when writing to it, so maybe it's being underutilized for the parity calculations).

 

[gramboh]

RE: Viruses, I used to use Norton and disabled on access scan because it was a resource hog and I thought I was smart enough about what files/websites I ran/visited. Either through a hole in IE or JRE (Java runtime) I had a nasty virus which took a day or two to fix (very annoying). The long and short of it is that Norton turned about to be useless as it couldn't even detect the virus on a full scan.

I now use Kaspersky as it has a very small footprint and on-access doesn't noticibly slow down my system (which is 3.5 years old).

RE: Raptors, I believe all WD Raptors are only SATA-1 (1.5gb/s)? Even the 150GB X Version is showing SATA 150MB/s on the web.

 

[Doh!]

Yup. Raptors are SATA-I only.

 

[ncage]

Thanks for posting all your results. I am using threads like this to make up my mind if i want a e6400 or e6600. I want to see on average what people are getting. I have seen some e6600 get up to 4ghz stable on air. The geil memory you have is suppose to be one of the top ram for ocing. I am starting to think that a e6400 will be better but im waiting for some more results from the e6600

 

[n7]

I'd look at the E6400 ncage

I too originally wanted an E6600, but with motherboards getting high FSBs like the Gigabyte DS3 & the Asus P5B Deluxe, the only limiting factor is the CPU, which pretty much means the cheaper the better.

The E6300 does require insanely high FSBs though to get to the same speeds as the E6600/6400, so yeah, i decided on the E6400.

I guess i'll know in a couple weeks when everything arrives if it was a smart decision or not.

 

[Some1ne]

RE: Raptors, I believe all WD Raptors are only SATA-1 (1.5gb/s)?

Ah, that's correct, the raptors are SATA-1 only, though they implement their own form of command queuing ("tagged command queuing", or something like that). The Seagate's, however, are SATA-II/3.0 gbps as far as I know.

Also, people on the Asus forums are saying that the 507 BIOS has bugged overclocking support, and that 502 is actually the best to use. I tried it, however my RAID controller would not work right (I couldn't enable RAID mode) so I flashed back as soon as it became apparent that I couldn't get my RAID working under the 502 BIOS, as I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the setup and force myself to have to start all over again. Flashed back to 507 and restored my settings (and the Asus BIOS has a utility that lets you backup your settings before an OC attempt or BIOS flash, and so far it's been extremely useful), and everything worked again, though obviously I can't say if 502 would have overclocked better or not.

For what it's worth, a lot of people are saying that various BIOS issues are crippling the board's ability to hit really high FSB's, though there's no word on if/when that will ever be resolved. The latest BIOS revision on the official Asus page remains 405, so in my estimation, the BIOS is just still in a very early/unstable state right now. Hopefully they'll get the bugs worked out soon, but who knows.

 

[Some1ne]

Solved the Seagate/RAID-5 issue. Apparently there is a jumper on the back of the 7200.10's, and they will only function in SATA-I mode as long as it is present (it is installed by default). After removing said jumper (not an easy thing to do, as the top of it is recessed below the top of the pins, and the pins themselves are surrounded with an enclosure set into the drive...I had to dig the jumpers out with the tip of a thumbtack), the array performs much better. The burst speed (as reported by HDTach) has gone from ~220 MB/s to a little over 400 MB/s, and the sequential read speed is between 200 and 240 MB/sec across the first 2/3rd's of the drive, and then falling off to about 150 MB/sec at the very end.

Finally a config that demonstrably saturates the SATA-I bus. Hooray!

 

[kschaffner]

What is the stock vcore on this?

 

[Some1ne]

The box lists the max recommended vcore as 1.35V. I think the "stock" vcore on the Core 2 chips is actually variable within the range of 1.2xV to 1.35V.

 

[kschaffner]

I found out that it is 1.3250. I have run into serious problems with my setup... Details here http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1917123&enterthread=y

 

[TechnoButt]

Thanks for the info in this thread. It has helped me considerably, these are my results:

Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi/AP 0507
2x1gb g.Skill HZ PC2-6400
oem e6600
Thermaltake Tai-Chi Watercooling Case

I tried your settings with everything at auto, except memory voltage at 2.4v and could boot fine below 350mhz (with 8x multi). When I went from there to 405mhz, I ran into a strange problem. My sapphire x1900xt did not recognize at boot, leaving no video. I could hear windows start and shutdown (using power button), but no video at any point.

