If I were to overclock the E6400 (my first time)

[kotoko]

Hi this is my first post

Honestly, I know nothing about RAM timings (ex. 4-4-4-12), how much voltage I need to raise when I o/c, etc.

But I'm pretty sure I can, through some more research, learn how to o/c the CPU in the BIOS. And since I want to do it nice and smoothly (I just want to o/c to its maximum stablility, meaning I will just use the stock heatsink), would buying similar parts from AnandTech's E6400 o/c article and following what they did be cool? (maybe buy a better motherboard when it releases) LOL sorry this will be my first time to o/c once I buy a conroe computer..

I look at most of the DDR2 800 RAM on newegg and it seems they are already 4-4-4-12 (some even 5-5-5-15, wow is that a good thing?!), so would that mean I do not have to mess with them and just copy the voltage and CPU speed of the Conroe? (360MHz FSB at 1.350V) And since this has been tested by Anandtech, I wouldn't realy need to increase by 3-5 mhz increments would I?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bobthelost]

Yes you would need to increase 3-5mhz at a time. The reason being that all chips are different, you might not get as much overclock or you might get more. The same goes for RAM.

 

[theteamaqua]

dont mess with RAM timing, benchmark shows that it has very little to do with performance on intel chips... about 2% in gaming amximum

but do increase vcore, vmch and vfsb 340fsb is easily reachable wth ES5 chips, i have seen as high as 500fsb on E6300 which is 3.5GHz with air cooling tower 120 ...

they didnt even push it to extreme ... retail oens are going to be much worst than those ES5 chips, be prepare . dont be disappoint when u get ur retail chip and found out that it cant go that high ... as the Stepping 5 B1 (retail is B2 stepping 6)

 

[theteamaqua]

also when u set timing RAM too low . itm ight not boot at all. so try not mess with it heh

i think with enough vcore u can jump really high at once.. i OC my 920D from 200fsb all the way to 266fsb with vcore increased

 

[kotoko]

vcore, vmch and vfsb 340fsb? Is there more to it than just..voltage? Ok I looked at your imageshack picture, and looks like there are 4 voltages on the PC Health..are those are the vcore, vmch, and vfsb respectively? And that's amazing how you have your system and cpu temperature so low! Shouldn't they go around 50 C when you overclock them?

And another question..ES5 = conroe?

 

[NoStateofMind]

ES = Engineering Sample .....Overclocking? Over my head and I'm watching this thread

EDIT: Welcome to AnandTech

 

[kotoko]

Honestly, would it be better for me if I didn't know those and just do these steps when I get a pc:
ex.
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2MB)
some SATA II hard drive
some nvidia card, hopefully dx10
DDR-800 4-4-4-12 corsair xms2 or ocz (seriously when I first saw ocz I thought it was a car)

Mind you, I will buy the parts once vista comes out, so hopefully by then I have a decent knowledge of o/c (thanks to you people of course)

1) put everything together
2) on boot, go to BIOS
3) uhh..do the 3-5 mhz thing
4) keep doing till computer doesn't reboot correctly, then go one notch below
5) finish!

 

[Zebo]

1. Load optmized defaults.

2 .Set ram speed/divider 1:2

3. Set Vcore +.05

4. Starting at 300Mhz bus go up in 5 or 10 unit increments until she becomes unstable testing each reboot with Prime95 - two istances, one on each core.

5. When it starts to fail knock bus back down 5Mhz, test again : repeat if nessesary until passing.

 

[kotoko]

Ah, hello.

Let's see, from my gathered information, you wanted to set ram speed/divider 1:2 so that the RAM clock doesn't interfere with the CPU improvements? I don't really understand though, how would the RAM clock interfere when you try to o/c the CPU FSB? It gets in the way? And all this ram speed/divider is available in the BIOS right?

As for the Vcore setting to +.05, you said that because 1.300V + .05 = 1.350V

And a final thought came in my head: By increasing RAM FSB, you can increase your CPU FSB even further right? However, if you just increase your CPU FSB without o/c RAM then you won't be able to reach that potential?

 

[theteamaqua]

its important to know that some board uses fsb : Dram, while otehrs uses fsb : DDR2

fsb = 340, so u need dram of 340 to keep 1:1 fsb : Dram, or u need DDR2 680 ( DRAM x 2 = DDR2)

thats why when OCing u need good RAM to keep at least 1 : 1 fsb : Dram, i would suggest 1:1 fsb : Dram if u have PC6400 DDR2 800 or less like PC5400 DDR2 667

 

[theteamaqua]

but liek i said many times, dont expect much from the retail chip. i have seen many of em

all retail steppings, stepping 6 B2:

3 X6800 ~ 3.8gHz
1 E6600 ~ 3.6GHz on 975XBX
1 E6300 ~ 3.08GHz on GA-965-DS3 (440 x 7)

965-DS3 seem like the best baord for overclocking E6400, 6300 ... for soem reason, it sucked at OCing E6600, damn i am getting 6600 ...

 

[SkylinGTR26]

tehteamaqua man you should really stop the double post thing man its annoying, you know you can just edit your post if you need to add something 2 min later.

Anyway, Kotoko you asked why would the ram interfere with the cpu improvments. Becuase you are upping the motherboards frontside bus. A ton of stuff runs on the FSB, ( ram,cpu,IDE,etc)
so your upping both ram and CPU at the same time. So you kinda wanna put the ram divider on becuase most ram wont stay at 1:1, if your doin some hardcore overclocking.

 

[kotoko]

Hmm..most ram won't stay at 1:1...........gotcha, I think.

Ok now I got another question:
So I want to get 360mhz for the conroe, that would mean I need 720mhz for DDR2 ram to have it 1:1? And since the RAM I'm getting will most likely be 800mhz, it would mean I have 1:2? There's nothing wrong with that right? What would be wrong is when the CPU FSB is higher than the RAM yes?

 

[SkylinGTR26]

hmmm.... i think im wrong about the 1:1 theory man. Im stuck w/ DDR so looks like you can run it at 1:1 easily even tighten your timings a little w. some more voltage.

Oh yeah and about that cpu fsb and ram... its fsb not "cpu fsb" they all run on the same front side bus. Anyway yeah your fsb times 2 = your ram speed. So if your fsb x 2 is higher than your ram can go give it some more voltage and see if itll be stable usually just a little extra volts will stabalize it. If not then you have to mess with the timings, youd have to loosen them in order to be stable. Or just put a divider on the ram.

 

[kotoko]

Gah ok, I think I'll just try to stay away from the RAM and see how high I can go with the CPU.

Thanks!