Alienware overclocking / underclocking failure

I have recently aquired a m17x r1 with intel q9000 4gb ram gtx 260. Bios a05. My problem is that if I raise the fsb even by one it doesn't post and I have to hard restart the computer three times. I recently updated the bios to a05, but that didn't help. This happens if I raise or lower the fsb. I also tried lowering the memory speed and raising / lowering the fsb. Any help would be appreciated. I'm new to the forum and have found it to be very helpful so far. Thanks in advance.

 

You need to increase my more than one MHz. Try 100MHz increases till it crashes. Than you can "Bracket" to the higest stable overclock.

 

Worked , Thanks I feel like a dummy. I was working with the rationale that if a small increase didnt work then a large increase definately wouldnt work. overclocked to 2.4 stable with max temps after 30 min of prime 95 79c

 

95c for the Q9000? my max was 75c, for the thrid core... im using occt and i had it doing the test at normal priority. should i have used that linpack and high priority? i tried going higher than 2.4, to 2.5 but it crashed after 5 mins. temps were fine though.

 

I think 2.4 for the Q9000 is enough in BIOS.I wasn't able to higher when i had mine.You can try throttlestop but don't expect miracles out of the Q9000 i think 2.4 is fair already.

 

I think you read it wrong. His temp was 79*C after running "Prime95"

 

Yes 79* c , after 30 minutes of prime 95 small fft's, Also thinking about getting another gtx260 to sli, found a deal on one, but having trouble finding a heatsink for it though. I run games fine on my 1440x900, but have trouble with external 1080p

 

i advise you to buy the second card with it's heatsink and the SLi cable as these are pretty hard to find!

 

Ive bought another gtx 260m off ebay for 110 shipped. couldnt pass that up, but the catch is doesnt come with fan heatsink, sli cable. Ive found fans fairly easily, but having trouble finding heatsink, cable. may call dell see what they can do. Also having some intermitten locking up playing crysis. Thinking my card is getting to hot, but not sure because it works fine for about 15 minutes. then either freezes or screen goes black (both tv & laptop) getting about 25-35 fps avg. which is ok for me the only time i notice lag is during checkpoints and explosions and random fast play.