I consider myself a noob to oc, only been at it for 3 months. I want to seek advice from the gurus of Intel OC. See my sig below for system details.

Firstly, I have been successful in OCing my Intel 630 stably (Prime95 15hrs) to 3.96Ghz with some heat issues, vcore at 1.55 and vdimm at 2.1. See attached pic. The oc gets me a Super Pi 1M of just over 32secs, and with the 7800GTX, a 3DMark05 score of 8100. After living with this Oc for the past month or so, all systems are go except for the game FEAR..... which will crash and quit to windows, 10seconds after the game loads..... happens everytime. Fear will run stably at 3.74Ghz. What gives? Ram is running at 800Mhz in all instances. So everytime i want to play FEAR, I'd need to bring down the FSB... pain is the axx!

Secondly my system will not take any oc above 3.975Mhz. If I oc anything above FSB1060, e.g. FSB1061, the system will boot but then scale down to 3.975Ghz immediately in windows. I have upped vcore till 1.6v (max for my mobo) and still the same. This happens with all FSB leading up to 1067, after which system will not boot! Which is really odd, mobo issue u think?

Btw, all oc done in the bios, not using Asus' AI Booster.

I am currently on Stock heat sink, with serious watercooling coming soon . But why does Fear crash out to windows. Tried upping chipset voltages, still the same. (Note: computer/windows does not crash, only Fear exits to windows)

Anyway, my goal is to reach 4.5Ghz on the 630 intel chip. This 4.5Ghz oc was easily done using the 630 chip on an Asus P5WD2 mobo I think. Do a google and u'll find it. So I do not think I have hit a wall on the processor.

Who is the manufacturer of your mobo anyway?

I have not heard any issues with the NF4 chipset hitting upwards of 4.0ghz. Will google this abit and see what is up with the NF4 chipset issue. If this turns out to be true, I may have to kiss my 4.5Ghz ego trip goodbye. (Better still, this maybe my a reason to get a new mobo) The fact that the 4.5Ghz oc was done on another mobo does lend some credibility to your claims that there may be some issues with the NF4 chipset.

Could be a bios problem, read that there was plenty of problems with the bios on the premium version of my mobo.

I have tried all that you have suggested and the results were the same. Ram at stock (667Mhz) and at oc (800Mhz) is the same. Chipset voltages have not impact to the stability of FEAR or the ability to break 3.975Ghz barrier.

Thanks for the links. It is indeed a sad day for NF4 intel edition. But change mobo to what to keep the SLI capability.... can the NF4x16 mobos do better?

Else may have to consider the intel 955 based mobos..... IF we intend to stay with intel.... could always jump onto the 'other' bandwagon.

By the way still kennot find the solution to my FEAR instability.