Hey folks!
After ~2 years of easy 4GHz Pentium D/975X chipset bliss, the time has come to refresh my editing/video effects workstation.

I'm now running a P45 and Q6600 G0 but the blasted thing doesn't like OCing at all!

Specs:

Gigabyte EP45-Extreme
Q6600 G0
4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-1066
*cough* Geforce 7800GT *cough*
Decent watercooling

EIST and

The P45 BIOS has way too many settings for me to be comfortable with - so I have a heck of a lot of reading to do to get up to speed. It's supposedly built for the LN2 crowd though which would lead me to believe that it should be a goer.

I've only had a brief session with the BIOS at this stage (an hour or so) but I'm having no luck.
Will have another crack at OCing tonight and see how I get on - hopefully with some more info to share

The thing that's getting me though is that all I can do on stock voltage is get a pathetic 50MHz out of the CPU - and that's just by upping the FSB speed. Lowering the multiplier and upping the FSB didn't seem to achieve anything either
Throwing voltage at it doesn't seem to help (and I shouldn't think I'd need to for a 100-200MHz increase anyway - right?)
I have a suspicion that It may be a non-OC friendly CPU, but I can't really verify that easily.

Now I know that there are VTT PLL and GTL reference voltages that can be tweaked too (which, to be honest, I know SFA about), but am I fine with just OCing the "old fashioned way" by raising the FSB speed?

There's a bunch of info on the mobo and BIOS settings (screenshots) available here if anyone's interested

Does anyone here have any experience with P45 overclocking that they'd care to share?
I'm ideally aiming for 3GHz - but if I can get above that - I'll happily do it.

EDIT: I have a couple of ideas that I'll try - I think I need to manually overvolt my RAM in the BIOS up to 2.1V to get to it's rated spec

Also, I might do the unthinkable and test the GB OC software... just to see if it craps out using that as well

What memory divider are you using? If it's set to run at DDR2-1066, maybe it lacks much headroom. Fiddling with the divider settings to start it at 800 might give you more room to ramp up.

I've been messing with my RAM dividers - dropped it right down (as you do) at the start - didn't seem to give me more than a 200MHz improvement though

Your post got me thinking... and to do a bit of reading actually - I've since been messing with the chipset strap and that's been helping things out a lot (set it at 200MHz and managed to break 3GHz without breaking a sweat!!!)

I'm well on my way now!!

I built a mate's PC with an Asus P5Q Pro last night, and it wouldn't overclock at all until we flashed a new BIOS. These boards are still pretty new to the market - have you checked for a BIOS update?

Most Q6600 G0s will do 3.5ghz, some do 3.7-3.8, and a very few do 4ghz. I found that 3.5ghz, 438x8 was a good speed when I had mine. Don't go over 1.5v for everday usage, and don't mess with the GTL voltages until you have to; you won't be getting incredible FSBs out of a Q6600 so you won't need them that much.

Quote: Originally Posted by reflux I built a mate's PC with an Asus P5Q Pro last night, and it wouldn't overclock at all until we flashed a new BIOS. These boards are still pretty new to the market - have you checked for a BIOS update? Most Q6600 G0s will do 3.5ghz, some do 3.7-3.8, and a very few do 4ghz. I found that 3.5ghz, 438x8 was a good speed when I had mine. Don't go over 1.5v for everday usage, and don't mess with the GTL voltages until you have to; you won't be getting incredible FSBs out of a Q6600 so you won't need them that much.

I flashed the BIOS as soon as the board was set up actually

Messing with the chipset strap was the setting that instantly gave me the headroom - I whacked the CPU up to 3.7 with a little voltage bump before it would stop POSTing, however I was getting page error BSOD's from anything above 3.3Ghz
I'm pretty sure that it'll be due to the high frequency that the RAM is running at (I try to have it sitting close to 1066)
If I drop the RAM speed, the CPU goes higher, if I raise it to close to stock - the CPU bombs out.
I'll need to mess with some of the chipset voltages and advanced clock settings on this board too... when I have time