MSI P6N SLI Platinum Overclocking

I have never overclocked a board before but.....

Games are running kinda slow and my proc and board are getting to be a
few years old... I would like to squeeze another year out of this
motherboard and proc so if someone can tell me how to adjust it would
be appreciated.

I have the following

MSI P6N SLI Platinum
4 case fans so plenty of cooling
E6600 Proc

Just bought a ge force 260 card for it - whatever I do to the MB /
Proc I just dont want it to fry my new video card...

Looking for some settings that are moderately better - I dont need
something that is going to shoot my house to the moon.

I have search for settings, but for the most part it looks like people
pushing the settings to the limits.

If anyone can help me it would be appreciated.

Thanks

JD

JD wrote:
> I have never overclocked a board before but.....
>
> Games are running kinda slow and my proc and board are getting to be a
> few years old... I would like to squeeze another year out of this
> motherboard and proc so if someone can tell me how to adjust it would
> be appreciated.
>
> I have the following
>
> MSI P6N SLI Platinum
> 4 case fans so plenty of cooling
> E6600 Proc
>
> Just bought a ge force 260 card for it - whatever I do to the MB /
> Proc I just dont want it to fry my new video card...
>
> Looking for some settings that are moderately better - I dont need
> something that is going to shoot my house to the moon.
>
> I have search for settings, but for the most part it looks like people
> pushing the settings to the limits.
>
> If anyone can help me it would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>
> JD

OK, here are 439 overclocking results for E6600.

http://www.hwbot.org/listResults.do?...rue&limit=1000

There seem to be a few 3600MHz overclocks, about 50% above
stock. The verification link for one of them is here.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=376057

The CPU input clock is raised to 400Mhz. That is
FSB1600. 400MHz x 9 = 3.6GHz. The RAM uses
the 4:5 divider, so the memory clock is 500Mhz or
DDR2-1000. There could be other dividers, that
don't push the memory as hard.

The memory clocks up at the same time as the processor.
So if you want to raise the CPU clock, and keep the
memory relatively the same, you need a memory divider
to drop the memory a bit to compensate.

The normal practice when overclocking, is to raise a
clock a little bit at a time. The idea being, you're
changing the clock only enough to help you spot trends.
You boot into Windows and run Prime95 stress test.

http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html

Say you raise it 5MHz at a time. You start at 266Mhz
(the nominal value), then try 271MHz. Boot and try
Prime95 for 10 minutes. If there are no errors,
you shut down, enter the BIOS, and try 276MHz.

Eventually, you reach a point, where Prime95 errors
out in less than ten minutes. You're still able to
boot into Windows, because the idle desktop is
less demanding than Prime95 is. So the Prime95
is like a "canary in a coal mine". It warns
about impending doom.

Once you get the warning like that, the next step,
is to increase Vcore a bit. Now, I don't know right
off hand, what the nominal Vcore is. You can check it
with the Speedfan hardware monitor output. The value
read, doesn't correspond to the value set in the BIOS,
as the Vcore circuit tends to "droop" under load,
and "overshoot" about 0.050V above normal
when lightly loaded.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan438.exe

Anyway, you apply a little voltage boost to Vcore.
Say, try 0.050V more perhaps. Rerun the Prime95 test.
Does Prime95 pass ten minutes ? OK, then you're
back to frequency increases.

If you plot your results, the curve begins to
have a slope. Pretty soon, you may see a couple of
possible shapes to the curve. I have an older
processor here, and it "hit a wall". I could
increase Vcore all I wanted, and I couldn't get
one more Hertz out of it. But other processors,
will give you an extra 400MHz for every 0.1V or
whatever. Your job then, is to judge the effects
this is having. If the processor runs too hot,
then on a hot summer day, your overclock is likely
to fail in the middle of a game. So you want
an overclock, which can be handled well by the setup.

There can be other limits. For example, with 45nm
processors, you can easily apply more voltage than
is safe. So the results may suggest a little more
voltage would get you a bit further. But above
a certain level, the processor may only last for
a short time. I believe for 65nm processors, it
isn't quite as bad, and they run out of steam
before the Vcore gets out of hand. (As an overclocker,
part of your research, is finding other people who
have ruined processors, and learn from them.)

My main purpose in describing the above, is to
point out, that you don't just go 266 --> 400
in one shot. Because that'll black screen for
sure.

Another word of warning, is to understand what
other clocks are affected by what you do.
For example, at one time, the PCI Express and
SATA cable clocks, also varied with some of the
other clock settings. You could cause some other
subsystem in the computer to fail, while the
overclocking experiment was in progress. In
some cases, the hard drive was corrupted when
Windows boots. Effectively, your copy of Windows
gets bricked. (Moral of that story, do a backup
*before* you try this.)

