e4400, overclocking, and lowering multipliers

[y3y]

hello all,

like everyone else, i'm looking to build a new rig now that the price cuts have come just received my evga 650i ultra, and i'm looking to buy an e4400 and overclock. this will be my first time overclocking, so i'd like clear up something with some of you more experienced people out there.

why is it not more common for people to lower their multipliers to something like 8x so that they can reach 400fsb? my ram will be ddr2-800, and from all i've read on the net running the cpu and ram 1:1 is the best way to go. yet most ppl i've seen oc-ing e4400's or 4300s seem to keep the 10x (or 9x) multiplier and limit how high their fsb can go. does the 1:1 ratio give neglible benefits then?

my computer is shaping up to look like this:
MB: evga 650i ultra
CPU: c2d e4400 (the cheapest c2d now)
ram: 2gb of crucial value ram ddr2-800
gfx: 8800gts most likely

and a 300 gb hd and 550w PSU to power it all.

i appreciate any answers that anyone could throw my way

 

[MarcVenice]

Jup it does give negligible gains, it's been tested, and the lower your fsb the less you are stressing your mobo afaik. Btw the e4x00's don't OC that well, they have had raving reviews but a lot of people seem to have trouble hitting 3ghz. That's kind of relative though, since a c2d at 2.8ghz is still a very fast cpu. To bad you're not going p35, I know I would if I were build a rig right now, with a E6550 or something like that.

 

[myocardia]

Holy lurker, batman. It's been 14 months since you registered, yet this is your first post?:laugh: Well, welcome to anandtech, albeit a year too late. The answer to your question is that C2D's still use an FSB*, and Intel designs their chipsets to set the memory strap according to the base cpu multiplier. This means that unless you have one of the few motherboards on the market that let you select the memory strap independently of the FSB, you'll see absolutely no gain at all (besides in a few sythetic benchmarks), by having a higher FSB speed. Oh, running at a higher FSB is also considerably harder on your motherboard.


*Front Side Bus

 

[tylerw13]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Jup it does give negligible gains, it's been tested, and the lower your fsb the less you are stressing your mobo afaik. Btw the e4x00's don't OC that well, they have had raving reviews but a lot of people seem to have trouble hitting 3ghz. That's kind of relative though, since a c2d at 2.8ghz is still a very fast cpu. To bad you're not going p35, I know I would if I were build a rig right now, with a E6550 or something like that.

i didnt have any problems overclocking my e4300 up to 3.6 with 1.55 volts...i was very happy and it was actually very simple to do...i dont know about what others have done but mine went well

 

[y3y]

Originally posted by: myocardia
Holy lurker, batman. It's been 14 months since you registered, yet this is your first post?:laugh: Well, welcome to anandtech, albeit a year too late.

thanks i know i'm the very definition of a lurker, been reading these boards for a long time, but i've always liked staying in the "shadows", as it were.

marc, i was very seriously considering getting the p35, but the cheapest reliable one seems to be the gigabyte p35 ds3r, which at the egg is 135 shipped. compare that to the evga board i've got for 70 shipped, and i couldn't justify spending the extra money when i'm going to pair it up with the cheapest c2d i can get my hands on. from all that i've seen, the 650i ultra should suit my oc-ing needs well with some $10 aftermarket cooling on the chipsets. factor in that once nehalem hits i'll probably build myself another rig that'll require an all new mobo, it made sense to me to go for a cheaper mobo/cpu combo at this point in time and put some of that saved money towards better graphics

thanks for the information guys it clears up a lot of things for me. i find it strange though that people seem to have more problems oc-ing the e4400 than the e4300. it would seem to me that if you set the multiplier of an e4400 to 9x, you'd have the exact same chip, perhaps even better because the e4400 should theoretically be binned better. i wonder if it's worth it to get myself an e4300 even though they're the exact same price as a 4400 now. what say you all? i'm hoping to pull maybe 3.2-3.4ghz out of my cpu with a simple coolermaster hyper tx.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Note that the 650i runs hot and will need additional cooling at NB/SB if you're going to push FSB above 300MHz. So final cost is $70 plus another $10 parts. Newer E4300 has the latest L2 stepping and should be able to reach 3.2GHz. E4400 uses the old E stepping.

 

[bryanW1995]

The e4500 isn't too much more. Also, you could get to 3.3 with only 300 fsb on one. Just wait for the frenzy to die down in a week or two and they'll be pretty close to the tray price of $133.

