The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Direct from Intel

 

well.... thats backs up my point

 

Just ordered my E8400, hopefully it will be here Thursday 'stock arriving at supplier dependent'

Looking forward to seeing what it can do on my board as a prelude to getting the Q9450 next month.

I've got to start selling off some CPUs, I never intended to start a collection!

 

At the rate you buy them, it doesn't surprise me that that's happened! lol - you can always be our tech guinea pigs!

 

Now sammy be nice to BigDK!! You never know he might sell ya one of those cpu's cheap if he hasn't fried it yet. hehehe. ;P

BigDK I'll be curious to see how you like the E8400 and the Q9450 if you decide to get both. I'm thinking of a new build late next year (yep again) but I believe the Quad may be the direction I go. What is your opinion on a cpu and mobo combo with TODAY's tech? I know that it may change in the next 9 months or so but just curious right now. tia..

btw I'm not a serious OC'er, more of a 24/7 type guy with me puters. I don't mind a little OC but with a computer running 24/7 it seems a little on the silly side to run that type of voltage thru them constantly. My opinion I guess, but I'd like to err on the safe side of the fence on this.

....gm

 

I have pretty much the same stance as you on overclocking Gm, it's nice to go fast, but I leave my PC overclocked all day long, so I'm not about to ramp up the volts too high...
As for the board, if there was a Gigabyte board that shipped with a BIOS that can run a Q9450, I'd recommend that. In all honesty though, I've no idea which one(s) that'd be.

 

I've managed to avoid frying all my cpus so far.

I've been very lucky with both my E6600s as they easily get to 3.6ghz without any problems, and both have clocked and run stable at over 4ghz.

My q6600 again clocks to over 4ghz, another good batch.

Anyone wantinga proven OCing cpu would get it with one of them.

My GAX38DQ6 already supports 45nm quads from F7 BIOS, so the q9450 will go straight into it.

I also have a Xeon and 3 P4s as well, but I always keep a spare P4 in case of BIOS problems with new boards and new cpus, having had bios versions that required updating to support my cpu, I avoid getting into that situation again.

My collection of graphic cards and PSUs is something else I need to address as well.

 

Yeah, having old P4s lying around would be invaluable for that aspect...

 

Are you in the UK? That sucks, otherwise I would have bought some CPUs from you if you wanted to sell.

 

Living in the UK definately sucks
I'll get out of here on day!

 

With the prices of them either on ebay or even on e-retailers, its worth adding one onto an order and taking the cost hit as a good investment.
I bought both my 631's for £15 each on eBay, and my 650 brand new was only £40 from a supplier up the road from me 'but they did mess the price up'
D915s can be bought for £27 new as well.

I found some Celerons can be unsupported in various BIOS's but most 600 series P4's will always be supported, plus the ones I have are extremely good OC'ers 'if you get the right one'

 

Hmm, much like all your other CPUs?
In all honesty though, overclocking a P4 seems like a pretty poor decision now unless you're desperate...

 

The 3 P4's are not for general use at all.

I use them for system testing, and I used them as testers for my phase cooler when setting up.

I wouldn't recommend them to anyone buying a CPU for general use, I however bought them soley for overclocking, and by overclocking I do not mean to the levels most users here would do for 24/7 use, I've been there done that and now want proper overclocking challenges.

I wasn't going to put one of my new CPUs onto it and risk damaging those until I had learnt the art of doing it, as I now own them and the resell value is minimal, it becomes pointless selling them.

I've already got over 5Ghz out of the 950 which was nice, but the board died.

Did some basic runs on the Commando which were all ok, but now have gone back to the P5WD2 Deluxe to see what I can push out of the older CPUs now its had all the mods done, that board does not support Conroes.

 

You may as well, it must be nice to have the option to do that now you have other CPUs you can use for general use.
Did that Pentium D push stable benches at 5gigs?

 

I had orthos running over 4 hours without any issues.

When I get it back up and running in the next few days I'll start to post some benches from it.

I'm waitng for some more neoprene and DC4 to turn up.

 

sammorris,
Though you might be interested in this article! Shows just how well your P35C motherboard does compared to a couple of high end X38 motherboards from Asus, GigaByte and Foxcon!
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/31/x38_comparison_part_1/
Both the P35C and the DQ6 do very well against the competition with the DQ6 winning the overclocking portion!

Here's the DDR3 tests as well, with once again the P35C as the reference MB.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/26/x38_comparison_part2/

Interesting reading!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Those comparisons are a waste of time, you're better off looking at real end user test results, as it is only when the true high end users get the boards and play with them that you find what they can really do.

Tomshardware is not regarded as a site of any reputation when it comes to accuracy of board stats, and that write up is 3.5 months old, way behind most of the BIOS revisions brought out on both those chipsets.

 

BigDK,
I only posted it to Sam for reference purposes, just to show how his P35C chipset does compared to the big boys with the X38s! Gives you a better prospective compared to outlandish speed Claims and voltages on all the big overclocking forums. We have a number of far better overclockers at AD than anyone at Tom's Hardware, yourself included! The biggest difference is if you post it, we can take it to the bank as gospel, not as a bunch of crap!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I wasn't trying to jump on what you said, as the board is a very good board, the P35 chipset is an outstanding chipset for overclocking.

I've just seen too many instances where tomshardware have been shown to be less than accurate, they seem to show things from their viewpoint, more a friendly warning not to put too much faith in those reviews than anything else.

There's not a lot in it as far as performance goes between the 2 chipsets, but the early releases of X38 boards were subject to less than perfect BIOS's and the P35 had a jump start over them, so straight away a review is biased towards the earlier released boards.

 

In all honesty, I wouldn't know what I was looking at with most motherboard reviews, I started learning about boards relatively late compared to my experience with most PC parts, and really I'm a bit of a philistine in this area - I just want something that works and has got a lot of cool features. So far so good on the P35C-DS3R, and with good reason, even at a lowly £72, it's the most expensive motherboard I think I've ever bought!