what to change ram timings to or other suggestions?

When you increase the FSB you're also speeding up the memory. Unlink/ungang the memory. Then you can overclock the memory and CPU separately and you'll know which is failing. Yes, you can set higher memory latencies, but that is effectively just slowing down the memory.

so how do i unlink the memory? right now its at 2.6ghz and i raised it to 2.66 and raised the vcore to 1.35 and it got as far as my log in which is the farthest ive gotten it but it froze after that. and iive heard not to go about 1.36v for the q8200. any specific things i can try that will make me able to overclock higher?

I had a similar problem with my set up. My ram just wouldn't play nicely with my overclock.

Like billbartuska said, you need to unlink the FSB and the RAM. It depends on your bios and motherboard. By default, this is set to auto. That links the two together. If you take it off auto, it should show the dividers. In my bios, it's set up with three digits and a letter. The letter is matched up to your FSB and the number is the divider.

i believe i have unlinked them and set the divider to two. is that what ya'll are talking about, or no?

Since you have a Gigabyte board it should say Memory SPD,change it from Auto to 2.00 whitch is 1:1 with the FSB.

yeah, i did that, i finally got the clock to 2.7 last night changed the ram voltage and upped the vcore and finally got it to work. so i may try a few more tweaks today and see if i cant get it to 2.8 but doubtful my vcore is already almost at the most its recommended to go

bump

right now they're at 65, 60,58, 61 and i have it at 2.8ghz right now.