 

[y3y]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Note that the 650i runs hot and will need additional cooling at NB/SB if you're going to push FSB above 300MHz. So final cost is $70 plus another $10 parts. Newer E4300 has the latest L2 stepping and should be able to reach 3.2GHz. E4400 uses the old E stepping.

yeah i know, already been looking into some aftermarket chipset cooling. thanks for the heads up though

why would a now "being phased out" e4300 have different steppings than the e4400? strange move on intel's part. does the e4500 have better steppings?

 

[Yongsta]

I bought a e4300 last week, it's the L2 stepping and reached 3.4 ghz (8x multiplier 425 FSB) on air @ 1.4 voltage and it runs great. My friend has the same chip on air cooling and he has his at 3.6 ghz (9x multiplier 400 FSB). I could hit 3.6 ghz but I would get the blue screen of death after 1 hour or so but his is stable. I was thinking about the E4400 as well but these e4300 with the L2 stepping are great overclockers.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Note that the 650i runs hot and will need additional cooling at NB/SB if you're going to push FSB above 300MHz. So final cost is $70 plus another $10 parts. Newer E4300 has the latest L2 stepping and should be able to reach 3.2GHz. E4400 uses the old E stepping.

Actually, my E4400 is the L2 revision according to CPU-Z, so maybe they've changed.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: y3y

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Note that the 650i runs hot and will need additional cooling at NB/SB if you're going to push FSB above 300MHz. So final cost is $70 plus another $10 parts. Newer E4300 has the latest L2 stepping and should be able to reach 3.2GHz. E4400 uses the old E stepping.

yeah i know, already been looking into some aftermarket chipset cooling. thanks for the heads up though

why would a now "being phased out" e4300 have different steppings than the e4400? strange move on intel's part. does the e4500 have better steppings?

Does the automatic fan speed control on your 650i works with 2-pin fan (no 3rd rpm sensing wire)? Can you also confirm that this board will disable the automatic fan speed control when you raise the FSB/voltage?

I had some bench time with this board but didn't get to test everything. Waiting for the price to drop below $60 before engaging. The older boards come with Japanese caps. Newer units are equipped with Xamson.

If you see L2 stepping in CPUz, then you have a pretty good chance of hitting 3.2GHz or better with these E4x00 chips.

 

[y3y]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal


Does the automatic fan speed control on your 650i works with 2-pin fan (no 3rd rpm sensing wire)? Can you also confirm that this board will disable the automatic fan speed control when you raise the FSB/voltage?

I had some bench time with this board but didn't get to test everything. Waiting for the price to drop below $60 before engaging. The older boards come with Japanese caps. Newer units are equipped with Xamson.

If you see L2 stepping in CPUz, then you have a pretty good chance of hitting 3.2GHz or better with these E4x00 chips.

i'll be happy to test out those things for you once I get all my components together. still missing the cpu and graphics card, but to be honest, i'm doing my damndest to wait until late august to pick those two up. i'll be going on vacation in a couple of weeks until around the 28th of august, and i'm hoping the prices on the cpus will have settled and the 8800's will have dropped some by then. that or enough information is released on g92 to convince me that it's worth waiting for on the other hand, it's incredibly difficult to wait...i've got all these computer parts laying around the house, and i'm just itching to put them together and get to overclocking.

any of you know how the new m0 stepping is for overclocking? after doing a quick google, i know the e4500 will run using the new stepping, and that the e4400 will also have the m0 stepping by mid august. what yongsta said makes me want to jump on an e4300 before they're completely phased out, though. thanks for that little tidbit

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Newer E4300 has the latest L2 stepping and should be able to reach 3.2GHz. E4400 uses the old E stepping.

First I've ever heard of that. I thought that all E4400s were L2 stepping, as that came out when the E4400 was introduced.
(Kind of like how all of the new E6x50 CPU are G0 stepping.)

In fact, E4500 is supposed to be "M0" stepping.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Newer E4300 has the latest L2 stepping and should be able to reach 3.2GHz. E4400 uses the old E stepping.

First I've ever heard of that. I thought that all E4400s were L2 stepping, as that came out when the E4400 was introduced.
(Kind of like how all of the new E6x50 CPU are G0 stepping.)

In fact, E4500 is supposed to be "M0" stepping.

That's how things work out at INTC. Some chips come with 85C Tjunction, while others have 100C.