What was your favorite overclocking "era" and why?

[CurseTheSky]

What was your favorite overclocking "era" and why? Basically, which processor(s) did you enjoy overclocking the most, and why did you like it? Was it for a hobby, did you bring new life back to and old CPU, or did it bring you up to record breaking performance?

For me, it was the Socket 939 Athlon 64 and Athlon X2 era, not that long ago. The 3000+ and 3200+ were very popular choices for a long time; a little voltage and some patience could get you the performance of the $1000 top-of-the-line processors. I was also an early adopter of the dual core line, starting with the (at the time) low-end X2 4200+ (the X2 3800+ wasn't out yet). I managed to overclock to 2.7-2.8GHz, but ended up being bottle necked by my 6800GT in Doom 3 and similar games... who would have thought?

Overall, it was just a fun experience. I bought EVERYTHING new for that computer (monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers included), so it ran a little over $2k. It dropped off the performance charts pretty fast unfortunately. I still have the hardware hanging around, waiting for the next project.

 

[Shimmishim]

my favorite was the socket A 462 chips.

those mobile chips were the bomb at overclocking... the best i did was 2.9 ghz on air! it was quite the little chip.

used a dfi infinity (red pcb) board and 2x256 kingston hyperx pc3200 (bh-5) with a 9800pro!

ah, the memories!

 

[CurseTheSky]

I think I remember the hype about that DFI board - was that the one that had all kinds of crazy voltage options in the BIOS, basically allowing you to fry everything you owned if you wanted? That one was very popular amount the hardcore overclocking groups, if I remember.

Thinking more about it, I think I enjoyed the early Socket 939 overclocking days the most because it was the first time that games really pushed hardware to the max (at least the first time in my day). Doom 3, along with a few other games (Far Cry later, I think), could take everything you owned, chew it up, spit it back out, and laugh manically. $2k and I was stick playing with the graphics only about 60-70% of the way turned up, still getting chop in some of the intense fights.

 

[Spikesoldier]

had to have been the late K7 era.

although i liked the northwood p4 era also, starting with a 1.8A then to a 2.4B which got me to 3333 stable, paired with a 9500 unlocked to 9700 which was nice.

my p4 rig was stolen when my home was burglarized - i had nothing but a spare p2 333/128pc66 rig with 14" crt in the closet that the thieves were either uninterested in or didnt get thier grubby hands on.

short on cash to begin with, i was able to get on the net shortly after the mess was sorted out and bought some hardware from the FS/FT section and pieced together a NF2 rig with a palomino 1800+ and 256mb of ram with the money i had left.

I got a loaner GF4 Ti4200 from my friend, and another friend let me use his Tbred-A 2200+ that he wasnt using, which didnt go too high either since it was near the ceiling that the Tbred-B revision broke through.

when i went overseas and got back on my feet i purchaced a 2500 XP-m and some memory locally and took the rig to 2300mhz.

i will always remember what i got after involuntarily stepping down from my p4 rig that i was very proud of, and what could be done with what me and my friends considered to be less than desireable hardware, spare parts and junk.

and of course i did have to get that p2 to do 416 stable (83.3 * 5) :thumbsup:

 

[Hulk]

Celeron 300A/450

My first, my last, my everything.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Hulk
Celeron 300A/450

My first, my last, my everything.

I had 2 Celeron 366A's at 500mhz on an Abit BP6.

 

[apoppin]

this one ... i really like C2D

nostalgia of course brings me to the Celeron 300A which when OC'd from 300Mhz to 450Mhz as a "given" ... 500+Mhz was doable and it just blew away the intel Flagship PII which cost many times more
... now that was a Celeron

the Coppermines were pretty good .... the 600 easily hit 800Mhz ... but not my favorite

i also liked the Tualatin Celeron that was the pinnacle of PIII architecture ... and those of us with an OC'd one waited for over a year as P4 performance struggled to catch up with it - at many times the price ... but the oc was generally from 1.2G to 1.6Ghz ... still faster then the P4 2.0Ghz

Finally the NW b's and c's were very good OC'ers ... the 2.4b thru 2.8c series would OC well over 3Ghz

and now my el-cheapo e4300 - stock 1.8 Ghz running stably at 3.150 Ghz at stock vcore ... what is not to love ... and also cheap with the performance of stock processors many times its price

There you have a capsule of my recent history with oc'ing intel CPUs

 

[Spikke]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
I was also an early adopter of the dual core line, starting with the (at the time) low-end X2 4200+ (the X2 3800+ wasn't out yet). I managed to overclock to 2.7-2.8GHz, but ended up being bottle necked by my 6800GT in Doom 3 and similar games... who would have thought?

