Best Gaming CPU in terms of price/performance AND overclockability?

[xCxStylex]

I understand that E7200's overlock like beasts, but what about E7300, E7400 E8200, E8300, or the E8400?

In terms of price range, I'm looking anywhere between the E7200 ($120) through (E8400) $160.

I don't have a MB lined up yet, but I'm looking at something based on a P43 or P45

 

[OCNewbie]

An E5200 may be worth considering too. Has a really high 12.5x multiplier so should be very tolerant with regards to overclocking. And you can get them for as low as $78 or so shipped. Has only 2MB cache versus the E7200's 3MB, and not sure if it has all the SSE optimizations either. Pretty good overclocker though from what I have read.

 

[ther00kie16]

e7200 if you can find it at your Fry's for cheap. Should hit 3.8ghz range and 4ghz if you are lucky and patient enough to tweak the settings.
As for e5200, it's not a true Core 2 (really an updated e2000 series which is the Pentium dual core series) and doesn't have sse 4.1 i believe.
It doesn't actually do 4ghz stable like the first threads showed. The picture actually showed 1.5V, which is death to the CPUs, just to run SuperPI. So I would guess a good overclock for e5200 would be 3.6ghz range. That's not bad at all for gaming but I would still go for a e7000 series chip at least. ewiz has e7200 and e7300 for <$115 shipped.
To answer your question more precisely, e7300 and e8400 should overclock to about the same top speed. Only difference is cache, which can be a 10% difference in games. You just have to decide if that 10% is worth $40 to you.

edit: odd that ewiz's shipping doesn't match what it shows in google.
Better deal would be to get e7300 from tigerdirect for $122 shipped - 15% live cashback = $104.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
An E5200 may be worth considering too. Has a really high 12.5x multiplier so should be very tolerant with regards to overclocking. And you can get them for as low as $78 or so shipped. Has only 2MB cache versus the E7200's 3MB, and not sure if it has all the SSE optimizations either. Pretty good overclocker though from what I have read.

In my experience these chips are lower bins (e5200s). They dont like even moderate FSBs (310+). It's not that hard to push them to 3.6 with a good air cooler but dont expect more.

 

[TidusZ]

E5200 isn't that great for overclocking or performance really. E7200 will get 3.6-4.0 generally with good air cooling, while e8400 is pretty much guaranteed 4.0 with extra cache, and if your lucky anywhere up to 4.3 at a high but safe voltage. The e8400 is the best option imo.

 

[Tempered81]

E8400

 

[betasub]

Anybody seen any data on how well the new E7400 (R0) overclocks?

 

[FalseChristian]

I you go the E8400 route make sure you get the E0 stepping. I was an early adopter so I got the old C0 stepping E8400. My overclock is good @ 3.825Ghz but I have to use 1.45v to do Orthos-stable for 24 hours. I'd recommend the E8600 where you're guaranteed to get the E0 stepping.

 

[Concillian]

Depends on what you're doing.

The games I play seem to be limited almost 100% by video card. I have to underclock my e7200 before I get a significant measured decrease in FPS. So I only mildly OC my e7200. So I see no reason to spend on an e8xxx.

This is with an HD4850. If you're running a GTX 280 and 2560x resolution you may need more CPU. But I think for the majority of gaming, a mildly overclocked e7200 provides perfect performance. Try not to get too worked up over reviews that typically run reduced video settings in order to force games into CPU limited situations in order to demonstrate the FPS differences. In the real world the performance differences from CPUs are smaller, and rarely are forcing the minimum FPS below the threshold of perceptible performance differences.

If overclocking, it's pretty much just the e7200 and the e8400. e7200 is the same as the rest of the e7xxx line when you overclock, and with a 266MHz FSB default, you don't really need higher multipliers for air, your OC will be limited by heat and voltage before you run into FSB limits.

The e8200 and e8300, last I checked were only like $1 cheaper than the e8400 and with the default 333MHz FSB, you can potentially make use of the higher multiplier on the e8400.

If you look at performance in it's own scale (something not FPS driven where you see an upper limit to performance when performance is above the pixel referesh rate), then you'll see the e8400 perform better at the same clock than an e7200. It will also tend to be binned better so that even if they're both c0, the e8400 will tend to be a better overclocker. Then there's the whole chance you could get an e0 e8400, which is a way better OCer.

So depending on your needs, the e8400 can offer some performance benefit, but I think an e7200 in the 3.2-3.4 GHz range that it will get fairly easily even on the low bin parts is plenty of performance for a real world gamer. If you get a big kick out of the potential for seeing 4.0+ GHz whenever you start up CPU-z, then go for an e8400. But if you're buying for gaming, and want to be practical, an e7200 with a moderate HSF ($30-40) and a mild overclock into the 3.0 - 3.4 GHz range is perfectly adequate for all but the most extreme gamer's needs.