Now, day in day out, see tons of threads on people asking how to oc. I'm pretty new to this too. So when I started out, I couldn't find anything on C2D oc; most were on AMD. The principles are the same but points of references in many cases alien. I'm not about to write a guide here; not qualified enough, period IMO. But there are lots of bros here who are; each in some way in a specialised field. I'm hoping I'll share somethings about it and the bros here add on and build this thread to a basic guide for new guys. 1 place to look and start with. So this thread depends on all the bros, not my thread but a consolidated team effort brought out in simple language. Just add/correct/improve anything I've written if needed. Bros, just choose any topics and whack it in. Write a topic and I'll put a link from here for fast reference.
Some Basic Tools you'll need to start with:
Memtest ( courtesy of Rascal )
This is a test for you to test if your rams can run at your stipulated speed and timing. Always better to burn in a cd, set your comp to boot cd before OS, and run this. If you clock too high or timings set too tight or not enough voltages, you won't risk data corruption in the os; when it's ran outside OS. Any errors you get in the test means it cannot run properly with the rams settings you set in the bios. Memtest is indicative of a somewhat stable ram oc, farksy shares it's because even when it's memtest stable, sometimes the memory doesn't actually appear stable in windows. Large FFt in orthos will give you the final indication.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Reddevil0728 Post #18 How to burn to cd You will see a memtest.iso rite? then open ur disc burning utility, look for burn image option. select the file n burn.. leave ur cd in ur optical drive.. restart.. go into bios set optical drive boot to first before hdd.. then exit.. then after POST it will go to memtest and runs automatically |
Orthos runs 2 instances of prime; calculating prime nos. In your c2d, it has 2 cpu cores, so this program makes both the core works to 100%. This will then cause the cpu to heat up a lot because of the load. In blend test, it will work both your cpu and rams, and if it can work without any errors for 8 hours in 1 go, you have a ok stable oc. Orthos shows your cpu clock speed as well as the period of priming.
Prime 95 does the same thing and is the parent program that orthos is derived from. Please install as described in the link so that it runs 2 instance of it. It is more stressful than Orthos as in that you can allocate more ram usage; you can torture your rams further and thus your system suffers more too..... in a good way.
Both statements below are shared with good points on orthos by Catacomb and double Prime95 by TankianW.
About prime 95 and orthos:
Catacomb shares..........to open up your Task Manager when running Orthos but somehow the blend test don't really max out your ram. It might be up to 70% only due to the fact there are some application running at the back end hence the rams might have some being reserved. If you really wanna max out your ram then best is run one instance of Orthos and another instance of memtest. That will really max out your ram
TankianW ..........Recommended: When running Prime Custom, for 1GB, run 400/400, 2GB run 800/800. Leave some room for your OS and Prime95 to cohibit during the stresstest. Try not to overshoot on your physical memory or your the prog will access your page file which slow it to a crawl..
Coretemp
This program gives you an idea what temperature your cpu is on both cores. Accuracy will not beat measuring with an ir probe but good enough.
3DMark 05/06
This one here mainly test your GPU oc as well as system stability to a degree. This is mainly if you oc your graphics card.
CpuZ
It tells you all the info on your current cpu speed, ram timings, ram speed etc...one common question= your DDR2 speed is reflected as 400mhz, and you got and set an 800mhz ddr2 ram. That's correct; your Double Data Rate ram is running at 400mhz in 2 cycles and therefore 800mhz.
Also ...
- Pen and paper to record your settings in the bios and tweak them 1 at a time.
- Your voltage/temperature monitoring programs that came with your mobo.
Let's Begin
Overclocking is setting the entire system to run above it's rated speed. When you overclock your cpu, the ram speed increase as well. Because of the speed increase, you'll need to put in more voltages in the cpu, rams, motherboard; liken to when you increase the speed of a car, it needs more fuel. So if there isn't enough volts into the system, it cannot be stable at that faster speed.
So why overclock? Well it's your call on this, since you paid quite some money on your system, why not make it more value for money.
Your casing, rams, cpu and mobo
If you choose some Branded system, HP, NEC etc.... you're limited severely. Forget this article. Research on the rams, the batch of the c2d cpu, mobo. Which is a system that you can oc within your budget? As for casing, as long as ther's good air movement. PSU is important as well. Google and ask. See this link http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=108088
Every mobo, chip, gpu, ram is different; don't refer to someone's setting and do the same, it's not..period. Refer to learn about characteristics but do the settings yourself.
About rams---- when the package say ddr2 667mhz cl4 1.8v, it just means that the manufacturer guarantees that it will run at that setting. It doesn't mean it cannot run at ddr2 800 or 900, 1000, just guarantees that settings. So selecting a good pair at ddr2 667mhz like the Crucial 10th anniversary ones; they can run at ddr2 1200 mhz. That ram is cheaper and faster than like a Dominator cl5 ddr2 800.
chispy: In order to get the highest stable possible overclock on your Core 2 Duo its always better to pair it with a good set of memory that overclocks good as well , Micron D9 based memory are the best of the best. an up to date Micron D9 memory buyers guide:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=223253
Research, read, ask at forums like here or http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...splay.php?f=59 . Find out all you can on your rams, mobos, etc.... you'll get a good idea what voltage settings you should do. Please if you are new, don't look at the experts and their high oc and expect the same. Start conservatively.
