Woohoo, upgrade time ;)

[Mehen]

been doing some reading during "work"...

You could probably drop your NB voltages even more, 1.35-1.4 should work.

With various boards, most of the people seem to say ~420fsb with 1.2-1.35 vcore and 1.35 to 1.45 NB works flawlessly. People are sticking with 3.2 to 3.4ghz, but say that 3.6 or just under is done pretty easily. Above 450fsb is tough to do. I've also seen a couple with 7.5 multipliers that go up to 470ish fsb.

With the might X48 though, who knows what will happen I'll be doing lots of tweaking and updating tonight.

Maybe we should start a Q9450 overclocking thread.

[Mehen]

Booted at 1.125v/1.35 cpu/nb. 400x8.

Ram is at 5:6 FSB:RAM - so 480x2 = DDR2-960.

Gonna put it up to 420x8 and see what happens.

edit: fixed voltage

[Mehen]

K well, at first I thought I had set it up as 1.25, but it was 1.125. So I had booted at 3.2ghz with LOWER THAN STOCK voltage. Nice. 3.36ghz (420fsb) didn't like that. So now I'm at 1.2vcore, 420fsb = 3.36ghz.
Lowered my RAM speed, don't wanna deal with that yet, I'd be over the rated 1000mhz if I kept the same multiplier.
Anyways, right now I am
420fsb for 3.36 @ 1.20v cpu, and 1.35v nb.

Now lets see how high she will boot @ 1.2v.

Stability testing will come once I see how high I can get it at a fairly low voltage. Then I'll find a sweet spot later.

[Mehen]

Boot stable @

435fsb = 3480 1.2v/1.35v. CPU-Z shows 1.168vcore.

That would be unreal if this was Prime95 stable at these voltages.

This next OC I DO NOT expect to boot at the voltages I'm gonna try...

[Mehen]

Boot stable @
450fsb = 3600 1.25v/1.35v. CPU-Z shows 1.216vcore.

450@1.2v did not work - crashed loading windows.

I am already above (or around) what I will use on a day to day basis. Just curious now...
CoreTemp shows ~49-50C across the board.

[Mehen]

well, froze while loading windows at 475 and 480. Didn't start up at all at 500 (at 8x or 7.5x).
I might be able to get it up at 475 or 480, (which is 3.8 or 3.84ghz) but I'd really have to start upping the voltages.

Right now trying a potential day-to-day overclock candidate.
440fsbx8 = 3.520ghz. Core @ 1.2v, NV @ 1.25v. edit: cpu now at 1.225v, 3dmark cpu tests killed it pretty quick at 1.2. At 1.225 cpu-z now shows 1.192.
also note that the RAM is running fine at 528 (DDR2-1056). It is rated for 2.0 to 2.1v at 1000, I have it at 2.1v.

[Mehen]

1.275Vcore now. Running Prime95 on all 4 cores. Stable so far. CoreTemp shows 69-69-66-65.

I might back it off a little bit to lower the temps, and so I'm not over-spec on my RAM.

[Mehen]

Oh yeah, and RealTemp shows exactly 10C less on all 4 cores.

[Marshmallowman]

you could try some benchmarks, and then try your fsb:mem to 1:1 and see how it turns out

[Mehen]

Yeah I'll try DDR-2 880 with tighter timings/lower voltage vs. DDR-2 1056. Probably over the weekend if there is time.

[Evildead666]

Holy hot damn you have been working hard...

I'll give 1.35V for the NB a try later on, i'm gonna leave the CPU voltage at AUTO for the moment, since I don't have any heat problems...
i'm gonna be doing some Game tests probably, later on.
I have the beer ready, so thats not a problem

[Evildead666]

After half an hour of Prime95:
31C core temp
38C NB temp (still at 1.45V)
36C SB temp ( the NB is keeping it warm...)
Vcore 1.23V form PC Probe II
MB is at 31C

[Evildead666]

With CoreTemp 0.99:
Load : 55-50-47-47
idle : 44-39-42-42

I have AVG, lots of proggies running in the system tray...accounts for the higher temp 1st core...
it also reports i'm at 1.2375V

[Mehen]

Ohhh yeah, that reminds me, forgot to install PC Probe... and an antivirus (probably avg) etc... heh, it was like - windows > drivers > overclock.

[Evildead666]

Be careful, thats what I did to my last PC, and we all know what happenned to that, whizz-kerbang....

PC Probe is showing nearly a 30C difference of the CPU temp than with CPUTemp 0.99...

Which one is right ?
I'd likely go with the highest readings, and if its actually lower, sweet.