Another alternative, and one I've used in the
past, is to boot a Linux LiveCD. There is a version
of Prime95 for Linux that you can get from mersenne.org.
Since the Linux boot CD cannot get corrupted, and since
it runs all the disk drives read-only, the odds are
better that anything stored on the system won't be
affected.

Overclocking the motherboard I own, is a bit more
difficult than yours. I have to jump from FSB800 to
FSB1066, with no fine clock divisions. My BIOS is
broken. I adjust my Vcore using a boost resistor
(so the voltage takes a relatively large step as well).
My system will accept the 33% overclock, but isn't stable
in games. So I cannot regularly use that option. You,
on the other hand, should have plenty of fine tuning
settings, to pick a value of overclock which can
survive Prime95 for four hours, with some
3D gaming thrown in at the same time.

There are other burn-in utilities currently making
the rounds, but I don't keep track of them. Something
called Linx ? And perhaps something from Intel. But the
objective remains the same - to pick conditions which
are good enough, that the computer never malfunctions
in stressful usage.

Also, until you understand the interactions of the
controls, I recommend reviewing the results with
CPUZ in Windows. For example, if you increase the
CPU input clock by 5MHz, use CPUZ in Windows and
see how much the clocks have changed. And what things
are tied together.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

One thing that may not be handled well, is the BIOS
ability to adjust memory timings. Say, for example,
before you turn any knobs, the memory is DDR2-800
with 5-5-5-15 timing. You turn the knob, and later
check the memory, and it is running DDR2-1000 with
the same 5-5-5-15 timing. This is not right, and the
reason it is not right, is because the timing should
scale with the frequency. 1000/800 = 1.25. So
the timings should probably be 7-7-7-21 (because you
round up for safety). So be wary of what settings
the BIOS is not correctly adjusting, while making
your changes. If you set the memory to 7-7-7-21,
while it was still DDR2-800, then you'd have
"headroom" for increasing the RAM frequency.
Or, you could drop the memory divider, such that
the frequency doesn't rise quite as high.

Some motherboards now, are exceedingly complicated.
And some of the controls actually work, if you can
find some results with all those controls listed.

You can get a ton of results here, and I use an
external search engine to search the forums. You
could easily end up reading a couple thousand posts,
to find enough adjustments for your board or chipset.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/

On occasion, Anandtech has a survey of some of the
settings for "strap", Northbridge voltage, termination
voltages and the like, for a certain chipset. But generally,
you cannot expect every chipset to have nice "recipe-like"
scripts of stuff to do. So there is a learning process
involved, and poor documentation to boot.