Temperatures
When your system goes into higher speed, and more voltages it'll heat up more. Too much heat will cause system instability and in long run kill your system; something will die/burn. What's the safe temp for c2d cpu?
On idle(means doing nothing), anywhere 55 degrees celcius and below is fine; fact it's better that it's idling at below 50 depending on what cooling you choose on your cpu. On load (when you're running orthos blend for 20 minutes) it should not go above 70 deg; the cpu can withstand higher heat than that but that's not good for it. Most of the time you will never work your computer to full load anyway.
Cooling
Running at higher speed and higher voltages also means higher temps. So your cpu, rams and motherboard will be hotter than it's meant to be at default. You can say the cooler you can keep the system, the higher you can overclock it. That means you look at your casing ventilation, rams if it needs cooling, mobo itself, gpu, cpu of course. For basic starters, a good case ventilation and a good cpu fan. Then after that, you get hooked, water cooling, chipset cooling, phase cooling (Sub zero temps), etc....
chispy gave this link for ref of air cooling:
Voltages
Ah...What is the safe voltage to use on my rams, mobo and cpu?
First you need your voltage moniter in your bios and also a software program that usually comes with your board. What you set in the bios is not neccesarily the voltages that is actual. This varies on different mobos. Eg: 1 mobo when you set 1.45v to the cpu may actually put 1.47v into it(what we call overvolting), while another when you put 1.45v to the cpu may be in actual when you look into the voltage moniter to be 1.38v (called undervolting), then it may drop further to 1.36v when you put more load on it(called Vdroop). So look at what the voltage monitering program tells you for the voltage and not what you selected while setting in bios. Of course the best way is to use a digital multimeter to measure.
Rams(Vdimm):
2.2v and below is safe. 2.3-2.4 is ok but it's better to add a fan to it. 2.4 above, for beginners don't try. And again this is a general statement, every ram is different.
CPU(Vcore):
It's ok to set to anywhere below 1.6v as long as your cooling can make the cpu at full loads at below 70deg. (Bros on WC and more, this doesn't apply). Generally using Heatsink fan (AIR), 1.45v and below is safe for the beginner. Default vcore is 1.325v.But use your temps as your guide.
Motherboard:
This is different on every board, research and ask other bros with the same board. Generally you need to increase some voltages on your mobo when you oc to stabilise the system. Vfsb, Northbridge voltages, Vmch, all different terms on different boards. Remember, the NorthBridge voltages affects a lot when it comes to ram and cpu overclocking.
Technical Jargon (FSB, Vcore, PIE ECP TPE etc....)
Let's get familiar with these terms we'll always use:
Core speed:
Speed of your cpu 2.4ghz, 1.8ghz .(1ghz=1000mhz)
FSB
Front Side Bus (Bus Speed), your internal clock speed, your cpu runs at this data speed multiplied by x times (multiplier) to achieve your core speed.
Rated FSB
This is the speed at which the CPU communicates with other parts of the computer. Screw that.... just divide it by 4 it's the fsb speed.
Multiplier
As it says, multiplies the fsb to give the core speed.
Vcore
The voltage value on the cpu; cpu voltage..
Vdimm
Voltage to the memory/rams/ddr2
TCL
Ram Latency; the timings of the rams, the time needed to process the data. There are many values to understand there. But the smaller the value, the faster it runs. Doesn't affect performance much for C2D. For a start just set whatever the rams says or set to auto.(someone please run a topic for this).
Ram ratio
The speed of the rams: speed of FSB, say rams running at 400(x2)mhz and cpu fsb 300mhz, it will still run synchronised at 4:3 ratio. Google lah.... Anyway setting cpu and ram to run at the same speed (1:1 ratio) does gives better performance .
About memory and stability: ( Contributed by Longsiew )
memtest v1.65 or 3.2 is for memory burn-in instead of testing memory stability. Make sure u active cool yr memory if the voltage is 2.1v and above for DDR2 and 2.8v for DDR1.
Quick memory testing under windows would be 3D Mark 01SE; Game Lobby high detail. At times, u can pass pi 32 million but will failed Game Lobby high detail.
3D Mark 03. First game is quick test for stability of yr CPU. Pls do not talk about 06 as if u failed to run 01 or 03, so how r u gonna run 06.
Before oc, u must know some trouble shooting kinda thingy as certain cases that seems to be related to stability issues is not cause by instability of oc but the hardwares itself such as dying HDD or a buggy mobo.
