Sweeeeeeet, new CPU to play with!

Damn, now I want to OC some more. That was quick. Shall I try 425 fsb?
You'll run into an FSB wall long before you run into the upper clocking limit of the chip. Chances are, you could probably hit said wall while still meeting your expectations for cool-n-quiet. Mine at 3.6Ghz loads up at 48*c with the two radiator fans at their lowest possible voltage.

If I remember, the Q9300 has a 7.5x multi right? So that would give you ~3.4Ghz as a semi-expected top speed. I wonder if the lesser cache models overclock better since they have less transistors to push?
 
425 didn't work out, so I went back to 400. Didn't juice it at all tho. Motherboard is a P5E with the latest beta bios.
 
Have had my Q9300 for a week now and so far I haven't been able to do much with the clock. It is also rather hot at standard speed considering I'm running a Thermalright 120 Extreme + Noctua 120mm fan. (It's ~50° on core 2&3, 5-6° below that on 0&1, measured with RM Clock since the gigabyte tool seems to be way off, posting 20° under stress)

Also it doesn't seem to be really stable at more than ~2950 @ stock voltage, but I haven't tried upping the voltage because of my current temp. problems. (Motherboard is a Gigabyte EX38-DS4)
 
For what I do most of the time with my 'puter, a higher clocked dualie serves me just fine; so I'm currently running a E8500 that can hit 3.8GHz without breaking a sweat, no vcore voltage change (though the X38 board most likely auto increases the voltage) needed. Background noise is also becoming more 'n more of an issue with me as I slide toward my mid-40s, and the stock cooler on that chip spins up less with the dual core.
 
Dual-core is still probably a better choice for people who spend a high percentage of their 'puter's time gaming. The more general purpose the box's usage, the more quad starts to make sense, IMO. I've got 15 windows open on this one at the moment. . . .by the end of the day it may get above 20. Often does.
 
Don't lie. Some portion of the point is pure geekery. :)
Some portion, sure. Then I compiled llvm-gcc from a ramdrive tonight, did a make -j 5, and holy crap it was the craziest thing I've seen in quite a long time.
 
I must say, I've been very impressed in the bump up from an X2 with 4GB of DDR. There's a whole lot of smooth going on in my rig right now. :) Also a lot of empty space as the floppy drive and cable, pata optical & cable, and Zalman CNPS9500 all came out of my case. No more pata cables at all.
 
That's ultimately why I changed to the quad from my dually. There's more Mhz to be had in the dual core, but the system is far more responsive with the quad. And hell, 3.6Ghz of Core 2 goodness is more than enough for all the games I have, and likely all the games currently in production.
 
I must say, I've been very impressed in the bump up from an X2 with 4GB of DDR. There's a whole lot of smooth going on in my rig right now. :) Also a lot of empty space as the floppy drive and cable, pata optical & cable, and Zalman CNPS9500 all came out of my case. No more pata cables at all.
My case is pretty empty... except for the Scythe Mugen. Goddamn that was the worst thing I've ever had to install.
 
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln. . . ."

But then my 8800GTX looks like the damn Berlin Wall dividing my case, even including the grafitti (PNY's disco-licious paint job).
 
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln. . . ."

But then my 8800GTX looks like the damn Berlin Wall dividing my case, even including the grafitti (PNY's disco-licious paint job).
At least you didn't have to deal with RAM voltage problems. That certainly was annoying to debug...
 
I juiced the FSB to 1.40 and now it seems to be stable at 3300MHz on a 440 FSB. We'll see if it stays that way. I could be very happy with that.

Edit: Yeah, and about 15 mins later it locked up. Down to 430/3225 now, and that made it all night folding, so is likely to be okay.
 
Back
Top