I then forceably set my PCI-e bus to 90mhz (I tried 99mhz, no improvement) and PCI-e to 33.33mhz. This seems to have resolved the video problem.

My cpu was dual prime95 100% stable, but was getting to 70C. I didn't like that (there's probably a bubble in my waterblock from reinstalling for this new rig). My vcore scaled automatically to something like 1.575 volts. I didn't like that either.

Reboot, change settings to manually set memory to 4-4-4-15, vcore to 1.4125, and disabled onboard sound (I have a creative x-fi plat, no need for onboard). After a successful boot and stability at ~3.2ghz, I bumped the bus up to 450 for ~3.55ghz. I'm running 34C mainboard, 40C cpu (asus probe II). Under a full double prime95 load, the cpu is getting to 60C. Hot, but within spec. More importantly, the rig was stable for at least an hour like this, never crossing 60C. I stopped after an hour and started running some basic benchmarks.

I bumped my x1900xt up to 700/800 and ran 3dmark06. No tweaking of OS, just a fresh install of windows xp pro with catalyst 6.8. CPU at 3.5ghz, memory at ~900mhz, and x1900xt at 700/800, I pulled almost 6k 3dmark05.

Then I downloaded the new might&magic demo and the most important test for me, it ran like butter on my 22" Westinghouse at 1600x1050.

All I can say is.. I love conroe. Thanks so much for your informative thread.

If I can get the bubble/cooling issue worked out and manage to find something stable higher (which I haven't even tried higher than 4x450), I'll update you guys for everyone's reference.

EDIT: Full system rig specs for anyone interested:
Thermaltake Tai-Chi VB5001SNA Black/ Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case with liquid cooling system - Retail
PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Continuous @ 50°C Power Supply 90 - 264V UL/ ULC/ TUV/ CE - Retail
-mine is not actually the SLI version, but otherwise identical
ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 1066MHz FSB 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail
-mine is actually an oem pull from Dell
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail
-Micron D9 Fatbody
SAPPHIRE 100149 Radeon X1900XT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16 Video Card - OEM
Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
-mine is actually a WD1600ADFD from Dell
BenQ Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache ATA/ATAPI 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With exclusive SolidBurn Technology - OEM
-mine is actually a DW1640
Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
Microsoft Natural 4000 B2M-00012 Black 103 Normal Keys 17 Function Keys USB Wired Ergonomics Keyboard - Retail
Logitech MX518 931352-0403 2-Tone 8 Buttons 1x Wheel USB + PS/2 Optical Mouse - Retail
Westinghouse 22" Widescreen Flat-Panel TFT-LCD Monitor Model: LCM-22W2
Logitech THX Z-5300e 280 Watts RMS 5.1 Speaker - Retail

Using Arctic Silver Ceramique on the waterblock, video card retail cooler, and bridge coolers.

Also have the system plugged into an APC 750VA UPS for cleaner power.

 

[markymoo]

here is a 0505 specially tweaked official Asus performance bios for Deluxe models - allows 535MHz FSB+

http://www.maxitmag.com/forum/www.maxitmag.com/downloads/asusp5b-0505.rar

theres nothing wrong with that g.skill hz memory its the bios is lacking it needs more timing options

the vmch refers to the northbridge. the cpu, memory all come together in the nb. if your upping the voltage on all then you got to cool that nb for any stability. look at a better heatsink they not expensive.

I believe the p5b 965 chipset will get better and better with new bios releases. still early days.

 

[AdamK47]

I'd like to run my Patriot PC6400 at 1000MHz DDR on my Gigabyte P965 DS3. It will run at 900MHz at 4-4-4-12 timings, but won't run at 1000MHz no matter what. I'd like to use a 400MHz FSB with a 2.5 ratio. The RAM is rated at 4-4-4-12 timings at 800MHz with 2.1V. Have any suggestions?

 

[markymoo]

@adam

set to manual and change the timings to 5-5-5-15 and up the voltage to 2.2 2.3

 

[stevty2889]

E6600 @2.84ghz(so far) on stock voltage 8 hours+ SP2004 stable
P5W DH 1201 bios, but shipped with 801 and booted right up anyway.
2x1GB PQI turbo 667, running below rated speed at the moment(630mhz)
Scythe Ninja

Max load after 8hours SP2004--43c


Now running at 3.2ghz, 1.4125v, getting to about 57c load(yuck) according to core temp.

