OCing a P6N 650i SLI Platinum ...

Question

I just put together a new system and am in the process of OCing it. I have a few questions and was hoping people here could help.
First my system specs:
MSI P6N 650i Platinum
C2D E6600 OCd to 3150 MHz (350 x 9 / 1400 FSB)
4 GB (4 x 1) Crucial Ballistix PC6400 @ 800 4-4-4-12 2.2v
Zalman CNPS 9700 LED (wow, what a beast!)
Antec 900 Case
eVGA 8800 GTS 640 (clocked stock for now-haven't gotten that far)
2 x 160G Hitachi Deskstar SATAs in Striped raid
Hiper Type-R 580W modular Power Supply (28A 12v Rail)
Sony NEC Optiarc SATA 18x DVD Burner
Win Vista Home Premium x86 32bit
vCore +.1000
vRam  2.2v
vNB    1.3v
vSB    [stock 1.5?]
vTT    8%
I have OC'd my E6600 to 3150 mHz (350 x 9 / 1400 FSB). Getting about 28c idle and 45c each core at full load (Orthos). Had some stability issues when I bumped it to 375. I tried bumping up the vCore and vNB to .1500 and 1.35 but still had some stability issues and didn't want to go higher in the volts so I backed down to 360, was stable for about 30 minutes then Orthos threw an error... So I backed down to 350 and I'm totally stable over 4 hours of Orthos--will give it the good 12 hour run this weekend.
I saw something about clocking down memory somewhere in this or anther forum and was wondering if that might have been my problem. I have the mem locked at 800 and timings set to mfg spec, but am wondering if I should be lowering the timing from 800 or loosening the 4-4-4-12 to 5-5-5-18 or maybe doing both to get more stability above 350. Thoughts?
What's the temp I should be avoiding when full load with this CPU? I'm assuming 60c+ is too hot, 50-55c is about as hot as I should run it at full load and not worry. Is that assumption correct? Or can I actually push this chip all the way to 60c without worrying about damage?
What's considered a reasonable overclock expectation on the E6600s? 3GHz, 3.4GHz? 3.9GHz? Should I be super happy with the 3.15 I have now with it running this cool and stable and just stop? If you were in my position, do you think you would try bumping it a little more?
Lastly, upon boot-up I get a message saying something like "you have installed a processor rated at 267MHz. This speed does not match and there will be a degradation in performance running the chip this way" -- or something like that... It's a warning message that shows up right at the beginning of booting just after the system figures the bus is "352 x 9 = 3168" (but cpuz shows 3150, weird). Is there anything to this message or just ignore it? Can I get rid of the message somehow (other than enabling full screen boot up thing)?
Anyway... Awesome experience with this build so far. Having a great time tweaking it!! Loving this Motherboard and chip combo!
Thanks for any help! This board has been a great resource for info on getting the most out of my new system!
Howard

Answer 1

Quote from: leibov on 19-May-07, 12:37:28
When you say "a much higher vcore" push, what would be considered "safe-ish"? with +.1500 (upped it today) Im at 1.47v right now. Guessing stay under 1.6 at the high end?
I'd keep below 1.5V. At a certain point the law of diminishing returns comes up, i think it's a bad idea to burn Vcore for only a few mhz gain - for 24/7 use anyway.
Quote from: leibov on 19-May-07, 12:37:28
Also... Back in "the day" OCing the FSB was more important that pure clock speed because when you OCd the FSB you Increased the speed of memory transfer. With mem locked, what is the benefit of hitting 401 FSB if you have to down multiply to 8x? at 3200 I'd only be 50 Mhz faster then now. Is the point of dropping to 8x just to switch strap and be able to get another few hundred out of the chip or is there still significance to higher FSBs other than pure clock speed. Are the 3.6GHz clocks you mentioned usually at a 8x setting (450x8) as opposed to 400x9?
I've seen a few posts that lead me to think this board changes strap at 400 Mhz. It could be your chipset beeing unstable at 375Mhz but if it changes strap at 400 it could be stable again at 401Mhz and onward. Dropping the multiplier is required to test this. Say the chipset does become stable at 401 Mhz, but you use x9 multi for 3609 Mhz and your CPU can't handle 3609, then you'd never know.
Test 375 x 8  = 3Ghz first. If this combo is stable then your chipset is fine @ 375Mhz; then it's just your cpu maxing out at 375 x 9.
If this is still not stable then it's your chipset not beeing able to handle 375Mhz, try 401 x 8 next to see if the strap change works.
Like i said i've only seen a few posts wich've shown this board to have a second breath past 400 wich leads me to believe it changes strap or something - It's not written in stone tho, you'll just have to try.
Pushing northbridge voltage a little might help too.