Gigabyte GA-EP41-UD3L will not overclock

Ikki

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Be aware that this board will not overclock even to the tiniest degree. I have a Q6600 in it that has been running rock solid and cool in a now faulty MSI P35 Neo2 FR board for a very long time at over 3GHz. Nothing will allow the processor to work above stock settings, any attempt to do so leads to boot failure. I have been overclocking for many years and am not a novice, I have tried everything but it just won't budge. The few Internet threads on the board come up with the same experience.

So if you are looking for a cheaper alternative for the GA-EP45-UD3 boards which are getting a good rep for overclocking (but aren't available from Scan) this is not a good choice. Otherwise the board is solid and would be good for a general purpose PC.

:(
 
Hi, I have same mobo now and the O'C ability is very poor but I could push my E8400 little bit higher. You probably will need to play with PCI-E freq manually. I set 356 MHz FSB and 105 MHz PCIE and it works. But it seems it cannot go higher. I know that my CPU can go at 3,6 GHz without increasing Vcore.


I don't know why gigabyte includes tens of o'c settings in M.I.T setup when I has some stupid limitation of FSB...
 
I will try that. I locked the PCI-E to 100MHz as I know that having it off spec can cause a lot of problems. This particular board won't work with an fsb of more than 266MHz. If I could get it to 333MHZ, I would be happy as this Q6600 has quite a high Vin and won't clock much higher anyway without silly core voltages.
 
You could try upping the MCH voltage by 0.1V if you haven't already. I have to do that to get my E4300 (w/DS3 board) up to 3 gig.

Oh, and it's a good idea to unplug all your usb devices when you try overclocking. I once had a problem with my bios resetting itself to stock whenever I tried setting a manual clock speed (even when left at default speeds!). Turned out it was a USB device causing the problem (think it was my steering wheel). My overclocks still held after plugging em back in though (maybe it was a bad contact between port and device?).
 
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Increasing voltages is not usefull in this case. It helps with higher O'C. I also tried disable all peripherals, remove HDDs and incease voltages. Then I go up with FSB but I cannot go over 357MHz ANY WAY. I guess there may be some problem how BIOS sets clock generator or so. I cannot belive that G41 would be such uno'cable much worse than cheap P/G31.

But yesterday my mobo suddenly died. I guess that some MOSFET in VRM has blown because when I try power on the PSU immediatelly shutdown. When I remove 4-pin power connector system will turn on but cannot operate of course. So I'm going to RMA it. Thius is my second dead gigabyte in this week! I can't belive they makes such crap now. I'll probably try to replace it with some Asus mobo...
 
I'll sell you my board. :rotfl:

Seriously though, I have to agree. The Asus PQ5E boards seem to get a good recommendation.
 
Well, I have been able to overclock the board above 3GHz using EasyTune 6 in XP. However if I put the same settings directly into the bios, it refuses to boot. Either I'm missing something fundamental or something just isn't right. EasyTune is not a solution as I use Linux a lot of the time. :confused:
 
Hm, interesting. I never tried EasyTune. I only tried SetFSB but when I adjusted FSB even only +-1 MHz system hung immediatelly. So I give up using O'C sw and rely on BIOS. But in this case it seems that BIOS is buggy and setting PLL wrong way and EasyTune do it better.

My mobo selection is very limited coz I need COM+LPT+FDC+PS/2 that only few mobos have now. Asus even removed FDC and PS/2 on some mobos. Funny is that Winbond super IO supports all this features but they just didn't wired it to the connectors :p
 
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Without trying to jump on bandwagons, my P5Q works very well with my Q6600. 3.42Ghz @ 1.325V.
 
Well, I have been able to overclock the board above 3GHz using EasyTune 6 in XP. However if I put the same settings directly into the bios, it refuses to boot. Either I'm missing something fundamental or something just isn't right. EasyTune is not a solution as I use Linux a lot of the time. :confused:

Your missing something.

What are your settings?

Ram used and speed?
 
You are missing something.

What are your settings?

Ram used and speed?

There are a lot of settings in the bios, which are you interested in?

Ram:

Either Corsair XMS2 DHX 2GB Cas 4 1066

Or Corsair XMS2 DHX 4GB Cas5 800

Same results with both. Bios set correctly for both.
 
have you tried the new bios F5c (beta)? i thought it was a chipset problem (g41), as i've read here. but your succes directly from windows makes me think it is a bios problem.

awaiting your reply. :thumbsup:

note: i've made a pc for a friend about a month ago, and i am very frustrated because of my inability to overclock a very suitable e6300. :(
 
Thanks for pointing this bios out. I had spent enough time on it and have been running it at stock just happy in having stability. I will give this a go, F4 was the only one the last time I looked. :)
 
Does the new bios F5C make any difference?

In a word - No. :-(

However it was worth a try.
 
well, thank you very much for the effort and for the quick reply.

i will try when i'll have the time your solution - EasyTune 6, and i'll test the stability also (probably with occt). my friend lives in a different city (brasov - i'm from bucharest), so my respone won't be as quick as yours. :rolleyes:

by the way, you are the only person on the hole damn internet that succeded in overclocking this board... even the engineers at gigabyte thougt it was a chipset limitation (fsb wall), as i've pointed out in my earlier reply.

thanks again! :thumbsup: :clap:
 
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I think that there are two issues here, the fsb barrier and the problem that it will only overclock for me with easytune and not through the bios.

My Q6600 runs happily at just above 3GHz which on a 9x multiplier is 333-340MHz, so it doesn't need to reach the barrier. It can go further but voltages and heat become too high, so I have not bothered.

As for the second issue, that overclocking is not possible unless you stick to Windows and use easytune (at least it is that way for me). This is not a solution that I can use, I am typing this from Ubuntu Linux.

Best of luck with making progress. :smashin:
 

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