Memorable Overclocking-Friendly CPUs

[schizrade]

My fave oc was a Mac G3 333 that you could pencil over the contacts and oc it. Think I got it to 400.

Had a gold finger too with a vapochill for my slot a.

I don't oc much anymore. Just set it and run it.

 

[revenant]

If you didn't have your 300a on a BH-6 mobo you were doing it wrong. That was one of my most rewarding overclocks still to this day... 464mhz with a riva TNT2! Quake2 screamed. After that I had an old Athlon XP 2600 that clocked well... And a 3700 san diego that would hit 3ghz.. Then with the multi core cpus. My topless opty 0550vpmw ran at 3ghz but had to run some serious volts into it... 2.9 for every day stuff. My first Conroe e6600 did fairly at 3.5ghz.... And my current 3820 @ 4.625 aint bad either...

 

[MooCow]

How come Cyrix didn't make the list?

 

[Zepher]

How come Cyrix didn't make the list?

because they were crap.
I had a Cyrix 166+ which was supposed to be equivalent to a Pentium 166Mhz.
I did a test with Lightwave 3D using my Cyrix against my brothers Pentium 100Mhz and the Pentium blew it away. I sold the Cyrix system the next day and went Intel.

 

[mdburkey]

I enjoyed that, it's basically my buying history of processors.

My favourite is still the i7 920 though, wasn't the biggest overclock by percentage (got 4.0ghz from mine) but for sheer longevity it can't be beaten. I could still use that processor today and I wouldn't be that far behind where I am with my 4770K

Still got my Rampage 3 and the i7 920 sitting in a box somewhere, I should make use of it.

The i7 920 was a beast -- and still is.
Even today and WITHOUT being overclocked, it still is more power than Haswell based i3's and even a few of the i5's. Overclocked, I wouldn't be surprised to see it still pull close to a 3770T.

 

[Zepher]

The i7 920 was a beast -- and still is.
Even today and WITHOUT being overclocked, it still is more power than Haswell based i3's and even a few of the i5's. Overclocked, I wouldn't be surprised to see it still pull close to a 3770T.

I am not sure what exactly this bench measures but I use the site to see where a CPU stacks up.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+920+@+2.67GHz
i7 920 - 5033

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-4360+@+3.70GHz&id=2244
i3 4360 - 5566

this is the fastest i5 on the list.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-4690K+@+3.50GHz&id=2284
i5 4690k - 7770

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3770T+@+2.50GHz
3770T - 8285

 

[M76]

I could only run my 300A at 375. 83FSB it wouldn't even boot at 100.
I also had a Celeron 366 @ 566 103FSB it was good enough.
Then I had a PIII 550 @ 850 155FSB

But the real thing was my Celeron 600. That I ran @ 1080 80%
I could get it to boot into windows at 1136 and run 3Dmark, but it wasn't everyday usable.

Then I switched to a PIII800 @ 990 What a poor excuse for an overclocker. But performance wise it beat the celeron, so I had no choice.

 

[rat]

I am not sure what exactly this bench measures but I use the site to see where a CPU stacks up.

Rose tinted glasses. It still feels like the Athlon 64 3800+ was one of the fastest computers I ever used but that was mainly because of what I was using before it and the upgrade after wasn't as big of a jump... so comparatively, the 3800+ is just remembered as a beast despite realistically having its arse kicked by everything I've had since.

I did get some great overclocks out of my K6-2, too, for that matter. That was a good system that lasted a while. Helped that I paired it with a Tyan board. But if I were to try to run that config now, I'd quickly go insane.

ahhhhh, nostalgia. Heh.

 

[Kor]

Spent time with a lot of those bad boys, got a lot out of my 1700+ and 2500+, sold my G0 Q6600 a few months back, still have my 920 in a box. Couple of friends rocked the 300A for a while, my brother just actually only recently retired his 8400.

 

[Commander FAT]

TechSpot is taking a trip down memory lane today looking back at all the memorable overclocking-friendly processors. Any overclocking list that starts off with the Celeron 300A is okay in my book. That thing was a beast!

And it wasn't just any 300A. It had to be the Costa Rican 300A. They were more OC friendly.

The 300A was my first. I'll always remember my first.

 

[sMiLeYz]

I was part of the 300A club too, that with the Abit BH6 were my first computer parts that I bought for overclocking.

You could easily hit 450mhz on that baby, which matched the fastest processor at the time the PII 450mhz. I remember that processor was the top dog for 2+ years.

 

[Budzman]

Thunderbird's were fun. Built a homemade water cooled peltier cooling system that I used on a few different chips.

That thing was pretty sick. The only flaw was I had to manually flip a switch to turn on the water pump. One night I came home drunk and forgot to turn on the water pump and all the water evaporated while I passed out.