Man I never had much of any luck ocing my 4200+ X2, I could never get it to go past a measily 2.6, no matter what I did.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

C2D...E4300. Cool and quiet for only a little over 70 bucks. Most should be able to go from 1.8 to 3.2GHz. If you can't do 3.2GHz, then you probably have a 3 sigma chip.

Now I would like to see Intel natively support 4x multi instead of 6x multi when idling. 6x is still too fast when the CPU is cruising at 3.5GHz under full load.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Originally posted by: Spikke

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
I was also an early adopter of the dual core line, starting with the (at the time) low-end X2 4200+ (the X2 3800+ wasn't out yet). I managed to overclock to 2.7-2.8GHz, but ended up being bottle necked by my 6800GT in Doom 3 and similar games... who would have thought?

Man I never had much of any luck ocing my 4200+ X2, I could never get it to go past a measily 2.6, no matter what I did.

I was stuck around high 2.5 - low 2.6 for a long time. I figured it would be maxed out there, and left it alone for a while.

Randomly, I got the itch again, and tried overclocking it one more time (several months down the line). It went up to the mid 2.7's and POSTed at 2.8 once or twice without much hassle. The only thing significant I changed was the HTT Multiplier (I think that's what it was, or I may be confused) from 4x (recommended by the experts, for the FSB I was running) to 5x. The move UP didn't make sense, but it somehow let me clock it higher.

It ran at 2750ish from that day until the day I finally took it out of service. It's sitting in a static bag right now, waiting for the next project. It's still not as fast as the semi-fabled Opteron 165s, but it was a pretty decent overclock.

 

[JackPack]

The current era....

Pentium Dual-Core E2160 1.8 GHz @ 3.0 GHz, stock cooling. Under $100 for the boxed processor.

3.2 to 3.6 easily achievable using a Ninja.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'd have to say the P3 coppermine era, when I went from my Celron 300A @ 450, to a P3 550E @ 733, thats the largest jump I've had in processor performance, night and day difference, I bought the 550E right when coppermines came out had to give it a voltage bump to make 733 but it did it , my cousin is still runing that rig, 5+ years later after I sold it to him. Longest lived PC I've peronsaly build.

 

[bryanW1995]

c2d. how many early e6600's hit a 50 % oc? How many e2160's or e4300's can do 75 %? 100 %???? I'm pissed that i'm "only" getting a rock-solid 24/7 stable 35 % oc on my e6750. That's nice.

 

[ultra laser]

Socket A was my favorite. I bought an AMD Athlon Thoroughbred B 1700 for $45 and got it to 2.4Ghz on air. Great value.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My favorite was probably the Slot-1 era. It was the first time that you could perform overclocking with just BIOS settings, instead of manually setting FSB, wait-state, and voltage jumpers. I had an Abit BX6-r2, a legendary OCer, that supported many Slot-1 CPUs, because it had a VRM spec that was ahead of it's time, and a wonderful soft-DIP BIOS, for FSB selection, AGP ratio, and a whole host of other things, like WOL and SB-Link support (never used either one of them though).

It also let me use both my PCI Aureal Vortex sound card (A3D all the way baby!), and my ISA SB Awe64 (for compatibility with legacy DOS games).

I had a PII-300 SL2W8 chip, the legendary chip that was supposedly originally binned as a 450 Mhz CPU, but then Intel decided to re-design the Slot-1 package for 450Mhz CPUs, with a different heatsink config, so these CPUs were re-labeled and sold as 300Mhz CPUs.
It was probably true, I don't know of any SL2W8s that didn't run at 450Mhz. 504Mhz was an impossible stretch for my chip though.

I did manage to run my AGP bus at 1:1 ratio (100Mhz!), with my ATI Rage Pro 8MB video card, also with it's GPU and RAM running at 100MHz each as well. It was nice and fast. (At the time, of course.)

It was a powerful system, and the PII was definately faster than the CEleronA at multitasking. (512KB L2!)


The only thing that can compare to that "drop in the parts, and just flip the switch" overclocking, is the current C2D OCing. Now you don't need a "golden stepping" to get a nearly guaranteed performance increase - you just need to buy a CPU, any CPU, and BAM!, maximum performance.

 

[n7]

Current era. (C2D)

OCing my Athlon XP Barton wasn't all that impressive (likely due to my lack of knowledge), & my succeeding 3200+ NewCastle never did much better.

When i had my 3200+ Venice, i knew what i was doing, & it did decently, as did my following X2 3800+ & then Opty 165 (currently still own).

But when i got my E6400 & E6300 to 3.4 GHz, i was extremely happy, not to mention the fun messing with multipliers & RAM ratios for RAM OCing.

And then there were my two E6600s under my short lived Coolit Freezone stint.
3.6 GHz & 3.9 GHz...you can guess which of the two i kept.

Under air (in my insanely hot apartment during the summer), i've been running the E6600 @ 3.375 GHz @ ~ 1.3V.
Or during winter that'll go back to ~ 3.5 GHz.

