System Builder Marathon: Overclocking Day 3

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] index.html

We look at what components make an ideal budget overclocker's system. With a few bucks and some guts, you too can have a low-cost rig that runs with the big boys.

Ok, I understand that the C2D is the fastest CPU, however the best value? I've been over clocking since my 486 DX2 50! I read toms back when the Celeron 300A was hot... mine was not so hot. I read toms back when the Celeron 1.6A was hot.. mine was good. I believe overclocking is a great way to get a little more out of your money.

Here's my issue, toms has always gotten great results. To get the results posted in this article you need to pull great memory, a solid motherboard, and a solid CPU. If any one of those three comes up short, your hosed. Ok so you buy better memory, or MB, or CPU, there goes the budget.

Which brings me to my point. In all this C2D talk, people seem to have forgotten the X2 6000+ for 160 bucks! In test the cpu was 120 bucks and the cooler 55! That's 175. So with zero effort the out of the box X2 steps in with solid performance. Tweak, even 10 - 20% which is MUCH more likely to happen and you just beat this heavily overclocked system.

Here's a little something for you all to chew on... My Celeron 1.6A, which was OC'd to 2.4G, served me well for about 3 years. The system was used in an office for about 8-10 hours a day M-F. Well, BSDs became common place. Took me a week of testing to identify the CPU failed! I replaced PSU, Memory, Video, and motherboard before I suspected the CPU. Have you ever tried to find a replacement part for an old system? Talk about tough! Moreover, talk about expensive! If you consider time and effert used/lost in the trouble shooting, I just paid for an initial high end system!

I personally like to retire my OC'd systems to lesser use. It is very bad when a retired computer fails. So, this "75% overclock" way risky. If you get the right stuff to hit the 75% mark, how long will it last. Will your budget be cut short because of the catastrophic failure and now your wife AND you need a new pc?

I am greatly saddened that all these "high end" websites consistently overlook the the AMD value. A 6000+ with a very safe 10-20% OC is a budget system with incredible performance and VERY low risk.

So how about Tom's, how about some review of a budget AMD system?

-Peter.

Hi Peter,

I certainly don't have anything against AMD... hell, I was the one of the folks who insisted that the previous budget marathon build used an Athlon X2.

But I don't think an OCd 6000+ would have beat an OC'd Core 2 Duo like our e4300, even with high-end cooling.

The Core 2's are just really good overclockers.

plus, $160 get's alot closer to the e6600's price, and the 6000+ wouldn't hold up well at all against that CPU in an OC contest, methinks...

Something smells a little fishy to me on Page 5 - I thought only the "extreme" versions of the core 2 lineup had unlocked multipliers. So any ideas how they changed it in these tests?

The only way that comes to mind is if Tom's used an Engineering Sample of the e4300 that includes the unlocked multiplier (which isn't available on retail/oem chips)

The asus P5B motherboard allows you to use lower multipliers with a retail/oem Core 2 Duo CPU.

I purchased both CPU and mobo from a local retailer...

Thanks dude.

It was a good article, but since when is $1200 a "budget" system, lol. To save some dollars, it would have been nice to see you use a cheaper cooler like the ACFreezer7 ($22 shipped from ewiz.com). I like the CPU choice, and I bet with a different motherboard, a higher overclock would have been reached. I do, however, understand that you had to "use what you had" at the moment. In my eyes, a [b]budget[b] overclocking system would be much cheaper (3600+, ACFreezer, 7900GS/x1950Pro) but would obviously not compete with the high-end rigs... but what true budget system will?

Nonetheless, kudos on the article.

so $22 vs $55 would make that $1200 better? lol

Whole thing seemed pretty clear to me. Cleeve explains each choice in the article. Dunno why so many are having issue w/ it. Just read it for what it is man.

meh.

well, he refered to the previous marathon where they defined a "budget" system as under $1k. Using THAT definition (regardless of what you or I think of as a budget system) he then says the 8800gtx put him over that but he needed it to compare w/ the big dogs. (which was the goal of this marathon)

IMO it was all explained really well.

As for the cooler... If I had a $55 cooler on my shelf or could BUY a $22 one that may or may not gain me some cooling... I would stick w/ the one on my shelf. (which is what they did if you read between the lines a bit )

IMO, the cooler wasn't even the limiting factor. We have e4300s down here clocking 3.15G on the stock cooler. If the article didn't mention that they tried to jump the strap by going straight to 400+ fsb, I would think the issue was with the NB strap.

I'm currently fooling around with a 945GC-A2 chipset board and what I noticed is that I can't get beyond 350fsb on the e4300 when using a Sata HDD (amazingly enough, I can do 370fsb on a B2 stepping e6300). I plunked in my old trusty IDE drive and broke 370fsb on the e4300 immediately following the replacement. I will need an after-market cooler before I can shoot for that 100+% OC.

The situation above tells me several things: Sata consumes more power than IDE - that may be a factor; Sata controller is on the NB, IDE on the SB (?) on the 945G-AC which may or may not be a factor.

Wondering the same??

I not a gamer but got into overclocking because I do a lot of home video editing. When I am making a video, I run my e4300 at a stable 3.51 Ghz (FSB 390Mhz) on my Gigabyte GA- 965P-DS3 v3.3 m/b. I couldn't get past 388Mhz FSB until I added a Thermaltake CL0034 NB cooler. The cost of my upgrades (m/b, cpu, NB cooler) was about $270 which seems reasonable for me given the performance increase.