 

[TMCM]

sig although I had been building PCs for years the AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (Thoroughbred-B) was my first to watercool and OC

 

[cdr_74_premium]

I remember reading about the 300A craziness and getting a Celeron 333 to overclock. Results were disappointing, to say the least.

 

[cdr_74_premium]

Rose tinted glasses. It still feels like the Athlon 64 3800+ was one of the fastest computers I ever used but that was mainly because of what I was using before it and the upgrade after wasn't as big of a jump... so comparatively, the 3800+ is just remembered as a beast despite realistically having its arse kicked by everything I've had since.

I did get some great overclocks out of my K6-2, too, for that matter. That was a good system that lasted a while. Helped that I paired it with a Tyan board. But if I were to try to run that config now, I'd quickly go insane.

ahhhhh, nostalgia. Heh.

I remember going from a 486 DX4-100 to a Pentium 133MHz.

Mind. Fucking. Blown. Compiling Linux kernel was suddenly a very fast task.

 

[gdonovan]

266 Celeron running at over 400 mhz was sweet! Abit BX6, still have them both.

 

[Pabuchok]

I remember saving my high school minimum wage money for a 300A and an Abit BM6. That was one of the best rigs I ever owned. It lasted about eight years until my dad threw it away in favor of a newer HP or something. I'd probably still have it in the closet.

 

[Conker]

Amd k6-2 350 @500mhz. Duron 600mhz to 1Ghz was good. Thunderbird 1GB to 1.4Ghz. Thorton Athlon XP 2400+ 2gz to 2.3ghz. Athlon XP Mobile @ 2.5ghz overclocked. Socket 939 athlon x2 3800 2ghz@2.97Ghz. Still running good today. AM2 Athlon x2 4200 oc'd to 3ghz. Phenom 2 945@3.7ghz. Right now until the next upgrade Bulldozer 8120 3ghz@4.8ghz Overclocking since good old days

 

[Conker]

I had a athlon xp palamino 1600+ overclocked to 1.9-2ghz also . Duron codename morgan didn't overclock well either. Ran hot just overclocking it by 100-200 since it was thunderbird based. Maxed out around 1.4ghz. The best Duron overclocker was the spitfire.

 

[redrage]

the Celeron 266 was also a excellent over clocker I had it up ~400mhz (don't' remember exactly) this was my first real go at over clocking.. didn't know the things had to be cooled after about a month it fried. The Celeron 300A was amazing.. pretty much any P2 era celeron was fair->good over clocker.

P3's where not too bad. my socketed 800mhz got to around 1ghz i think in a dual cpu configuration ABIT VP6 was amazing. BP6 was good too, bummer about all the bad caps though.

The Athnlon MP1800's where good as well.

My Pentium 133 I think i got to around 150, before that i didn't do any over clocking ... hardware was too expensive for my budget (broke high school student on a paper route)

Now CPU's are so fast, they are not an issue and just do the basic auto overclocking lol (yup i sold out)

 

[harmattan]

Turbo wasn't for overclocking in the 386 era. iirc, most 386 and 486 boards would switch between full speed and a lower speed (often 8MHz). Later chips in the Pentium era would switch between full speed and 1/2 speed. I used to hate those front panel LEDs. So many jumpers to move to make it display properly and you'd cut up your hands or fingers while doing it. A few "retro" boards far later did use a switch to control overclocking, but it never really caught on.

Most 386 chips were difficult to overclock. And you had to do all kinds of things to make the overclock stable (in coarse speed bumps... I did a 25 -> 33MHz overclock in 1989), like using a heatsink and/or a fan. Craziness!

Didn't stop me from saying "turbo-mode-engage... NEEEEEEAAAARRRAAAR" in a robot voice every time I pressed it I was 13...

By sheer percentile increase, that 25 to 33 mhz OC is massive.

 

[w00t69]

The XP1700+ TB-B was my first dabble into overclocking things (and truthfully my first real computer build that i did myself). Before that RAM upgrades and video card upgrades i had done, but never my own entire computer.

i had my 1.47 ghz 1700+ at 2.2 basically indefinitely. From the 1700+ i moved to an Athlon 64 3200+ single core, and then after that an Athlon x2 3700+. Finally in 2008 i realized my computer was insanely slow and bumped to the freshly released Nehelem. Jumped ship and HOLY GOD was my computer faster. It was like i stepped into the future in comparison to that 3700+ i had up until then. I immediately overclocked it and since i had a D0, it hit 3.8 ghz without breaking a sweat, running 1.25 volts. To hit 4.2 only took 1.2875 volts and i was ecstatic. It was the first god tier overclocking chip i'd ever owned, i was never lucky enough to get one that would hit the highest of the high clocks.

