Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 & E6400: Tremendous Value Through Overclocking
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 26, 2006 8:17 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Overclocking
Overclocking lower end CPUs is always more fun if you're actually buying these things because, as long as the manufacturing process is mature and your component selection is sound, you're usually able to reach much higher speeds than you paid for - an ever rewarding achievement. The Athlon 64 X2 CPUs have been fairly good overclockers, with the X2 3800+ usually able to run anywhere from 4600+ speeds (2.4GHz) up to FX-62 speeds (2.8GHz) and sometimes slightly beyond (3.0 - 3.1GHz). While we don't have any Socket-AM2 Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPUs on hand (we will use a 4600+ and underclock it for our benchmarks), we do have performance results of the X2 4200+, 4600+ and FX-62 to give you an idea of where an overclocked X2 3800+ can get you performance-wise.
What we didn't know previously however was how far we could overclock retail E6300/E6400 CPUs, and furthermore we had no idea what a highly overclocked 2MB Core 2 Duo CPU would perform like. Armed with two B1 stepping Core 2 Duo CPUs, one E6300 and one E6400, we went to task on overclocking them. Our goal wasn't to reach the absolute highest overclocks using high end cooling, but rather the maximum stable overclocks easily attainable with a stock Intel heatsink/fan. Undoubtedly we could have reached higher frequencies with more elaborate cooling, but we were more interested in the bare minimum of what was attainable - and we weren't disappointed.
Our E6300 was able to reach 2.592GHz using a 370MHz FSB at 1.400V (up from 1.320V stock):
Our E6400 was a bit more successful, reaching 2.88GHz using a 360MHz FSB at 1.350V (up from 1.300V stock):
Both CPUs were totally stable when overclocked and were able to complete our multiple days of benchmarking without behaving any less stable than when clocked at their default frequencies.
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coldpower27 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Assuming you have the Socket AM2 platform, then yes you can, remember 5000+ only exists for Socket AM2, and not Socket 939.Since that platform is relatively new, only a handful who have would consider upgrading to anything.
Gigahertz19 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
I'm definetly going with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4GHz since it is the cheapest one that has 4Mb of L2 cache and overclock it to 3GHz or whatever is stable.Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
I'm also missing any mention of single core solutions. Sure, dual core is the future, but in the present, single core is just as fast for games and a lot cheaper.An Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4 ghz costs only 110 dollar/euro.
krisia2006 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
AMD left me wanting for an affordable dual core cpu and Intel answered.I bought the Pentium Ds and will buy the Core 2 Duo.
In the present, I play games fine on my Pentium Ds.
Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Isn't way too much attention given to CF/SLI?
Given the costs, it's only interesting to 'diehard' gamers that spend very much money on their systems.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
The benefits in some games are huge, and I would say just about any gamer would at least *think* about CF/SLI before making a decision as to what to buy. That doesn't mean they have to go that route, but without CF/SLI you will certainly be GPU limited at higher resolutions. This is a well-established fact, as in recent titles you can't run 1600x1200 or 1680x1050 with 4xAA/8xAF and still get CPU-limited results.samuraiBX - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Hey guys, I like the article, but I was wondering, why did you go with medium settings instead of ultra high or high? I'd like to see the performance in that arena more than the medium settings. Any chance we could get those? Thanks!coldpower27 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
The performance is obvious, even on a Crossfire system with image quality settings tunred up you will get a straight line down the middle between NetBurst, K8, and Core based products due to the GPU being the bottleneck, since the emphasis was CPU performance, they need to kick back on the GPU settings a tad to make sue the CPU is the limiting factor.Real world, a Pentium D 915/945 would be sufficient for gaming.
bob661 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
What impresses me the most about these Conroe's is their OCing ability. Almost as fast as a Conroe EE for less than a 1/4 of its price.mkruer - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
You might want to pick up the new stepping 6 (mass produces ones) A lot of people over at xteamesystesm are complaining that the stepping 6 doesn’t over clock nearly as well as the stepping 5 and that the temperatures are staring to go though the roof.Personally I would love to know if this is true
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...