Upgrade my Q9300 chip?

[hawkhero 11]

I have a Q9300 cpu running Vista 64 with 8gb of ram. 780i MB. I have liquid cooling installed and 2 NVidia 9800GTX in SLI mode 512 cards. I have had a hard time trying to overclock. Should I be looking at a new CPU or or just overclock like one of the MD 11 Beta guys does! Thanks for any help or input.,Greg, new owner of the MD11!Greg Moorehttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpghttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/for...argo_hauler.gif

[Guest D17S]

Your Q93 will go to 3.0Ghz, so you may as well use it. 1st make sure you have at least DDR2-800 ram. OK?Get a trial copy of Everest to stress and monitor temps. Now go into you bios and reset your CPU voltage to 1.3v and your front side buss to 400. The rest stays in auto. Boot 'n run. Now fire up Everest system stability tab and run the stresser. The 4 core temps need to stay below 80C. If the temps are good (and it doesn't crash!) you're good to go.The 8Gs of ram are Not helpful to FS. A 32bit program can only use 4Gs under Any circumstances. If that Nvidia board starts to act up, take out 2 sticks. Also, SLI is not helpful to FS.Actually, an old Q6600 would be an upgrade. That one will go to 3.6Ghz at the same FSB speed. Your CPU is not the bottleneck. Current chipsets are not designed to go above a 400Mhz FSB. That's why those old, high multiplier core2 CPUs are a better choice than these new-fangled Penryns.

[Guest Callmecapt]

SLI is the most overrated gimmick I have ever seen. And 8GB of RAM????????4GB is more than you will ever need.And now you want to overclock?You'll get people telling you that overclocking is safe if done properly. Overclocking of any kind will shorten the life of the equipment you are overclocking. Be careful how far you take it.I looked into liquid cooling for my PC, but I have a problem with putting liquids and electric circuitry so close together. I'm guessing you didn't ask the PC seller many questions. You just went for the highest end system you could get.Next time, ask questions. I was going to upgrade from my 8800GTS 512MB card to a 9800GTX. I asked the guy what kind of increase in performance I can get and the store person told me I will get barely a 15% increase in performance for an extra $300. Not worth it for me. I'm telling you this because I get a lot of people asking me to get PC systems for them. The last one was my brother in law who wanted a high end multi media system. He was quoted $2200. I told him I could save him $1000. And this is a COMPLETE system. 21 inch widescreen BENQ LCD monitor as well.He's extremely happy with what I got him.Research a bit for tips on optimizing your system and you will be very pleased. It's amazing what you can do to make your PC go faster and it costs you nothing. A PC is like any other piece of equipment. You MUST maintain it by servicing it regularly. Spyware, virus, etc...scans, disk cleanups, defrags, scandisks. You have to do all this. This speeds up your PC by a very large margin.Also, look up comparisons between graphics cards and compare SLI configurations with different games. Some games, or sims like FS, don't use it effectively. FS uses dual core very well. Not sure about quad core though.I suggest you try this site for tweaking your system. It is highly recommended.http://www.tweakguides.com/Just my 2c.Goran

[hawkhero 11]

I have to adjust rated FSB speed 1333, 1433 ect, to get to 400 bus speed. My BIOS will not let me adjust bus speed. Do you think pulling out 2 Dimm chips of ram and let the 4 Gb of ram run in SLI mode be better? 8 GB of ram is overkill?Greg Moorehttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpghttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/for...argo_hauler.gif

[stevenp 1]

For 8800gts 512 and the 9800gtx (theyre the same exact cards)For your ocing experience put in a very good cpu cooler if you know how such as thermalright ultra 120 extreme or hr01+. Also for fs just disable the sli and use it in single card- it runs faster. For me I have sli because I also play a lot of high stressing games and it really makes a difference.

[hawkhero 11]

I have liquid cooling installed. I was looking at the Q0950 that would give me 3.0 without overclocking.Greg Moorehttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpghttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/for...argo_hauler.gif

[Guest D17S]

FSB speed are sometimes advertised at a 4X number. For instance a 1333 FSB is actually a 333Mhz FSB speed ( x 4 = 1333). If the bios will not let you adjust your FSB, there nothing else that can be done. Sorry. In any case, the 8G are not helping and will likely just contribute to stability issues.Again SLI video will not help FS. SLI ram mode only auto detects and sets ram speed and timings. That won't help either. All modern mobos do that anyway.