I have almost the same cpu a q9450 on a asus p5e flashed to rampage formula. I've had the setup for 10 years! It won't do above 400-433 or so but it used to do 475fsb. I got 3.8 from a 2.66 cpu. I was using high motherboard voltage at 475. Like 1.73 NB voltage. It spent most of it's life at 3.6 and 450 fsb 1.61 NB voltage.
I'm limited to 400-433 now because I overvolted like crazy my cpu and it degraded very fast@ 1.55+-1.6vcore
I kept my vtt termination volts at like .02 below vcore.
Note the NB voltages I mentioned some might. consider too high but nb and vtt volts definitely help high fsb overclock along with performance level and strap.
You mentioned thermal grizzly did you use liquid metal or normal paste? I redone my boards heatsinks also.
Great tips, thanks for the help! FYI used normal paste thermal grizzly.
Q9650 or extreme editions would be ideal for performance but imo, on ebay atm, they are asking too much for 10+ yr old cpus.
In any case, I don't want to throw too much $ at this platform, just use what I have stored over the yrs already & some cheap bargains on ebay if I come across them.
Biggest issue imo for future usage is limited instruction sets in these older cpus. Not so much their outright performance, but its ability to crunch through modern & future apps is limited.
Still if your a tinker at heart, its all fun!
I have Xeon X3360 on its way, so will post new results soon.
Testing some Hynix HYMP125U64CP8-S6 2x2GB PC2-6400 kit on P5Q vanilla board (non pro), will pair these up with X3360 when I get it.
This ram was snapped up for bargain price imo, Memtestx86 stable to 466Mhz (2 passes) with 1.86 vdimm. Tightened timings from stock 6-6-6-18 to 5-5-5-15.
Ran PCMark08 & p95 1hr under win 7 x64.... all's well!
Greatest OC friendly DDR2 I ever seen.
), with Q6600 G0 CPU and I was able to do 4GHz on it (445MHz FSB).
