Need your help with a choice

[Dorkenstein]

I need to know if I should keep my e6300 and oc it with a newer motherboard than my foxconn 975x7ab or should I get an e2180 or e4500? My budget is the driving factor, cheaper is better. Thanks for your help.

 

[Denithor]

OC that e6300 and wait for January.

e8200 (45nm, 2.66GHz, 6MB cache, $163) will make a nice upgrade.

Linky

 

[TC91]

yah, just oc that e6300 to around 3ghz or so on your current motherboard and you should be fine for a while.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Thank you guys for your advice. The thing is, I don't believe my motherboard is 45nm ready. Also, can anyone help me or point me to a guide for overclocking my particular setup? I'm sure I could stumble through it but I would rather do it right. Also, my memory is ddr-667. Thanks again!

 

[TC91]

if u have 667 memory, u can sync your memory and fsb, should be easily done, with little to no voltage increase @ 7x333 = 2.33ghz. most 667 memory can oc to 800mhz with increased volage (2.1v is safe for most, 2.2v for ones with good heatspreaders imo) and relaxed timings, eg 5-5-5-15-2T. if you do that, your oc would be 7x400 = 2.8ghz. most e6300's should be able to hit 2.8ghz with near stock voltages, maybe one or 2 notches up. imo i think going to a penryn would not give you a huge performance boost unless u grabbed a quad and oc'ed it a lot; maybe wait and see for nehalem, and try to hold out as long as you can with your e6300.

 

[Dorkenstein]

So I raise the fsb multiplier to 7 first try? And how do I test it to see if it's stable? Thanks. I have corsair ram with heat spreaders. Not sure of BIOS options because I am on vacation. Thanks again very much.

 

[TC91]

yah your welcome, no problem. first try to raise the cpu multiplier to its highest value, should be 7 in this case. your ram sounds like it should reach 800mhz with little problems. if you want to save some time overclocking, try setting the cpu voltage in bios to 1.35, not sure what kind of cooling you are using, so be careful about the voltages if you are using the stock intel cooler. to test stability, i run prime95 in dual instances, but i believe there is an updated version that can spawn 2 threads. run coretemp in the background as well, to monitor the temperatures in case it gets too warm. try keeping the full load temps under 60c, since you probably have a L1 or L2 stepping. run the small fft's test in prime and let it run for 24hrs without any errors, bsods, freezes, lockups or reboots, and your cpu is stable. if the prime testing fails, you have to either lower the overclock if the load temps are getting too high, or increase the voltage on the cpu, mch, or maybe even ram. to test stability of the ram, if it is overclocked, run a program called memtest 86+. you can run it off a cd, dvd, floppy, or a bootable usb flash drive. run memtest for 50 full passes and make sure there isnt any errors. if any errors approach, you may either be pushing your ram too much, or it is not being supplied enough voltage. try to keep the ram voltage at a max of 2.1v to be safe, or 2.2v if your case cooling is good. you may also have to tinker with the mch, and other motherboard processes in the process too. good luck and hopefully you get a nice overclock.

 

[Dorkenstein]

I can't wait to get home and try this. I saw a web page a while back, think it was at tom's hardware, and it had a checklist of things in your bios to change/turn off if you are going to attemp overclocking. Anyone have a link?

Also, I am indeed using the stock intel cooler. Should I go with setting the multiplier to 7 or setting the cpu voltage to 1.35? I am guessing those two actions do the same thing? Thanks again.

 

[Denithor]

Read the first part of this post which provides a great overview of C2D overclocking.

 

[TC91]

yah i think you should always start overclocking using the highest multiplier and stock voltage to see how much u can pull out of it.