I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm just confirming...

wafflez

wafflez

New Member
Ok, so I have a q6600 b3 stepping, and I overclocked it to 3ghz with ease. Now with my new fan on my heatsink, my temps dropped drastically, so I thought to myself that I would up it to 3.2ghz. sooooo, I set it to 355x9 and couldn't get it stable...I played with voltages and even went all the way up to 1.368 (intel's high end of the recommended voltage is 1.37)...THEN, I noticed on my multi meter gadget in vista that when I did stress tests, the comp would blue screen as soon as the 3rd core got to like 15% utilization...I changed affinity on the stress tests to exclude the third core and got up to 3.4ghz stable easily. Now, I ask you, is there any way to 'Disable' one of the cores? The max I can go up to stable on all 4 cores is 3.1ghz (from 2.4ghz). Also, does this mean one of my cores is just a bad overclocker?

Well uh, for the core disabling question, I have a gigabyte p35-ds3r if anyone had any ideas. ALSO, is 3.4ghz even worth it with this core? I tested game fpss in bioshock, hl2, lost planet, and some other games and the fps difference is around 4-5fps from 2.4ghz to 3.4ghz....I figured an entire 1000mhz increase would do more than that. Heat is not an issue seeing as even at 3.4ghz none of the cores go above 65c...(CPU temp is different than core temps)
 
ram's at 1:1 automatically, so I didn't want to oc a lot and left the multiplier for ram at 2.40 x 355, which is 852. I really don't see how that has to do with a malfunctioning 3rd core. I mean the third core goes to 100 percent perfectly when I go up to 3.1 but as soon as I hit 3.2ghz the third core keeps causing lock ups. also, I've tried putting my timings back to 5-5-5-15, no luck. (I generally leave them at 4-4-4-12).
 
Your assumptions sound correct. The third core sounds like it's hit it's max.. As for disabling it, I believe you can, possibly in the BIOS? If not there I do not know where, elsewhere.. I gave it a quick Google and came up with nothing, mayhaps a more determined effort will yield the desirable results.

In my opinion though you should keep it at 3.1ghz. As you stated, the jump from 2.4ghz to 3.4ghz returns, by no way, the same return in gaming performance, disabling a whole core, as unused or unneeded it maybe, seems too much a loss to gain an extra 300 effective clock. On the topic of the measly gain in FPS with such a large overclock, I can only guess that your GPU (as powerful as it is) is bottlenecking the maximum performance index of your CPU in gaming potential. This doesn't sound so farfetched when you remember that that most games rely more heavily on the GPU, than CPU. Testing it on a CPU heavy game like Total War, or any RTS in general, may see bigger performance boons than the likes of HL2 and Bioshock.

If you want to be certain, Lower the setting of the desire benchmark game, by as much or as little as you deem fit, and test the two respective clocks then. If my guess is correct, FPS will rise much more dramatically then before.
 
hermeslyre said:
Your assumptions sound correct. The third core sounds like it's hit it's max.. As for disabling it, I believe you can, possibly in the BIOS? If not there I do not know where, elsewhere.. I gave it a quick Google and came up with nothing, mayhaps a more determined effort will yield the desirable results.

In my opinion though you should keep it at 3.1ghz. As you stated, the jump from 2.4ghz to 3.4ghz returns, by no way, the same return in gaming performance, disabling a whole core, as unused or unneeded it maybe, seems too much a loss to gain an extra 300 effective clock. On the topic of the measly gain in FPS with such a large overclock, I can only guess that your GPU (as powerful as it is) is bottlenecking the maximum performance index of your CPU in gaming potential. This doesn't sound so farfetched when you remember that that most games rely more heavily on the GPU, than CPU. Testing it on a CPU heavy game like Total War, or any RTS in general, may see bigger performance boons than the likes of HL2 and Bioshock.

If you want to be certain, Lower the setting of the desire benchmark game, by as much or as little as you deem fit, and test the two respective clocks then. If my guess is correct, FPS will rise much more dramatically then before.
Click to expand...

lol good point. even 3ghz with this cpu is overkill...my ray tracing goes at 20fps fullscreen at 3ghz =D
 
elitehacker said:
Q6600 at 3Ghz is crazy man, that's pretty good. I'm planning on getting a Q6600 seems to be pretty good value.
Click to expand...

go with the e6850 dude...I regret getting the Q6600 because nothing uses more than 1 core. ;_;

Though I paid $264 for my q6600 on july 22nd, and the e6850 is about $50-$60 more but it's stock 3ghz. Dual is enough, especially when you can oc it to 3.8ghz
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top