Hi BruceHope you enjoy the scenery, I sure do. Try a flight from Telluride to Creede. The scenery is awesome and the landing is pretty challenging.My brother-in-law lives in Boulder and I went to CU. Had season tickets to the Buffaloes & Broncos for several years after I graduated. Haven't been back to Boulder for 25 years, bet a lot has changed. Is it still a toll road between Boulder and Denver?Bob

Hi Bob,Thanks- I will try the route you suggest.The toll road to Boulder from Denver is long gone and is now a freeway (called the "Boulder Turnpike"). It's either a 6 or 4 lane freeway depending on where on the road you are. And plans are well in development to further widen it. There is, however, a new toll road which conencts south denver to the northern suburbs via DUA (KDEN), so is like a ring road going way east of the city.Cheers, Bruce.

AspenleafI had a little time to try your overclock suggestions this weekend. I set my memory to manual and was able to input the ram speed at a constant 800mhz. I was able to increase the FSB until I was able to get to 2.8. I tried 2.9 and it wouldn't post so I upped the Core voltage up to 1.35 and that's when I ran into problems. I spent the next hour trying to get back into the bios so I could undo my changes. Finally, was able to get back to 2.8 and it runs cool and stable at that speed. 2.8 was my original goal, but I got a little greedy when I saw people getting up to 3.2. I think I'll stay right here for the time being and not worry about trying to push it harder.SamI know my Vcore voltage is holding me back as you suggested. I have an Asus P5N32 680i SLI motherboard and when you take the Vcore voltage off "auto" to specify a particular voltage it disables several other "auto" voltage settings. Since I have no idea what those settings should be, I think I'd better leave them alone.Thank you both for your help and excellent advice. In a few months I'll probably forget about the problems I had resetting my bios and try to push it a little harder. In the meantime I'm satisfied with my 30 to 45 frame rate. I only fly the GA stuff, so I can crank everything pretty well to the right and enjoy the ride and not worry about tweaking too much.Thanks again for your help.

You're welcome, Bob, but now I'm very puzzled as to what could be holding your system back, and why you couldn't post at 2.9. What was your final FSB that was stable?

I got the FSB up to 311.1 X 4 =1244 (2.8) to run stable. When I tried to bump it up to 322 X 4 = 1288 or higher it wouldn't post. I checked my Vcore voltage and it does appear the "auto" setting boosts the voltage when I increase the FSB.As I said before, 2.8 was my original goal because I was going to buy a Q6800 chip @2.8. If I could OC the Q6600 up to the same speed, I'd save about $500. That's not to say I wouldn't like 3.0 or 3.2, but I just not sure how much aggravation I want to go thru to get there.Since starting this little experiment, I've read that my motherboard is somewhat finicky about memory. I have Corsair Extreme memory and maybe the board has a little problem with it. I haven't seen this type of memory specifically mentioned, but maybe no one but me is using it with this board.I really do appreciate your help and if you have any magic bullets, I'd be glad to try them.Bob

It might be possible that your RAM is being undervolted. If you don't know the specs, you can check it in Windows with CPUID. Look under the RAM section and see what the SPD says about voltage. It's probably 1.8v, although most DDR2-800 should be warranted to 2.1 or 2.2v. You may want to see if Corsair support has any info on that. My motherboard says it has the RAM voltage at 1.8, but HW Monitor reports it at 1.87. You can also use HW Monitor or CPUID to see what your actual vcore is. It's often different than what the BIOS setting says, although on auto it is usually set to whatever the VID on your CPU says, or even a bit higher. That would usually be enough to hit 9x333. The other problem could be that your motherboard needs a little more voltage at the higher FSB settings. If you look under your voltage controls after you set it to manual instead of auto, you will see what your BIOS will allow you to adjust. Look for the memory controller voltage. You can try increasing it one step at a time and see if it will post. If you do post, use the hardware monitoring in the BIOS to check your motherboard temps. If they're OK, boot into Windows and monitor it for awhile with HW Monitor. You can also use the very expensive and accurate sensors located at the tip of your finger, and touch the heatsinks on your motherboard chips, and make sure they aren't getting too hot. You should be able to keep you finger on them for 10 or 15 seconds without feeling like you are getting burned.

My ram is shown at 1.8 on CPU-Z. The specs for the sticks rate it at 1.9. When I change the VCore voltage from "auto" my board says this will unlink the voltages to my Northbridge, Southbridge and CPU VTT, whatever that is. When I changed these last weekend, I had a heck of a time recovering. Sometimes I could get into the bios, but my wireless keyboard would not respond, so I couldn't make any changes. I finally realized the keyboard was live for about 15 seconds after I entered the bios and then went dead. I was finally able to go in and hit F10 to restore the bios defaults and then all was well. My next option would have had to have been the motherboard jumper.I'll check all of this out when I have a little time play with it, hopefully before the weekend. After last weekend, I get a little nervous messing with the voltages.Thanks again for your help.

I can see why you might shy away from trying anything higher. But I do think you system is capable of it when you can see what settings everything needs to be at. It takes a lot of testing and you may not find it worthwhile.I installed a Xigmatek 1283 cooler in mine today, and it works so well I decided to try some higher overclocks. I have it at 3.2 GHz (8x400)right now, and the temps under Prime95 full load on all cores are staying in the mid 40s (core temp). And I have a high VID of 1.3v. I wouldn't dare try these higher overclocks with the stock cooler, but it was OK at 3.0 GHz with temps at full load in the mid 60s.If you do decide to try again with your system, I'd be curious to know the results.