Overclocking Q9550

Everlong said:

beagrie07 said:

beagrie07 said:

I've noticed the clock speed doesn't go all the way to 3.4GHz even though thats what wndows says its running at :/ Thanks in advance :)

I've sorted that, just disabled C1E Support. Windows says that its running at 3.40GHz but CPU-Z doesn't go over 3.2, which one should I trust here? lol

Thanks

Try disabling EIST (Intel SpeedStep) in BIOS as well.

It doesn't have the option for SpeedStep after I've overclocked it, it did before. I assume its disabled :)

The temperatures when Windows starts are in the 49C to 60C area, is this normal? idle temperatures are around 33C - 40C.

smarteyeball said:

What does your BIOS report the clock speed as when you first turn the PC on?

BIOS says 3.21GHz, decided to lower the clock too. Something else, when I power on my computer, it powers up, powers down with a couple of second gap before it powers up again, is there a way to fix this or?

Cheers

beagrie07 said:

smarteyeball said:

What does your BIOS report the clock speed as when you first turn the PC on?

BIOS says 3.21GHz, decided to lower the clock too. Something else, when I power on my computer, it powers up, powers down with a couple of second gap before it powers up again, is there a way to fix this or?

Cheers

Gigabyte boards will do that when you make a significant enough change in the BIOS. In addition, they will do that and resort to the second BIOS if there is something configured bad enough that the machine won't run.

If you are changing settings and experience this on the first boot after the change...don't worry about it. It has to cut power to the CPU and such to actually make the change. If it happens on each and every boot and you haven't been making changing in the BIOS, then you might have an issue.

I only changed a couple of options in BIOS, I didn't tweak any voltages. I think I just changed the FSB frequency and the ratio, plus turned off C1E support and SpeedStep (Which disabled anyway)

I've started to play around with my Q9550 a little bit more. I was running it at 3.2ghz, up from 2.83, by using a 400FSB with 8.0 multiplier. I ran with idle temps of 31,27,32,34 across 4 cores (with RealTemp 3.6 and CoreTemp64), and max temps with Prime95 running of 68,62,67 and 67. Mind you, this is with the stock Intel cooler, an Antec P182 case with 3 x 120mm fans all set at their LOWEST setting.

One thing that I hadn't done much with was change my vcore to my CPU. It was set to AUTO which on my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R turns out to be 1.2500V volts.

So, I started to experiment with actually lowering the vcore just a bit to drop my temps. Since my temps dropped and I stayed stable by dropping my vcore down to 1.125V..I decided to see what would happen if I increased by multiplier from 8.0 to 8.5...thus bringing my CPU from 3.2Ghz to 3.4Ghz. At 1.125v, I couldn't run Prime95 stable.....but it seems that I can at 1.175V or 1.200V.

At 1.175 running at 3.4Ghz, I'm idling at 30,28,31,34 with max temps of 65,59,64,64.

I'm currently testing 1.150V at 3.4Ghz to see if I can run stable. My ambient temps in my basement are about 19C.

I've always been quite happy with this Q9550 chip and Intel Stock cooler.

Pretty low voltages and decent temps for a stock HS.


Is that 1.15 at load? If so, you have quite a bit of room to work with. :)

1.175 is good anyway for 400FSB.

Looks like only thing really holding back from much higher FSB speeds is the cooler itself. It seems to be doing a good job ATM though.

9550/9650s are great chips IMHO.

Wishmaster said:

Is that 1.15 at load? If so, you have quite a bit of room to work with. :)

At 1.15, my 4th worker threw a rounding error....so I'm not going to run there.

Wishmaster said:

1.175 is good anyway for 400FSB.

This seems to be my sweet spot and where I plan to keep things. It's running just fine at 3.4Ghz here, at 1.175V and is cooler now then it used to be when i was running 3.2Ghz at 1.250V.

Wishmaster said:

Looks like only thing really holding back from much higher FSB speeds is the cooler itself. It seems to be doing a good job ATM though.

My RAM is likely holding me back too, as I'm running Corsair DDR2 800 RAM in this box. With a 400FSB, I'm sitting at a 1:1 cpu:mem ratio.

While I have considering numerous times of replacing my stock cooler with a CM 212+, I spent so much time wiring my case, and I don't have a back access panel to put on a new cooler, so I would have to pull the mobo to change the cooler. And since my temps aren't an issue, I cannot be bothered to have to redo my wiring for a few degree drop in temp.

Wishmaster said:

9550/9650s are great chips IMHO.

Yep, no need to replace it yet. It handles everything I throw at it with ease. And considering it's 2 years old now, that makes me quite happy. And the chip was only $219 when I bought it.