E6600 Underclocking Self

[marcus1060]

My Core 2 Duo E6600 keeps underclocking its self to 2200 MHz.
The motherboard is ASUS Commando, with the latest BIOS.
And I'm using Windows Vista.

This happens even when I turn of Speed Step.
And if I try to overclock it, I get the right speed in the bios, but when in CPUZ it's like I'm just overclocking from 2200MHz. It also says my multiplier is only x8. Shouldn't that be x9?
Whats going on?

[Marcin]

disable Speed Step

[spongiforme]

As long as the CPU works correctly under load, I would not bother: there is no point in doing nothing very quickly.

[D.8080]

[marcus1060]

Speed step is disabled.

Right now it's actually only at 2133.3 MHz

[spongiforme]

Test the CPU while running a computation intensive program.

Mine switches between a 6x and 9x ratio depending on load.

Also, check the settings in the setup screens of your motherboards... try reverting to default settings. I really doubt your CPU is at fault.

[Guest]

Try reverting to default BIOS settings. Or verifying the CPU temperature, to make sure cooling is adequate. And generate some computation while watching your CPU - mine switches 6x and 9x dynamically depending on load.

[marcus1060]

But mine is going to 8x, which is weird.
And doesn't switch from that, and I've reset the bios settings, and messed with all the config.

[spongiforme]

The E6400, which uses a 8x multiplier, should report 2 MB of L2 cache. I'd be curious to see what cpu-z displays.

If that's 8x and 4 MB cache, yes, it's an anomaly.

However some overclockers report that they get better results at 8x and more agressive timings than 9x. Don't ask me for the details, I found such reports through Google.