Bios Update:
Every mobo has constantly updated bios version, and each version behaves differently. Update to the latest bios version, and check in forums (VRzone, Extreme systems, etc...) if that's generally is the most overclocking suitable one. Familiarise yourself with the bios and read up what each functions are for generally.
Find out generally what is a conservative easily obtained core speed and try at that value first. Eg: Most E6600 can get to 3-3.2ghz quite easily sometimes on almost stock voltages.
A Simple OC Example:
Here we oc an E6600(2.4ghz) and a ddr2 667mhz ram as an example.
AT default C2D runs at 266mhz FSB or Rated FSB 1066mhz. DDR2 667 runs at about 334mhz x 2. You see here that the rams is running faster than the cpu. So if you downclock the ram speed and set it to run at 533mhz(266 x 2 ), now it's running the same speed as the cpu at 1:1 ram ratio. Remember when you increase the value of FSB, the ram speed increase as well.
Eg: Now the rams is set to 533, when you increase the FSB to 300, you'll see the ram speed is also increased to 300(300x2=600mhz).
Again On default speed. If the rams were set to 667 in bios, rams are now at 333mhz against cpu 266mhz FSB now the ratio is at 5:4, if we raise the FSB to 300, then the ram speed will go in the same ratio to 376(x2=753mhz). Do some simple maths, if you can't understand this part, try again, you need to.
Go into bios, everything default. Set to manual to oc. Disable anything you don't need(someone can contribute on this) or if you don't know, just the spread spectrum thingy.
oOgA contributed this-- what to disable in the bios:
...
things u can disable when u are doing overclocking
EIST, C1E, CPU Lock Free (to disabled if u are using a non-ex cpu), Max CPUID limit.
DISABLE ANY "enhancement" features in motherboards that advertises on better performance, when it comes to clocking well, manual settings are teh best..hence eg. for asus mobo, disable Q-fan, hyperpath3, dram throttling..etc etc..u get what i mean
the purpose is to reduce the load as much as u can. (such features dont come free ...)
things i notice when overclocking.
Setting PCI-E to 101 instead of 100 can do wonders. (apparently it did so for my case)
Setting PCI to 33.33mhz instead of Auto
Intel Thermal Control....this feature is a question to me. Imo, it does not affect your overclock UNLESS when ur heat generated surpass a certain amount. Hence..i will agree it is a safety feature for those on Air cooling. (correct me if i am wrong. this is not to be mistaken as C1E and EIST. this is a safety feature)
there are 2 modes. TM1 and TM2.
Tm1 reduces voltage
Tm2 reduces vid and multi.
u can disable it to further reduce the load although imo, i wont recommend it.
One more thing to note is the Vdroop when clocking...Dont worry, it has nothing to do with your motherboard. It has been happening since the canterwood generation....not much an issue but u just need to consider the droop in voltage when u are on load..hence to compensate the droop, u need to set teh voltage right so that it wont droop to the unstable amount that causes your tests to fail
Make sure the cpu is set to 1066 strap for some mobo.
Set the FSB value to 334mhz. Don't touch the multiplier adjustments. On this cpu the default multi is 9 and therefore 334 x 9 = 3006mhz core speed.
Set the rams to auto and set it to run at 533mhz; because of the fsb increase the ram speed has also increased to 668mhz.
Set the vcore to 1.4v, ( as for the rest of the voltages for your mobo, please google.) For the E6600, at 2.8-3ghz, you may just be able to leave the rest to auto. But please post in this forum your mobo model and ask for help for the VNB, Vfsb, Vmch, etc.... these voltages plays a large part to oc stability.
F10 to save and exit bios. Go back into bios again to check in voltage and temperature moniter the actual values. Place memtest cd in and Reboot.
Please learn how to reset cmos in case of an oc failure unless your mobo has auto recovery. If you cannot go into windows, see a blue screen, no screen, whatsoever, your oc has failed, at such low level, don't worry, it won't kill your stuffs.
If it pass all the tests the rams are stable. But here because it's running at rated speed, you may not need this test; unless you then set the rams to run at 667, on this fsb that will run the rams at 753mhz, you will need to test.
Otherwise boot into Windows. Open up Coretemp, your voltage/temp software moniter, and Orthos. Select blend and prime. Make sure the temps don't exceed 70deg. If it does downclock. If temps are ok, and prime fails, increase the vcore. Let it prime for 1/2 hour and if it does, reboot into bios reduce the vcore by 1-2 values down, say to 1.375v. Prime again. What you want to do here is to find the lowest voltage to run this speed. So you can repeat till you find the lowest stable voltage; save electricity as well as runs cooler. If satisfied, prime on for 8 hours, if ok, voila!!! you have succeeded.
Remember armed with some basic knowledge, overclocking is lots of trial and errors, trying one value at a time to determine if it's the best.
An OC flowchart: (Efforts by argonmt)
To be continued...................
I will not procrastinate, I will start tomorrow!
thought you busy ? sticky dah so pro...even the effort 
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