Well here we go again. The wife asked me to build her a newer pc for the family to use, so i decided to use my AMD parts and secretly buy a Q6600 and new mobo for myself. Now what i`m after from the cpu and mobo is the ability to OC the hell out of it because of the authoring that i do is usually time critical. Besides that i`m only really using it to mess around a bit and if it breaks i`ll buy something else, so my question which of these two mobo`s do you all think is best in terms of stability and oc ability?

Mobo 1
Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3

Mobo 2
Asus P5Q Pro


Thanks again for taking the time to have a look

Nathan

I've got a P5Q Deluxe and I lurrvvveee it! Not idea of it's OC ability though.

Why are you going for a 65nm Quad Core and not a 45nm one?

Well i`m actually an AMD fanboy really *BLUSH* and i`m holding out till their 45nm chips come out. The reason that i`m looking at the Q6600 is because it`s cheap and i`ve read that people are getting 3.8ghz on the GO stepping and i`m just interested to see what i can get with liquid cooling. I`ve never seen a stable clock for a X2 6000+ go past 3.2ghz were as i`ve had 3.3ghz run like a charm. I think i`ve just got to much spare time on my hands and need something to occupy my time so i don`t go nuts....

I expect to either kill the setup or just swap it out in the future anyway so best bang for buck is my rule of thumb...

Well yesterday i got the P5Q PRO and the Q6600 and i`m upto 3.5ghz at the moment and it`s running at @45c, and that is under liquid cooling aswell, so i guess i`ll leave it there and not push it any more as i`m not used to the temps on Intel chips.

Much quicker than the X2 6000+ that i was running...

When it is running at 45 under load you can go up much further... my E6400 runs at 50-55°C and it works just fine.

The cores are between 34c and 40c idle. I`ve ditched asus probe and i`m using core temp because asus probe was reporting 30-40 and then after reboot 7-10 so i don`t somehow thinks it`s accurate.. lol

When the thermal paste has had time to dry properly in a couple of days i`ll try for some more. And so for i`ve only touched the fsb so with a little tinkering i might be able to hit 3.4 to 4. I`d like to run 4 but i know there's no chance with thermaltake hardware.

The fastest almost stable I've gotten my E6400 was 3.2 now I keep running it at 2.8 and it works like a charm.

Forget parts of my last posts.. (i must have been drinking) the cpu is at 3.6ghz with a vcore of 1.4 and the temps are @ idol 39 hottest core and 34 on the coolist core. Ive got the multiplier at 9 and the fsb at 400 and i can't get it any higher without it refusing to boot into windows. And i've tried everything. I was going to lap the cpu and buy a top of the range water block but with it refusing to go any higher and the temps as they are now i don't think it's really worth it.....

Unless i'm missing something??

There will soon be the Nehalem. Wait before you run off buying high-end cooling.

The Core2 series can take up to 70C without any damage to the cores. Preferably not above, however. With liquid cooling you should be able to hit 1.5 or even higher vcore

Windows refusing to boot could be your RAM as well. It's linked to the FSB, if you didn't know. So check that, as well as your timings. Loosen it up alot until you get your target CPU clock!

Happy clocking

My ram is corsair (not to sure of medel) DDR2 667 and i'm running 4gig (4x1gig). The timings are 5-5-5-12 however for some reason cpu-z reports the ram to be DDR3. strange?
The D RAM frequency is at 400 so it's running 1:1 ratio. However i think the ram was cheap crap when i bought it so i was thinking of getting 4-8gig of GEIL

I just hope that when i get it i don't find out it's restrictions of the board that are stopping me from booting successfully. Infact i would have thought that if the D RAM frequency was at 400 and it's running 1:1 ratio that that would mean the ram was running at 800mhz? So it might have overcloced it aswell as the cpu?
If this is the case does anyone know how to tune the ram down a bit and try to push the cpu a bit more?

Thanks again all

Nathan

Durrrrr

If i'd done my homework first i would have known that with the setting i'm at my ram is clocking at 800mhz and that's why i can't get any higher.. Thanks Danthe for pointing that out.

Well on fri i'll order 2x2gig of geil pc-8500 (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GEL-BD854G)
Or i'll go for (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?CSR-HX8542)..

I'm still looking around to find out if there's and definitive proof of either being better than the other, so if anyone has any input i'd appreciate it..

Nathan

Do you have limitless funds? Otherwise, again, I'd strongly suggest waiting for Nehalem...