Off-topic: Ashchap, I'm in Taunton. It's a right dump xD On-topic: Turn the CIA off (I have a Gigabyte motherboard too), as it overclocks 'automatically' and basically messes everything up. Also, if you have a 'Performance Enhance' option set to Turbo or something, turn that off too, I'm not sure of it's exact function (the manual says: allows components to run at optimum speeds (??)) but it messed up my overclocks a bit. You could try changing the voltage of the NB?
First bit OK, but I would not change NB voltage, or indeed any other voltages. It's a very minor overclock for a C2D, to not even POST is shocking so I'd look elsewhere. Is the RAM timing on "Auto" settings? Lowering the CPU multiplier will just reduce the amount of overclock possible before hitting the 333MHz FSB limit for his RAM; eg, 333 x 6 =2GHz, only 7.5% up on stock.
BTW, what revision? No BIOS support for many 45um CPUs (inc E8400) until rev3.3. Q6600 is OK on all revisions.
Obvious suggestion that for some reason has not been made so far: update the bios I flashed it with the latest version (version 4 -> 13) and now I'm succesfully running at 300MHz FSB. Hooray! Now I need to see if it'll go to 333 It's Rev 1.0 so looks like I've limited CPU upgrade options - good job the overclock is working now! Is it still worth me getting another 2Gb of RAM? It's still not clear to me whether it's worth paying extra to get 2x1GB compared to the cheaper option of a single 2GB stick. Would two sticks be significantly faster since they will be dual channel?
You're running a 64-bit OS so it can certainly make full use of 4Gb. Depends how much money you want to invest in a near-obsolete system. See if you can hit that 333FSB, then you may think it's worth hanging onto the system a bit longer.
running at 333 now, seems fine 2x1Gb costs £20 from scan, 1x2GB costs £17. I'm tempted. I think I'll re-read the article from a while ago demonstrating the benefits of 4GB. Edit: Still playing with getting the best overclock. I've got my FSB up to 400MHz now (2.8GHz core) which is causing my 667MHz ram to run at 800MHz. They didn't like it at first so I increased the ram voltage by a notch and now they're running fine. I've noticed though in CPU-Z that the memory timings are different at 400 FSB to their values at 333. 333MHZ: 5-5-5-15 400MHz: 5-6-6-18 I don't know much about ram timings but higher numbers are worse aren't they? Am I losing much performance at the higher speed or is it easily made up by the increased processor speed? Edit 2: The highest I can reach without putting the ram voltage up again is 420MHz (2.94GHz cpu) and now the timings are 420MHz: 5-7-7-20
Don't get carried away and don't go over 2.0V on the RAM. If you want to keep a high processor overclock (over 2.33GHz), ditch the DDR2-667 RAM altogether and start fresh with some DDR2-800. Are you checking stability with Prime95?
