Gigabyte 6-QUAD GA-P35T-DQ6 - PAGE 14J. Micah Grunert - Thursday, July 26th, 2007
So far with the Intel P35 chipset, I (and others) have come to notice that hitting just shy of 500MHz FSB speeds is easily attainable. In fact, with the Gigabyte 6-QUAD GA-P35T-DQ6 I was able to reach 490MHz times 6x multiplier. That simple O.C. provided a 2.940GHz system speed. Impressive, but mostly useless in terms of sheer processing power. When I kicked the CPU multiplier up to 7x, I was still able to keep a decent FSB at 487MHz, not too shabby. But it was when I hit 8x that I had to drop the FSB pretty low, down to 435MHz.
And because memory speeds are tied to FSB speed, there were some interesting new memory frequencies to play around with. Furthermore, the Gigabyte 6-QUAD-P35T-DQ6 didn't require much in the way of higher voltage adjustments to keep those overclocks.
Here's a couple of tables to detail what settings I used in overclocking the 6-QUAD motherboard.
3.4091GHz
487MHz x 7
1978MHz FSB
2.4 Memory/FSB Ratio
9-9-9-24/2T 1168MHz
3.4800GHz
435 x 8
1704MHz FSB
3.0 Memory/FSB Ratio
9-9-9-24/2T 1305MHz
And though the final gigahertz rating is pretty close, we may see some performance advantages from the faster 1978MHz FSB attached to the 7x CPU multiplier. But then again, the 8x O.C. is running the memory almost 200MHz faster. Hard to say who'll win, but it should be a good fight nonetheless. As for voltages, both overclocks received the same treatment.
Voltages
DDR3 Overvolting: +.05V
FSB Overvolting: +.10V
MCH Overvolting: +.10V
CPU VCore: 1.475V (stock of 1.325V)
I might also add that the Gigabyte 6-QUAD GA-P35T-DQ6 is quite forgiving when overclocked too far. Typically, it simply won't post right away, cold cycling itself a couple of times in valiant effort, then load a default 266MHz x 8 in the BIOS. Not once did I have to clear the CMOS, not once did I have to take extreme measures to resurrect said hardware. Aside from the odd memory ratio configuration (though you get used to it), the Gigabyte 6-QUAD GA-P35T-DQ6 could go far in the hands of an experienced overclocked. Furthermore, the P35 chipset runs pretty cool, even at higher FSB speeds. Perhaps a bit of extreme cooling could help to break that 500MHz barrier with perfect stability.
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