Overclocking GREAT success overclocking an E6300

Just wanted to check if this is standard or if I got particularly lucky. Remember Core 2 Duo? No? Me neither. But my work machines are disinherited gaming boards with whatever I had lying around jammed in them. One is a Foxconn P43A with an E6300 (1.86GHz) stuck in it.

I punched in a few numbers in the board's fairly basic OC options and immediately got 2.8GHz without changing any voltages. Had to change the FSB ratio to keep the RAM happy and that was it. It's been solid as a rock ever since.

I just wondered, is this normal? I don't remember Core 2 chips ever being that easy to overclock. And this is the crappiest Core 2 chip of them all, more or less. Or maybe that's the thing, are crappy underclocked chips inherently easier to push further?

 

My E5200 use to clock reasonably well if I remember rightly. Can't remember figures tho. Also didn't the Q6600 come under the Core 2 Duo brand?

 

Q6600 was Core 2 Quad, but essentially the same.

The old Core 2 Duo E8400 used to be THE dual core overclocker. I think most of the C2D chips were decent OC'ers, especially once they dropped down to 65nm.

 

The E6300 was tricky to get stable above 3GHz, but more often than not, the board's max FSB was the limiting factor due to the fairly low 7x multiplier.

My old abit board would go up to ~470 FSB but my 6300 wouldn't go beyond 3.2Ghz.

It did get my e7200 up past 4.4GHz though, iirc.

 

I have still have my old E6600 in my media centre at the moment.

I still have the Asus P5K Premium Black Pearl as well which was fantastic with these chips.

Was able to push 3.7ghz with it although I'm sure saspro managed ~4ghz with his. Very nice overclockers back in the day.

Pretty sure the E8XXX were down to 45nm and probably a few here still running them as you were able to push them well over the 4ghz mark.

 

Yeah Wolfdale E8 series were 45nm.

 

My second gaming rig is a Q9-something. I hadn't even thought of overclocking it! For some reason I had it in my head that the 8- and 9- Quads didn't OC well, and that all that ended with the Q6600.

I still know of people gaming on Q6600s, so...yeah.

 

I don't think they OC'd has far as the 6600s, but I think they offered better stock performance, IIRC.


I was still on a Q6600 till last year (blimey didn't realise the time had gone that quick ) and it was still doing fine at 3GHz, just wanted SATA3, SLI and a general upgrade.

 

Oi! Proud former E6600 owner here (lapped and everything because of the overclocking possibilities)!

 

To answer your first question: hell yeah - Core 2 CPUs were amazing overclockers. I still have an E6300 in my drawer, and I did overclock it but can't remember what I did with all the benchmarks. Your speed of 2.8GHz is reasonably moderate; it could probably go a lot higher but you would need a better motherboard and some voltage tweaking.

All the E6xxx CPUs were basically the same CPU with different multis, so all will do 3GHz without much trouble, and 3.6GHz was relatively easy to achieve on the higher end models. When they revamped the Core 2 CPUs with the likes of the E6750 etc., the 4GHz milestone was in sight, and with the release of the E8400 4GHz became the new standard.

Re. the Q9xxx CPUs, the Q9650 was an amazing overclocker, and the Q9550 was not so bad but limited by the lower multi. I started off with a Q9550 but ditched it in favour of a Q9650 which I ran at 4.3GHz daily in my Maximus II Formula, and many people managed 4.5GHz daily, although this was only possible on Gigbyte EP45 boards (for some reason, 500FSB was a no-go on Asus boards with quad core CPUs).

IMO Core 2 is by far the most fun architecture to overclock. This is what I got with my E8200 some time ago, which has a stock speed of 2.66GHz. The motherboard was an Asus P5Q-E.

 

I've still got a system with an Asus P5K Premium Black Pearl with a Q9650 that's been running at 4GHz with 1.27v for what seem like forever (since early 2009 anyway).

 

I completely agree with Lenny, Core 2 series were great fun, they were what got me into overclocking basically, and I lost almost all interest when newer stuff came out, still got a couple of chips at home with a decent board and RAM to try and get back into it once I have more room/time.

You can use www.hwbot.org to check to see how others do as a general overclocking guideline (you probably want to limit results to air/water unless you want to get motivated to really push things )

 

I don't think my E5200 ever sat at stock. The first time I booted, I pushed it to 3GHz. After that I went to 3.9GHz but dropped to 3.8GHz stable. Hard to believe that was 7 years ago!

 

I remember my E6400 fondly as it was in the first pc I built myself. I had it on a Asus Rampage Formula and it did 3.2Ghz for ages, eventually having to drop down to 3Ghz.

Had that all the way up until last year when I finally built a new system.

 

Core 2 Duo was most definitely the most fun. I've got a 5 GHz on air E8500 on my desk.

 

Yeah the E8500 was a beauty - that was the CPU that got me my first sub 10 second SPi

I remember when HWBot was quiet and I was 8th in the UK Top 10 with less than 200 points. Things have really changed!

 

Things have changed drastically, and some changes are NOT for the better either.

 

I'm still rocking an E8500 (but incredibly it's not currently overclocked - shh, don't tell anyone!)

 

For me its the simplicity and non-greed that I miss. Change the multiplier and boom. done. If its unstable, up the vcore. Everything felt simpler than it does now. BIOS is full of funny terms I don't understand unless I do tons of research.

And paying a premium for overclockable chips really put me off. I haven't bought a new Intel CPU since my E5200. I've stuck with AMD quad cores or second hand I3 and the like.

I miss my little wolfdale..

 

Core 2 Duo's and Q6600 days where the best times for overclocking. Remember it fondly trying to tweak my CPU and GPU to the absolute max just so I could get Crysis running 5 fps better. I got a proper water cooling setup and a X38 board as well, just so I could overclock my Q6600 to 3.85GHz, was so happy with that because most people couldn't get a Q6600 past 3.6GHz.

And now all overclocking is choose your voltage and multiplier and away you go. To me it feels like I am cheating because there is no art to it. I remember when you wanted to push the FSB to the max you would go in 5s until the computer crashed, then you knew your limit, and then you had to start again going up in 5s. I spent hours doing pointless overclocking, in some cases enjoyed it more than the games!