 

[Some1ne]

Here's an update...the 609 BIOS revision is available for the P5B Deluxe boards (though not officially posted on the Asus website as far as I can tell...if anyone wants I can link my copy), and I highly recommend it. From my experience, it completely fixes the FSB issues that were occuring within the ~330 MHz to ~400 MHz range, and increases the maximum FSB headroom on the board a bit, as well. I was very close to stable at 7x500 using BIOS 609 (previously could not even POST at 6x500), and that was without changing the FSB termination voltage, chipset voltage, or any other settings, so it's entirely possible that with a little extra tweaking I could have gotten it stable (it booted to windows, and passed superpi, but failed prime).

Also, I decided that the auto voltage-scaling was a bit heavy handed, and am now running at 1.43V instead of the 1.55V that the board had been giving on the "Auto" setting (and oddly, CPU-Z will now correctly read my vcore). So now I have things at 9x389, with the RAM operating at DDR2-973, 1.43 vcore, 2.35 Vmem, CL4-4-4-12. It's prime stable and very fast. Load/idle temps have also dropped, to a max of 54 to 55 when priming, which is much more acceptable than the ~60 it had been getting at 1.55. I spent some time trying to get it to be stable at 3.60 GHz, but that still appears to be unattainable, though with the new BIOS it feels closer to being within reach than ever before. For the first time, the system is behaving reasonably while overclocking, meaning that I can set the stock vcore, bump speeds until it starts to get unstable, increase the vcore a bit, and then bump speeds a bit more, and so on, and not have it suddenly start crashing if I select a FSB speed > X but < Y and then magically be stable again at any speed > Y...it's really nice, so I highly recommend the new BIOS.

Lastly, I recieved a request for an enumeration of my BIOS settings, so:

Main -> IDE Conf.:
SATA Configuration - Enhanced
Configure SATA as - RAID
Write protect - Disable
IDE Timeout - 10

Advanced -> JumperFree Conf.:
AI Tuning - Manual
CPU Freq. - 389
DRAM Freq. - DDR2-973
PCI-E Freq. - 100
PCI Clock - 33.33 MHz
Spread Spectrum - Disabled
Memory Voltage - 2.35V
CPU Vcore - 1.475V (note: actual voltage reported by hardware monitor in windows and BIOS is 1.430V)
(all other settings on this page - Auto)

Advanced -> USB Settings:
Legacy support - Auto
Port 64/60 - Disabled
USB 2.0 Mode - HiSpeed
EHCI - Enabled
USB Wifi - Enabled

Advanced -> CPU Conf.:
Modify Ratio - Enabled
Ratio - 9
C1E - Enabled
Max CPUID - Disabled
Vanderpool - Enabled
CPU TM - Enabled
Execute Disable - Enabled
PECI - Disabled

Advanced -> Chipset -> Northbridge:
Memory remap - Disabled
Configure DRAM by SPD - Disabled
CAS - 4
RAS to CAS - 4
RAS Precharge - 4
RAS Activate - 12
Write recover - 6
TRFC - 42
(next 4 settings) - 10
Static Read Control - Auto
Graphic Adapter - PEG/PCI
PEG Force x1 - Disabled
PEG Link Mode - Auto

Advanced -> Chipset -> Southbridge:
PEG Force - Auto

Advanced -> Onboard Devices:
HD Audio - Disabled
1394 - Enabled
Gb LAN_1 - Enabled
LAN 1 Option - Disabled
Gb LAN_2 - Enabled
LAN 2 Option - Disabled
JMicron - Enabled
Jmicron Mode - IDE
Serial port - 3F8/IRQ4

Advanced -> Chipset -> PCIPnP:
(everything left at default)

Boot -> Device Priority:
1st - floppy
2nd - IDE CD/DVD
3rd - RAID
4th - ATAPI CD

Boot -> HDD's:
1st - RAID OS Volume
2nd - RAID Data volume

Boot -> Settings:
Quick Boot - Enabled
Logo - Disabled
ROM Display - Force BIOS
Num lock - on
PS/2 support - Auto
Wait for 'F1' - Enavled
'Hit Del' message - Enabled
Interrupt 19 - Disabled

...and that's all of them.

 

[execine]

that's interesting... i did all the parameters as you stated, just put cpu frequency 377 and i got blue screen on loading windows and the message "dumping physical memory to disc" and the after rebooting i got error in windows's system directory, but fortunately i could fix it with chkdsk in windows setup....

i'm gonna go ant try first setting at 3 ghz and bump up ram voltage higher... let you know...

btw, i changed to 0609 bios...