Nice OC on your e4300!

This is a good overclock, still I've had the 4300 stable at 3.4 GHZ with the gigabyte 3d cooler: GIGABYTE GH-PCU22-VG 105mm 2 Ball bearing.

but I used a EVGA 122-CK-NF66-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra ATX with a good power supply
the cooler does an extremely good job of cooling the northbridge as well. this is all I was worried about, given the core 2's are not hot heads.

I am typing to you on a 1.86 GHZ core 2 6320 with 4mb cache running at 3.56 GHZ it can do a 1m pie crunch in exactly 14.5 seconds. (on the gigabyte cooler) Of course it makes a large difference in price to run a 8800gts 320mb and seems to score the same as the 640 mb version but saving 200 bux... seems worth it as I've not found a game that runs choppy with this setup. I used better ram... seemed to make the difference but with how ram prices are going down it's somewhat affordable to get some XMS2 1066 mhz ram memory timings didn't make a noticable difference.

the 650i ultra is a board that deserves some light shed, the stability of it is better than anything I've seen I've had the FSB set to 2033 MHZ and it booted windows with the 6320 in it. the motherboard only costs 100 dollars.


here is a screenshot
forums.extremeoverclocking.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=105538&am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;d=1184015492

well let me know i can email you the parts to it. It seems the cheap Gskill Ram pc6400 (800MHZ) ram overclocks almost the same as the xms2 it's pretty darn stable
950 bux is the complete cost w/out xp

not always true, I work for a mid sized custom computer builder and we see all core 2's able to hit at least 3.2 90% of them hit 3.4 motherboard power supply and ram are the main factors, yes liquid nitrgen will help alot but we're talking about budget. 27 dollar cooler, that's quiet and cools the northbridge

i did say 90%, no I'm not a kiddie flamer, I'm a professional builder, honestly I haven't seen any of the 10% I think the 10% are the ones I've heard of that didn't because they were using a 965 chipset or lower as opposed to 6 series or better nvidia, EVGA though... great cheap good product looking through some records we were able to get a 6700 core 2 to 5 GHZ wasn't me though
i meant 3.4 on my original post. which was done many times, only on the 650i ultra and 680i

budget oc board (in my opinion also the best for non-sli systems) evga 650i ultra.
again 96 dollars... opposed to 115 for a "mediocre"? board no offense on 965 just doesn't float my boat, we sell them here and it's very common to not hit 3.4 with them I believe that same cpu in the EVGA will hit 3.4 and be stable, the OC options in it are amazing.

Raven you echoed me, *high five* I'm with you as well

I find the 50 dollar cooler master cases with 3 120 mm fans do nicely not to mention the one with the plexi window also 49 dollars and still a sharp gamer looking case

The E6320 I had maxed out on a DS3 @ 450mhz FSB...

465x7 = 3255mhz on air. I was using 2x1GB sticks of Geil DDR2 - 800 @ 5-5-5-15-25 2.1v

The $$ you save on choosing the 8800GTS lets you exercise the option of the 4mb chip. So really that would be my ideal" budget setup.

Sojrner, that's something i always wonder about when reading overclocking articles...exactly how lucky was the site with the cpu they bought/received? I'd love to see an article where multiple same model cpu's are overclocked, preferably all sourced from different different seller's to make it really random. The more that could be tested the better but lets say 10 would give a fair idea, for example test the max overclock of 10 e6600's using the same rig and see what the min/max results were.
Sometimes you see replies to posts where people say 'oh you should be hitting 5GHz with your dog doing warm farts on your rig with that cpu' and you can't help but think bollox

Carod

actually, my dog assists in "water-cooling" my system... I modded the case to look like a fire hydrant to keep him motivated. I can beat out NO2 cooling that way.

but I agree... that article would be cool. Dunno how practical or feasible for a site like tom's to do it though in terms of how many "new readers" it would draw.

come to think of it... might actually be worth it in that way. Maybe if more of us suggest it they would warm up to it...

...as warm as a dog fart probably.

I haven't been OCing Intel in a while. I know on my X2 system(s) I can OC the CPU and reduce the memory multiplier. This hits performance a bit, but the onboard memory controller and less expensive ram is a reasonable trade off in my eyes.

Now what about C2D? Can you increase the FSB and decrease the memory multiplier? If you pulled a "bad" lot of DDR2800 that only did the rated speed, what does that do to your performance?

Seriously, I've been down this road many times, banking on a "good" overclock will always leave someone coming up short (that's usually me :-p). So, what if you use the C2D with "only" a CPU boost, memory running stock speed?

Thanks

I"m seeing Intel cpu's overclock less and less..

their binning down chips well and prevent the end user from getting significant gains.

that said, the E6320 I had was @ 1.375v on air; its the lowest possible voltage I could run at most stable.

I didn't see that anyone mentioned this already so...

How about instead of 1 8800 GTX 640 card you get 2 8800 GTS 320 w/SLI. I have seen/read detailed benchmarks that show 2xSLI 8800 GTS cards significantly outperform 1 8800 GTX card, and for about the same cost.

these are probably some of the most poor articles ever at toms hardware
I mean the day 2 and day 3 articles.
toms suffers from lack of professionalism .
I can find in my own neighbourhood at least 10 guys with high end, and some low priced overclocking machines which are far superior to what toms did here.
this lack of professionalism is going on for about 1 year.