So yeah, i like this current Core 2 era the best by far.

 

[Acanthus]

I440BX

 

[fillosaurus]

Well, I started oc-ing back in the days of 486 and Pentiums.
Pushed some 486 to 160 Mhz, my first Pentium 133 @ 150-166, then I had some fun with an Intel TX mobo and Intel, AMD and Cyrix CPU's (200 Mhz Pentium MMX @250, 200 Mhz AMS K6 @225).
I think my favourite was a Celeron 600 that went as high as 945. Usually I had it running @ 750 or 900, first with a Gigabyte then ASUS mobo, both with VIA 694x chipset. AFAIK it's still working today, 3 years after I sold it.
It's succesor, a 1200 Mhz Celeron, didn't impress me much. No more than 1400 (MSI mobo with Intel 815EPT chipset).
As for my current rig, AMD Sempron 2600+ @1600, ASUS K8V-X mobo, VIA K8T800, it was stable @ 2000. Me thinks I could run it higher, but not on the current mobo.
Hope in a week or two I'll get me hands on a Athlon X2 and start toying with it.

 

[minkyboodle78]

For me I have to go with my first love, 300A @ 450 on a BH6. Even for a newbie like me it was so easy, that computer ran for a friend all the way till a year ago, probably could still run today but I had to put it on my keychain I know super nerd move but I had to

 

[brencat]

Definitely a lot of parallels between the current era C2Ds and the golden era of the Socket As (2001 - 2003). So many people with the venerable Abit NF7-S v2 + the XP-M 2500+ & 2600+ mobiles took those things to 2.5 - 2.8 ghz for some great overclocking fun.

I am a dinosaur with one of those older Socket As that's planning to upgrade soon. My mobile was an okay overclocker - took it to a little over 2.4 ghz before settling lower for 24/7, but the best were clearly the 2500s & 2600s.

 

[Triton67]

This one right now !

OK, I am one year after other C2D owners, but I got my upgrade pretty cheap, straight to 3,6GHz in few minutes. Not looking for higher oc (or temps etc), runs well on near stock volts. - 2GB kits dropped in price last night (15$ maybe!), so I ordered a 2nd 2GB kit for Vista x64

 

[slag]

Originally posted by: Hulk
Celeron 300A/450

My first, my last, my everything.

Celeron 266@448 mhz on an ASUS P5B board.

Totally rocked hardcore and in gaming, kept up with the 300a @ 450 crowd.

I also had it months before the 300a stuff became widely known.

 

[Viper GTS]

I had a Celeron II (aka Celermine) 566 @ 952 the week they came out.

When I got tired of the noise (I had 14 fans in a Super Micro SC-750A) I downgraded to a mid tower & replaced the Celeron with a P3 700 that I ran @ 933.

All on a BX chipset with Mosel Vitelic RAM of course.

Viper GTS

 

[Lozzo]

486 DX2/50 @ 66Mhz

Pentium 1 75 at 100Mhz

And so it goes on. Faves was the Celery 300A@450, Coppermine 600Mhz at 800Mhz, would fire up at 1Ghz but the DFI Intel 810 chipset board I had at the time wouldn't lock the PCI bus so it would scramble the HDD every time.

Athlon 1Ghz at 1.33Ghz, Barton 2500+@3200.


Current overclock, E2160 at 2.62Ghz (290 FSB). I'm convinced the CPU itself can go higher, and indeed I have had it at 300+ FSB, but this Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA board pretty much hits its limit at 300 without any mods, or so I believe, so I'll stick at a stable 290 for now.


My philosphy, buy it as cheap as you can and run it as fast as you can. Keep up with the wallet-worriers for a fraction of the cost.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Gonna have to be the era of the Abit BH6.
I loved my 300a@464 (and eventually, after a few years, In the winter with the heat set low it ran stable at 504 ... hehehehe)
I eventually got a "slotket" and used a celeron (coppermine core) 533 and ran it at 896mhz.

I kept that CPU/Mobo combo until eventually the mobo died (Bios Checksum Errors) .....

Before then I OC'd a little bit, 486DX 33 to 40, AMD K6 233 to 225 (yes, slower clock rate, but faster FSB ....
The mobo I had officially supported 50, 60, 66, and 75mhz FSB, When playing with the jumpers .. I could get the FSB up to 83.
my PC66 DDRAM couldn't handle 83 though, so I ran at 75mhz FSB and a 3x multiplier. It ran stable and I got awesome performance in Quake (I had a Pure3d, it friggin ROCKED)
Since then I've OC'd my duron, athlon, bartons, my socket 754 system, and my current socket 939 system ... But I just use stock cooling and go for a small 10 to 20 percent increase (though my barton was closer to 40% ....)