 

[Quix]

I've actually had a bunch of these, I actively try to buy easily overclockable processors. Athlon 700, Athlon 2500+, Core 2 Q6600, i5 2500+. The i5 is still in my gaming rig, I've had it up to 4.8, but I run it at 4.4 all the time slightly undervolted. Intel was hasn't come up with a compelling enough reason to upgrade. I'm hoping Sky Lake has a nice overclockable SKU. It's a great way to save money if you like to tinker with your desktop.

 

[rabidz7]

I remember XPC7400/450 in my PowerMac that I overclocked to 540MHz speeds by desoldering some resistors and writing traces with window defogger paint. That PowerMac still works fine. I use it as an emergency backup system. If all computers fail: boot the Sawtooth up.

 

[rabidz7]

My fave oc was a Mac G3 333 that you could pencil over the contacts and oc it. Think I got it to 400.

Had a gold finger too with a vapochill for my slot a.

I don't oc much anymore. Just set it and run it.

That's a bad idea, unless you enjoy 20,000v surprises... The CRT can shock anything that touches it. I've overclocked my PowerBook G4/1.67 to 1.83GHz. It works fine and is my only real laptop (Chromebooks don't really count as laptops). I'm thinking about having the CPU upgraded to a 7448, but that would be very expensive...

 

[geforce]

OCed my E2140 to 3GHz without even trying... before it hit the FSB wall at 380. No voltage increase required.

 

[flashoverride]

What? No mention of AMD's slot A and goldfingers?

I loved my old 300A, but my best memories were with a couple of 366 celeries on a Abit BP6.

I remember rocking this setup too back in the day, clocked them both to 510... man, that was my first real foray into building my own system and overclocking. Good lord my build quality back then was such crap - no wire management, case sides all jacked up, never enough screws to hold in drives... slicing those ribbon IDE cables with an exacto knife and trying not to nick the sides, electrical tap holding together my western-union spliced power connectors...

Flash forward 10 years or so and now I have to do 2 hours of cable management if I want to change out a hard drive. I miss the good old days!

 

[geforce]

Also had an Athlon XP-M 2400+ at up to 2.4GHz on a Zalman 7000AlCu cooler @ 1.65v, a C2D E7200 at 3.3GHz, and had my i7-2600K as high as 4.3GHz (not so good for 4-phase power delivery, though).

 

[Parja]

Even today and WITHOUT being overclocked, it still is more power than Haswell based i3's and even a few of the i5's. Overclocked, I wouldn't be surprised to see it still pull close to a 3770T.

Yeah, I don't think any of that is actually true.

 

[AthlonXP]

Man I loved reading that article. Made my morning!

 

[KoolDrew]

A lot of the CPU's on this list were before my time with computers given my first was a S754 Sempron 2800+ with a Biostar TForce-754 motherboard. That thing was a hell of an overclocker though. I ran it for around 1.5 years at 2.75GHz from a stock of 1.6GHz. The CPU is still in use today in my mothers PC, although at stock.

 

[kirbyrj]

Celeron E1200 (LGA775) - Went from 1.6Ghz stock to 3.2Ghz. Only time I ever got a 100% overclock on a CPU.

 

[kirbyrj]

Celeron E1200 (LGA775) - Went from 1.6Ghz stock to 3.2Ghz. Only time I ever got a 100% overclock on a CPU.

Oops...news edit:

Very similar to the E21XX series pentiums they listed but much cheaper.

 

[Axehandler]

Just replaced my 2600k -(cpu failed) my q6600 is still going strong thou

Axe

 

[JDanser]

This is a pretty dead-on piece of journalism. The last 3 processors I've owned are on this list, and all 3 overclocked like beasts and all hit the mid-high range of the overclocks listed in the article.

My Opteron 144 ran at 2.7ghz all day every day for years.
My C2D 8400 ran at 4ghz all day every day for years.
The 2600k in my sig ran at 4.8ghz all day every day until I updated my mobo to UEFI, and now for some reason it won't post past 4.6ghz. Still, a free 1.2ghz isn't anything to laugh at.

 

[daglesj]

I miss the simple act of flicking a tiny dip-switch with a small screwdriver and getting a instant boost of power.

I remember around the turn of the century I was doing a few 'undercover' overclockings for folks at work on their laptops and desktops.

I switched quite a few 166MMX laptops up to 200 or 233 and a lot of Compaq Pentium desktops too. An extra 33MHz or so never hurt back then on your 32MB NT4 desktop.

 

[DooLocsta]

Ah the memories. Celeron 300A on a slot 1 adapter with an Alpha heatsink

 

[Manofsteel]

Had a Q6600 that did 3.6 24x7 and on a P35 (ABIT IP35E) I clocked it to 3.91 Ghz though not very stable!

 

[ManofGod]

Overclocking is a blast. Strange thing is, I have given up on it lately since I just want a fully stable system without worries.

 

[KoolDrew]

It's quite a shame my last build was an E8400 and I never did get around to overclocking it.