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Please help me upgrade this ancient relic of a system

562 views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  Arxontas 
#1 ·
I watched my friends get the Rampage II Extreme, was not interested. Then came the Rampage III was slightly interested but the increasing rumors about a new socket made me wait. Then finally came the Rampage IV and I seriously considered upgrading to a LGA2011 system. But figured out that my current system was enough for me so I instead bought a GTX590. I am still satisfied with my gaming performance, but the years have finally started to take their toll on my Rampage I and QX9770 and my RAMs.

Over the years, I gradually reduced my CPU to it's current state at 3.8GHz. Also, no matter what I do, I can't get my OCZs to run at the specified frequency of 1200MHz. They're at 890 now. I was still doing OK until I started to have some serious problems this week. Right now, I'm getting BSODs, I/O read/write errors, input lag, all kinds of annoying things.

And now, there comes Haswell... Totally ruined my plans.

I game mainly on my PC so I'm looking for the ultimate gaming performance. It would be nice for Windows to respond fast and quickly sort out some occasional decoding/encoding, but what's really important for me is longevity. I've been using this system for years and it has served me well. My new upgrade should also provide me that satisfaction.

Go for Haswell? X79? Wait for the next high end X series chipset (I don't have much time left before my MB totally craps out on me) ? What do you think?
 
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#2 ·
I'f you have the money I'd get a Ivy Bridge-E and a X79 motherboard, there the best and will still be good in a few years down the road
smile.gif
 
#3 ·
What have you gone over so far with your system? Sounds like something simple to fix.
 
#4 ·
Tell me which BSOD's you have been getting and I can help you find the problem. I have got a lot of experience with the 775 platform.

There is no reason to run your QX9770 at 3.8 GHz if you are a gamer, unless it's so degraded it can't run higher.

IMHO, a person who has ran their 775 system within specs for the last 5-6 years should have seen little or no degradation. My QX9650 has ran for 23,000 hours approximately since 7 March 2008 and I haven't yet seen any degradation.

I was always very careful with core temperatures, and in my case CPUTIN temperature never exceeded 65 C for long (TCASE for QX9650 is 64.5C).

To be fair, my system was never overclocked out-of-the-box. I overclocked it for the first time in 2011.

Here's the "specs" you should have never exceeded courtesy of ANANDTECH:



As for gaming, it's still doing just fine. It performs at 4GHz like an i5-2500k at stock turbo clocks. Personally I am waiting for DDR4 systems before I upgrade. Since you waited that long, might as well get new tech (DDR4) for your hard earned money, right?
 
#5 ·
FWIW, been running my E8400 at close to then 1.4+V since the day I bought it, no degradation whatsoever. The memory speed issue you mentioned sounds normal to me, 775 platform overclocking is very often limited by memory speed.

Lock your FSB/memory strap to 400Mhz and try and tune up your core clock. For example I can't run over 4.05Ghz with my memory at 1021Mhz but can run 4.2Ghz with it at 930Mhz. Over that, I am again limited by memory speed and the locked CPU ratio. You can find the limit of your memory by turning down the CPU ratio and moving up the FSB range until it is no longer stable with a low core clock which you know is stable at that voltage.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by garikfox View Post

I'f you have the money I'd get a Ivy Bridge-E and a X79 motherboard, there the best and will still be good in a few years down the road
smile.gif
That's what I've finally decided on. Next month (if nothing newer comes out) I'll be getting a Rampage IV Extreme, i7 4930K, 4x4 GB CL10 DDR3 2400 modules (it's a little hard to find). Hopefully it will sort out my problems. If not, I'll also get a 4TB Caviar Black.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OCmember View Post

What have you gone over so far with your system? Sounds like something simple to fix.
Pretty much everything. I tried changing SATA cables, I've tried a bajillion of HDD maintenance programs and each and every one of them gave me errors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arxontas View Post

Tell me which BSOD's you have been getting and I can help you find the problem. I have got a lot of experience with the 775 platform.

There is no reason to run your QX9770 at 3.8 GHz if you are a gamer, unless it's so degraded it can't run higher.

IMHO, a person who has ran their 775 system within specs for the last 5-6 years should have seen little or no degradation. My QX9650 has ran for 23,000 hours approximately since 7 March 2008 and I haven't yet seen any degradation.

I was always very careful with core temperatures, and in my case CPUTIN temperature never exceeded 65 C for long (TCASE for QX9650 is 64.5C).

To be fair, my system was never overclocked out-of-the-box. I overclocked it for the first time in 2011.

Here's the "specs" you should have never exceeded courtesy of ANANDTECH:



As for gaming, it's still doing just fine. It performs at 4GHz like an i5-2500k at stock turbo clocks. Personally I am waiting for DDR4 systems before I upgrade. Since you waited that long, might as well get new tech (DDR4) for your hard earned money, right?
I eliminated most of my BSOD issues but my 2TB Caviar Black rans like there's some serious issue going on with it. uTorrent gives me I/O Write Error when trying to download large files, and whenever I try to access some files on it, it locks up the whole system, even lags my games when I don't access it. There are no problems whatsoever with my SSD. Curiously my 2TB caviar green also stopped working a while ago (I'm using it via eSATA in an enclosure) I ran chkdisk, found some bad sectors (I've always been careful about handling my hard drives and it's the first time in my whole life) then the drive started working again like nothing happened. I think my SATA ports and/or south bridge is messed up.

Also, I'm getting some crazy temp readings at coretemp, like 19 degrees celcius on some cores (impossible since ambient temp is around 22 degrees).

Quote:
Originally Posted by ino8 View Post

FWIW, been running my E8400 at close to then 1.4+V since the day I bought it, no degradation whatsoever. The memory speed issue you mentioned sounds normal to me, 775 platform overclocking is very often limited by memory speed.

Lock your FSB/memory strap to 400Mhz and try and tune up your core clock. For example I can't run over 4.05Ghz with my memory at 1021Mhz but can run 4.2Ghz with it at 930Mhz. Over that, I am again limited by memory speed and the locked CPU ratio. You can find the limit of your memory by turning down the CPU ratio and moving up the FSB range until it is no longer stable with a low core clock which you know is stable at that voltage.
I managed to tweak some voltages and now running my RAMs @ 1200mHz, 5-5-5-18 - 65tRfc. FSB=300, core clock @ 3900mHz (tried 4.2 gHz, my old clock speed, but not stable unless I take vcore up to 1.58v !)
 
#7 ·
Check your northbridge voltage.

I discovered that NB voltage is equally important with other voltages when it comes to OC S775, especially so if you have pushed your memory so far and/or your performance level/NB latency is low (Mine is 7 and my memory is OC'd above specs soI need 1.56V northbridge voltage to be stable).

Try NB voltage 1.58-1.60. I discovered that raising NB voltage allowed me to take down a notch CPU VCORE.

1.58 Vcore for 4.2 GHz whereas you used to be stable there before, sounds like your QX9770 is pretty badly degraded, unfortunately. In any case, see if raising nb voltage improves your issue.
 
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