What can I tweak besides CPU voltage to achieve stability?

[Robert P]

Hi. I'm new to OC'ing. I have a GA-P35-DS3L Rev 2.0 board, running XP Pro. Been OC'ing a Core2 Duo E8400 3.0 gig cpu.

At an OC of 4 gig - Freq @ 445 x 9,  PCI Freq 100, CIA2 disabled, Performance Enhance - Standard,  I find with the cpu voltage at 1.4 it seems to hold up to everything, ran a Prime95 Blend test for a few hours and that didn't reveal any problems. Runs Battlefield Bad Company 2 without issue.

However at that voltage the cpu temp runs as high as 69 deg which seems high. From what I understand Intel states the 1.35v is the highest recommended voltage for that cpu.

If I drop the voltage to to 1.3, the cpu temp goes down to a max of 61 while playing BFBC2. and the game runs fine but a Prime95 small FFT test crashes the sytem almost immediately. Bumping up to 1.325v yields an error on one worker within about 20 mins.

It would seem the goal is to run the lowest possible voltage, wondering what else I can tweak to make it solid while keeping voltage as low as possible.

Thanks for all input.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

You seem to be doing fine but I think that you may be missing the point that one tenth of a volt is a massive amount when talking about CPU power. You really need to tweek it a tiny bit at a time. 1.4 to 1.3 is a vast difference. Try it at 1.35 and see how it runs. You can make slight adjustments from there. There are very many other settings that can have a bearing on stability and I can't list them all you will just need to do a lot of homework.