Overclock my Core 2 Duo E8200

AddRAM said:

Windows is booting and here`s what we have now. How do the volts look ?
Another question, why do the core speeds and multipliers constantly change ? It does this on all 3 of my Core 2 Duos, I guess that`s normal ?

Oh, nice!

I admit that 1.208V is lower than I was expecting. What is it set to in the BIOS?

Anyway, yeah, the constant fluctuation is very normal. If CPU-Z could show this in true real-time, then it would look like the CPU is having a major fit after taking way too much caffeine. :) Older versions of CPU-Z didn't show these fluctuations enough because they believed no one wanted to see them. I guess they were wrong, but now lots of people are like "Omg, my CPU is going nuts!" hehe

AddRAM said:

I only went up 1 notch on the vlotage ( as it were ) in the bios from 0.000V to 0.125V. It changes in incraments of .0125V should I leave it there ?

In the bios It reads

CPU Voltage 0.0125 ( that`s what I can change )

Oh, you can try to leave it there, but the 1.208V voltage that it's resulting in is a bit low. Of course, if it turns out to be stable, then that would be nice.

Speaking of which, Prime95 is the most-recommended program for stability testing. For the Core2 series, Prime95's "Small FFTs" test is the best test because it focuses just on the CPU. Most people recommended to me in my days of overclocking the E8400 to tweak until it can run Prime95's Small FFTs test for 12 hours! So, I did and it was worth it. I never had any stability issues. Although, I also added 12 hours of Prime95's "Blend" test and the "In place large FFTs" test too. lol I'm crazy, but I also had my E8400 @ 4.0 GHz! :)

Prime95 will show you two "Worker" windows, one for each core, underneath a main window that shows the start time of the test and some other useless info. hehe The titlebar of the two Worker windows will show you if the Worker is either Running, or Stopped. If it's Stopped, then it failed. Any failure like that is instability and it just means that you have to do some more tweaking, such as increasing the core voltage or something.

When you go to their site to download Prime95, you might find it a little bit difficult to find the the download link. You might laugh when you see their site. :) Anyway, I recommend just doing a Ctrl+F for "p95v277.win64.zip (4.6MB)" because it will land you right on the download link so that all you have to do after finding it is press Enter. :)

AddRAM said:

Memory 1.90
VTT FSB 1.200

As you go higher and higher on the overclock, the FSB will probably have to be increased to help with the higher FSB clock.

AddRAM said:

NB 1.24
SB 1.50

Also, the memory clock didn`t change, it stayed at 800 MHz, the box says it supports 800 MHz so should I change that ? I wrote XFX asking them if it will support 1066 as Tigerdirect claimed it did but the XFX specs don`t say that, that`s why I got PC2-6400.

Oh, and by the way.... You`ve been Repped

lol thank you. :)

When I had my 680i, I was told that I could overclock above 800 MHz if I wanted, but finding the tightest (lowest number) timings would be the most beneficial for nForce chipsets. I was also told that if I could get the Command Rate down from 2T to 1T, then I would feel a difference. My memory at the time didn't want to do that, so I looked around on Newegg for memory that could by searching through customer reviews using Ctrl+F for "1T". Fortunately, I found one fairly quickly. I ordered it, switched to 1T, but it failed. I got it to work after some tweaking though.

So in the end for 1T, I had to increase the memory voltage a lot, and I had to take the main timing, the one that matters the most (other than Command Rate) called CAS # Latency, and loosen it from 4 to 5! Argh. lol It was worth it though. hehe That change from 2T to 1T made a slightly noticeable improvement for general things, like browsing through my hard drive, opening programs, and even surfing the internet. So, any time my memory was used I noticed it a little. That little bit was worth it because I was looking for some tangible difference!

So I guess I can summarize what I learned by saying that it's not the memory's clock speed so much with the nForce chipset, but the timings. Although, thanks to that, I never learned how to overclock memory and I still don't care for it. :) lol I guess things would have been different if I had started out with an Intel chipset like the P35. The P35 guys were overclocking their memory!

AddRAM said:

So if I wanted to go to 3.2 GHz I would change the clock speed to 1600, is that right ?

Yep! This should require a slightly higher core voltage and probably even a little bump on the FSB voltage.

Oh, I almost forgot about temperature monitoring: Real Temp!

Real Temp download page: Download Real Temp 3.70 | techPowerUp

You'll notice a "Distance to TJ Max". This doesn't really have to be watched, but it's kind of neat to know what the distance is. The core temps are what matter, of course.

Yeah, this is like riding a bike. I haven't talked about overclocking a Core2 Duo on an nForce board in about 2 or 3 years. I could almost shed a tear. :) I haven't used that EVGA 680i SLi in about that long. I used to think it was awesome. Well, it was when it came out. So yeah, I'm having some fun here!

AddRAM said:

Running Tests

What the hell is Average Distance to TJMax LOL

The tests in Real Temp aren't really stability tests.

Anyway, the Average Distance to TJMax is the average temperature spread between the core temperature and the Tj Max temp which is 100°C for your CPU. So in the screenshot, the Distance to TJ Max was 49 and 56. That means it's 47 and 56 degrees away from 100°C. The Tj. Max is the temperature where the CPU is supposed to automatically throttle itself down to cool off. It's kind of like it goes, "Yeah, I don't think so. This is too much. I'm takin' a break to cool off. Sorry." :)

Real Temp GT is for 6-core CPUs. That's why it's wider. :) Other than that, it's the same program. The reason for the temperature variations between Real Temp GT and the plain Real Temp is they were polling the CPU at different intervals and caught the CPU at different times.

Just a quick update: I am looking at going to bed sometime soon, but I don't know when. So I may need to soon begin thinking about finding a point where we can pause and continue tomorrow. Of course, there's always Overclock.net - An Overclocking Community. hehe

AddRAM said:

Sleep on a Saturday ? Unheard of LOL !! Alright, thanks alot for your help. I`ll keep playn with it and I`ll seeya in the forum

You're welcome. This is fun stuff! When I joined SF, I didn't expect to be seeing threads like this. I love it. :)

Anyway, I should be back tomorrow morning for more overclocking goodness. hehe