Right now I have 2GB of corsair valueselect ddr2 533 ram. Is a E4300 my best bet?

[Hajpoj]

I was looking at upgrade paths at this seems the most reasonable route.

Right now I'm running a p4 3.6 ghz with a asus P5PL2 board with 2GB of the said ram.


Are any more 800fsb cpu's coming our way from intel any time soon?

 

[Roguestar]

Are you sure your motherboard supports Core 2 Duo?

 

[Hajpoj]

cpu support: http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5PL2

Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz,1066FSB,L2:2MB,rev.B2)
Only can support FSB 800
Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz,1066FSB,L2:2MB,rev.B2)
Only can support FSB 800
Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz,1066FSB,L2:4MB,rev.B2)
Only can support FSB 800
Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz,1066FSB,L2:4MB,rev.B2)
Only can support FSB 800

Since it runs all the other C2D @ 800 bus speeds, one would assume I would be good to go with only a bios update.

 

[Roguestar]

Um, I guess so. Wouldn't count on it being very good, though.

 

[Hajpoj]

Why not? My mobo has some good overclocking options, it just wasn't released widely in america I believe.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Yup, run it 1:1 and your memory is guaranteed to hit 266MHz DDR (i.e. 533MHz).

With the x9 multiplier on the E4300, you can go to 2.4GHz which is a decent 33% improvement. Now how much head-room does the RAM have (to hit, say 333x9=3GHz with the memory at 667MHz) is anyone's guess. Some say Corsair is very stingy with OC headroom on the VS line...others disagree. I will also add that I'm not very familiar with your particular motherboard and how high its FSB goes.

 

[Hajpoj]

I can hit about 645 with my ram at 5-5-5-15. So I can expect to hit about 2.9GHZ.

It's rated 3-3-3-8 @ 400, 4-4-4-11 @ 533



I believe it goes to 350fsb, my board is rated for use with ddr2-533 so it makes sense. I see ram dividers for DDR-667 and DDR-700.

 

[Hajpoj]

dbl post, sorry