How can I overclock my Q6600?

boramk

Bammed
Joined
Mar 17, 2007
Messages
9,957
Reaction score
338
Location
Chicago
I'm an overclocking noob...

How do I overclock it? BTW there's only fan cooling from the CPU fan and the 3 fans on my case, so its air cooling only.

It's G0 stepping if this is important..

Step by step, how do I get it to the highest stable? Like I want to go down the moment there is a strain.. I hear it is 2.9Ghz or 3.0Ghz?
 
Push the turbo button... :)





What motherboard do you have?

This helped me out a lot when I was noobish.
ok, I assume you've never overclocked before...

I hope you are familiar with playing in the bois, spesifically how to reset it using the motherboard jumper if you make a mistake.

I'm not familiar with Gigabyte BIOS'es, but there are 3 main things to know in basic overclocking

1. CPU speed is determined by taking the FSB times the CPU multiplier.
Intel FSB speed is Quad channel so 200MHz is 800FSB.
Your board is rated for a 1333FSB, or 333Mhz, so you got lots of room to play with. your E5200 has a 12.5 multiplier. 200Mhz X 12.5 = 2.5Ghz

2. Memory speed is determined by a ratio divider to determine your RAM speed relative to your FSB speed. For best speed and stability, its best to keep this ration at 1:1 or 1:2. IE if you FSB is set to 333Mhz, its best to run your ram at 667Mhz for 1:1 (2x333 since its DDR) or at DDR800 if you run your PC at stock FSB of 800, thus giving you 1:2. There are lots of other Devider settings, but you should stick to those 2.

3. its highly unlikely that your CPU will run a the motherboard's 1333FSB at its full 12.5 multiplier (4.16Ghz), but the benefit of running the FSB at 1333 is, that we can run the ram at 667 giving the ideal 1:1 sync. What we do then is to reduce the multiplier on the CPU to something more sensible. Start by aiming at 3Ghz (9 multiplier). That should give you a speed boost without pushing temperatures too high. Most E5200's out the should be able to do that.

what you will need to find out is how to change settings for the above in your particular BIOS. Some other owners of that board might be able to help you out with specifics.

Here's the 3 steps:
1. set your FSB to 333Mhz (some bios would indicate it as 1333)
2. Set you ram speed to DDR2 667 (some bioses might refer to this as 333)
3. Set you Max CPU multiplier to 9.

save bios and reboot.

After that you need to do 2 things, keep an eye on the temps using a program like speedfan

run the CPU through a stress test for a few hours (I use Prime95)

What you are looking to avoid is:
1. Temperature of over 60C when stress testing. below that wont shorten the life of your CPU.
2. Prime 95 failing tests, or bluescreen reboots.

Should you find it to be stable, you can go into the bios and start increasing the multiplier slightly by 0.5 each time and running the tests again, until you find either of the above happening, then go back to the last value that was stable. If your temps get a bit high, you can get a after market cooler like a Zalman 9300 or 7500 Cooler.

Congratulations, you are now "sticking it to the man" and getting what Intel did not intend for you to get :)

I've been able to get 2 E5200's to a stable 3.5Ghz using a ASUS P5QL-E motherboards.
 
Last edited:
Push the turbo button... :)





What motherboard do you have?

This helped me out a lot when I was noobish.

You joke but MSi released a laptop with a turbo button not long ago:D

1951turbo1.jpg


1951turbo4.jpg



Stock:
1951turbo3.jpg

Turbo:
1951turbo33.jpg
 
Ya we all know they had it back in the day, had it on my 386 when pushed I got a full 40MHZ!!!
 
I was struggling to overclock my Q66, I eventually got it working though. It would seem the RAM speed makes a pretty big difference. Follow Brawler's post and it should work for you. Here's mine with my RAM at 667MHz: http://i39.tinypic.com/2n9kqja.jpg
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X