Paul

On Jun 15, 11:58*pm, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> JD wrote:
> > I have never overclocked a board before but.....
>
> > Games are running kinda slow and my proc and board are getting to be a
> > few years old... I would like to squeeze another year out of this
> > motherboard and proc so if someone can tell me how to adjust it would
> > be appreciated.
>
> > I have the following
>
> > MSI P6N SLI Platinum
> > 4 case fans so plenty of cooling
> > E6600 Proc
>
> > Just bought a ge force 260 card for it - whatever I do to the MB /
> > Proc I just dont want it to fry my new video card...
>
> > Looking for some settings that are moderately better - I dont need
> > something that is going to shoot my house to the moon.
>
> > I have search for settings, but for the most part it looks like people
> > pushing the settings to the limits.
>
> > If anyone can help me it would be appreciated.
>
> > Thanks
>
> > JD
>
> OK, here are 439 overclocking results for E6600.
>
> http://www.hwbot.org/listResults.do?...icationId=13&f....
>
> There seem to be a few 3600MHz overclocks, about 50% above
> stock. The verification link for one of them is here.
>
> http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=376057
>
> The CPU input clock is raised to 400Mhz. That is
> FSB1600. 400MHz x 9 = 3.6GHz. The RAM uses
> the 4:5 divider, so the memory clock is 500Mhz or
> DDR2-1000. There could be other dividers, that
> don't push the memory as hard.
>
> The memory clocks up at the same time as the processor.
> So if you want to raise the CPU clock, and keep the
> memory relatively the same, you need a memory divider
> to drop the memory a bit to compensate.
>
> The normal practice when overclocking, is to raise a
> clock a little bit at a time. The idea being, you're
> changing the clock only enough to help you spot trends.
> You boot into Windows and run Prime95 stress test.
>
> http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html
>
> Say you raise it 5MHz at a time. You start at 266Mhz
> (the nominal value), then try 271MHz. Boot and try
> Prime95 for 10 minutes. If there are no errors,
> you shut down, enter the BIOS, and try 276MHz.
>
> Eventually, you reach a point, where Prime95 errors
> out in less than ten minutes. You're still able to
> boot into Windows, because the idle desktop is
> less demanding than Prime95 is. So the Prime95
> is like a "canary in a coal mine". It warns
> about impending doom.
>
> Once you get the warning like that, the next step,
> is to increase Vcore a bit. Now, I don't know right
> off hand, what the nominal Vcore is. You can check it
> with the Speedfan hardware monitor output. The value
> read, doesn't correspond to the value set in the BIOS,
> as the Vcore circuit tends to "droop" under load,
> and "overshoot" about 0.050V above normal
> when lightly loaded.
>
> http://www.almico.com/speedfan438.exe
>
> Anyway, you apply a little voltage boost to Vcore.
> Say, try 0.050V more perhaps. Rerun the Prime95 test.
> Does Prime95 pass ten minutes ? OK, then you're
> back to frequency increases.
>
> If you plot your results, the curve begins to
> have a slope. Pretty soon, you may see a couple of
> possible shapes to the curve. I have an older
> processor here, and it "hit a wall". I could
> increase Vcore all I wanted, and I couldn't get
> one more Hertz out of it. But other processors,
> will give you an extra 400MHz for every 0.1V or
> whatever. Your job then, is to judge the effects
> this is having. If the processor runs too hot,
> then on a hot summer day, your overclock is likely
> to fail in the middle of a game. So you want
> an overclock, which can be handled well by the setup.
>
> There can be other limits. For example, with 45nm
> processors, you can easily apply more voltage than
> is safe. So the results may suggest a little more
> voltage would get you a bit further. But above
> a certain level, the processor may only last for
> a short time. I believe for 65nm processors, it
> isn't quite as bad, and they run out of steam
> before the Vcore gets out of hand. (As an overclocker,
> part of your research, is finding other people who
> have ruined processors, and learn from them.)
>
> My main purpose in describing the above, is to
> point out, that you don't just go 266 --> 400
> in one shot. Because that'll black screen for
> sure.
>
> Another word of warning, is to understand what
> other clocks are affected by what you do.
> For example, at one time, the PCI Express and
> SATA cable clocks, also varied with some of the
> other clock settings. You could cause some other
> subsystem in the computer to fail, while the
> overclocking experiment was in progress. In
> some cases, the hard drive was corrupted when
> Windows boots. Effectively, your copy of Windows
> gets bricked. (Moral of that story, do a backup
> *before* you try this.)
>
> Another alternative, and one I've used in the
> past, is to boot a Linux LiveCD. There is a version
> of Prime95 for Linux that you can get from mersenne.org.
> Since the Linux boot CD cannot get corrupted, and since
> it runs all the disk drives read-only, the odds are
> better that anything stored on the system won't be
> affected.
>
> Overclocking the motherboard I own, is a bit more
> difficult than yours. I have to jump from FSB800 to
> FSB1066, with no fine clock divisions. My BIOS is
> broken. I adjust my Vcore using a boost resistor
> (so the voltage takes a relatively large step as well).
> My system will accept the 33% overclock, but isn't stable
> in games. So I cannot regularly use that option. You,
> on the other hand, should have plenty of fine tuning
> settings, to pick a value of overclock which can
> survive Prime95 for four hours, with some
> 3D gaming thrown in at the same time.
>
> There are other burn-in utilities currently making
> the rounds, but I don't keep track of them. Something
> called Linx ? And perhaps something from Intel. But the
> objective remains the same - to pick conditions which
> are good enough, that the computer never malfunctions
> in stressful usage.
>
> Also, until you understand the interactions of the
> controls, I recommend reviewing the results with
> CPUZ in Windows. For example, if you increase the
> CPU input clock by 5MHz, use CPUZ in Windows and
> see how much the clocks have changed. And what things
> are tied together.
>
> http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
>
> One thing that may not be handled well, is the BIOS
> ability to adjust memory timings. Say, for example,
> before you turn any knobs, the memory is DDR2-800
> with 5-5-5-15 timing. You turn the knob, and later
> check the memory, and it is running DDR2-1000 with
> the same 5-5-5-15 timing. This is not right, and the
> reason it is not right, is because the timing should
> scale with the frequency. 1000/800 = 1.25. So
> the timings should probably be 7-7-7-21 (because you
> round up for safety). So be wary of what settings
> the BIOS is not correctly adjusting, while making
> your changes. If you set the memory to 7-7-7-21,
> while it was still DDR2-800, then you'd have
> "headroom" for increasing the RAM frequency.
> Or, you could drop the memory divider, such that
> the frequency doesn't rise quite as high.
>
> Some motherboards now, are exceedingly complicated.
> And some of the controls actually work, if you can
> find some results with all those controls listed.
>
> You can get a ton of results here, and I use an
> external search engine to search the forums. You
> could easily end up reading a couple thousand posts,
> to find enough adjustments for your board or chipset.
>
> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/
>
> On occasion, Anandtech has a survey of some of the
> settings for "strap", Northbridge voltage, termination
> voltages and the like, for a certain chipset. But generally,
> you cannot expect every chipset to have nice "recipe-like"
> scripts of stuff to do. So there is a learning process
> involved, and poor documentation to boot.
>
> * * Paul- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Your response was more than I expected - thanks