 

[execine]

ok then...
seems that bios change helped a lot...

now i can run my cpu @ 3.4ghz @ 1.375v (bios) and ram @ 756mhz @ 1.95v (bios) and it's prime stable, btw
ram timings are 4-4-4-12

i tried getting to 3500, but not lucky, prime tests on ram continued to give errors, i tried increasing voltage to
2.0, 2.05, 2.10.. still errors, so i just stopped. anyone thinks that i should try 2.2v ? i'm runing my ram at 1:1
ratio, so at 3500 ram is 778mhz, cpu fsb389.

i have TWIN2X2048-6400 corsair ram (code ending with 6400 exactly, not "pro", not "c4")

tomas

 

[MiS Nemesis]

Arrrrgghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I nearly have the same setup as most of you and I am unable to boot without getting these weird numbers:
7249.9.12.5.2.as05
Can anyone please help, I spent so much money on this system and I can't pass the first error!! Thanks

My current specs:
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe/WIFI MoBo
INTEL Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4 CPU
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink / Artic Silver 5
G.Skill 2GB RAM (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 PC 6400
(Qty 3) WD Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 (For RAID 0)
(Qyt 2) ViewSonic VG2021m Black 20" 8ms LCD Monitor
Antec Performance I P180B Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel Case
ASUS EAX1900 CrossFire /2DH/512M Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

 

[Some1ne]

Hm...no idea what those numbers might be...can you get into the BIOS config at all? If so, you might try flashing to a new revision, and then making sure your SATA controller is set to RAID mode, and making sure your array is defined correctly, and so on.

Also, if you insert a bootable CD, does it do anything different? If you don't have one handy, just use the Asus driver/utility CD that came with the board, it will boot to a DOS prompt if you insert it into the PC when you power on.

 

[MiS Nemesis]

This is what my BIOS says:
WDHOA
0801
0559
F909

I can't even get a bootable CD going.

 

[Krazyjack1000]

The only thing that shits me about this board is whats with the rev up and shuting down and booting up crap, anyone else experiencing this problem (not sure if it's a problem)
Only does it when i extremlly oveclock. It's like hmm should i boot hmmm can i boot oh yes lets boot. Can this cause problems overrall nice features

BTW 0614 bios is up at asus

 

[Some1ne]

I can't even get a bootable CD going.

Do you have another graphics card you can test with? It's possible that the one you have is defective somehow. I'm pretty sure that if the system cannot initialize the graphics, it will fail to boot. Also, some graphics cards will very briefly show a screen at startup with various obscure letters and numbers on it, so it could be the source of your problem. I've never seen the board itself generate strange numbers like the ones you describe during my experiences with it.

The only thing that shits me about this board is whats with the rev up and shuting down and booting up crap, anyone else experiencing this problem (not sure if it's a problem)
Only does it when i extremlly oveclock. It's like hmm should i boot hmmm can i boot oh yes lets boot. Can this cause problems overrall nice features

Yeah, mine does that too. I think it even does it at stock settings, though I haven't run it at stock often enough to be sure. I've never had any problem with it...in fact, I actually kind of like it, because I know that if after changing settings the system doesn't do that initial rev-up and instead goes straight to full-blast, then my settings are unstable and need to be reset (and conversely, I know if it does do the rev-up, I should at least get a successful boot).

On an unrelated note, it turns out one of my RAM modules is bad (fails memtest even @ DDR2-533 settings...the other one passes, both at the slower speed and at the overclocked speed of DDR2-973). I was getting intermittent reboots and it turns out that module was the problem. Running the system without the bad module now, and reboots are gone. The odd thing is, it passed prime95 stability testing (8 hour overnight run) just fine, but would reboot randomly even when sitting idle. But regardless, I put in an RMA request with Gskill today, and I'm hoping they will let me just replace the one that's bad. We'll see how that goes.

 

[Mozillauser]

Thanks for all information, i have the exact same specs except i have an E6300 and a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler.
For now, i cant play around with it that much, because of no monitor (waiting for a dell 24!).
This is a really interesting thread, good work Some1ne!

 

[imported_Buckster]

MMm - interesting at 330fsb it didn't do the on, then off, then on again trick, but did if any bios change, or powered off at wall

now at 345 fsb - it does the on, off, and on again on every power on, and on restart....

I'm thinking it could be something to do with auto voltages ... turns on, not enough voltage, off, then on at slightly higher and voila

any one else getting it ?

Mark.