wheres_wally wrote:

Ok,
here is my problem
I have an e6600 on an asrock 945g-dvi mainboard witha leadtek 7600gt
graphics card. When i first got the computer i had a stick of corsair select
533mhz 1gb memory. I since have brought some corsair XMS2 667Mhz 2x 1gb to
enable dual channel. When I had the 1gig stick i couldn't raise the fsb past
300 giving me a clock speed of 2.7mhz.
Now I have the so called good quality ram and running dual channel I still
can't get the fsb past 300mhz, even though it is faster ram. My 3d marks
have not increased, so basically i have spent $430 dollars for no gain (how
****ed am I)
I have checked all my bios settings and everything seems set right.
In the bios there are no multiplier settings, only fsb is adjustable and u
can't increase the v-core cause it is locked. I am very frustrated as I
thought going from 533mhz to 667 mhz ram and enabling dual channel i would
see some improvement, but nothing, I am open to any suggestions!

First of all, if you are going to overclock, you need to do some background
reading here. You might be surprised about what holds back these systems.
I'm not about to repeat all what I've read, because I might get it wrong, and
because I cannot verify any of it by reading it in Intel's datasheets. So
you'll have to read it for yourself.

http://xtremesystems.org/forums/

Here is a hint for you. You can overclock farther by changing the clock
to the CPU while you are in Windows. The reason for this has to do with
the "strap" used. "Strapping" is normally a hardware feature, where defaults
for hardware are applied when the systems starts (at time T=0). It is also
possible to apply straps under BIOS control, either though (secret) registers
in the Northbridge, or via GPIO signals applied to the outside of the chip.
A system is "strapped" in the BIOS, and performance range is determined by
the strap used. But the "strap" and the monkey-business associated with it,
is not made visible in the BIOS. So it has taken overclockers a while to
figure some of it out. (I.e. Why is my overclock via the BIOS, behaving
different than overclocking while in Windows? )

So one overclockers trick, is to select a clock frequency in the BIOS, which
is not an overclocking value. Purely to force the BIOS to select a particular
strap. Then, you go into Windows and use a utility to change the clock
setting to the desired overclock speed. Much greater overclocks have been
achieved by doing that, as well as better benchmark results for identical
clock settings. The strap affects how the Northbridge works, and affects
latency to the memory.

The picture at the bottom of this page, shows a guy using Gigabyte "Easytune5"
to set a higher clock while in Windows. In some cases, a program like
Clockgen from cpuid.com can be used.

http://xtremesystems.org/forums/show...light=gigabyte

Note that the above strangeness applies to Intel chipsets. It is possible if
some good non-Intel-chipset Conroe boards come along, that more "linear"
behavior in overclock, will be observed. Only time will tell.

Paul