X2 vs C2D question

wtburnette said:
I have to say I disagree with you about the overclocking. Yes, a majority of C2D chips can OC to over 3Ghz, but not all. I have followed all the guides, messed with every setting, added better cooling and have a lot of overclocking experience and my E6400 will only go to 2.6Ghz with stability. Every chip is different. People just need to be realistic with their expectations. At 2.6Ghz, the CPU still performs very well, it just won't go any higher.
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You are correct.......mileage may vary......but you have to agree,what you have versus what you paid for is well worth it,no??? I have an e6300 at 2.6 currently and havent really tried hard to get it there..........The 3 Ghz statement was a bit broad.......but you understand the reasoning,correct???:D
 
wtburnette said:
I have to say I disagree with you about the overclocking. Yes, a majority of C2D chips can OC to over 3Ghz, but not all. I have followed all the guides, messed with every setting, added better cooling and have a lot of overclocking experience and my E6400 will only go to 2.6Ghz with stability. Every chip is different. People just need to be realistic with their expectations. At 2.6Ghz, the CPU still performs very well, it just won't go any higher.
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There is something else holding your machine back. It's probably not the CPU. Could be motherboard, ram, settings or whatever. I've never seen a Core 2 Duo that couldn't do 2.8GHz at least. People on this forum seem to be quick to blame the CPU for poor overclocks. The fact is the CPU usually isn't the limiting factor. It's the motherboards. I have an E6300 that I've used for the past several reviews I've done. The fastest board did 501MHz FSB with that CPU. I got the CPU to 3.51GHz on air cooling. Pretty damned impressive if I do say so myself.

Next board I used didn't go that high. Why? I used the same ram, same CPU and same PSU, video card and so on. Yet I didn't get to 500MHz FSB. In fact none of the board's I've reviewed since then could reach 500MHz FSB. All with the same CPU. (Though some get close)

On my own personal system, I had a E6300 (different chip) and I could only reach 2.87GHz on my ASUS P5W DH. (410x7) That same CPU would do 3.3GHz on the Biostar motherboard that did 500MHz FSB. So again, the motherboard NOT the CPU was the limiting factor when used on the P5W DH. Another weird one was on my ASUS P4C800 Deluxe. I had a 2.4C that wouldn't break 2.6GHz. I moved it to another motherboard and it did 3.2GHz relatively easily. I put a new CPU (Prescott 3.0E) on my P4C800 and it did 3.45GHz. Again clearly showing motherboard limitations. Sometimes, it seems to be that a specific combination as mentioned above just doesn't work the best.

Not saying that all CPUs overclock equally, because they don't. But don't be so quick to cry "my CPU is a shitty overclocker!" when it may not be. Most Core 2 Duo's should break 3GHz, if they don't I'd look elsewhere before blaming the CPU.
 
Dan_D said:
There is something else holding your machine back. It's probably not the CPU. Could be motherboard, ram, settings or whatever. I've never seen a Core 2 Duo that couldn't do 2.8GHz at least. People on this forum seem to be quick to blame the CPU for poor overclocks. The fact is the CPU usually isn't the limiting factor. It's the motherboards. I have an E6300 that I've used for the past several reviews I've done. The fastest board did 501MHz FSB with that CPU. I got the CPU to 3.51GHz on air cooling. Pretty damned impressive if I do say so myself.

Next board I used didn't go that high. Why? I used the same ram, same CPU and same PSU, video card and so on. Yet I didn't get to 500MHz FSB. In fact none of the board's I've reviewed since then could reach 500MHz FSB. All with the same CPU. (Though some get close)

On my own personal system, I had a E6300 (different chip) and I could only reach 2.87GHz on my ASUS P5W DH. (410x7) That same CPU would do 3.3GHz on the Biostar motherboard that did 500MHz FSB. So again, the motherboard NOT the CPU was the limiting factor when used on the P5W DH. Another weird one was on my ASUS P4C800 Deluxe. I had a 2.4C that wouldn't break 2.6GHz. I moved it to another motherboard and it did 3.2GHz relatively easily. I put a new CPU (Prescott 3.0E) on my P4C800 and it did 3.45GHz. Again clearly showing motherboard limitations. Sometimes, it seems to be that a specific combination as mentioned above just doesn't work the best.

Not saying that all CPUs overclock equally, because they don't. But don't be so quick to cry "my CPU is a shitty overclocker!" when it may not be. Most Core 2 Duo's should break 3GHz, if they don't I'd look elsewhere before blaming the CPU.
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Very interesting and yes, I agree, it could be something else that's holding me back. Unfortunately, I don't have anything else I can use to test with, other then what hardware I have. Perhaps in time I'll be able to try different RAM or something to see if that helps. The unfortunate part of not working for a hardware site is I can only test on what I can afford to buy. I researched here in the [H]ardforums and the mobo/CPU combo I purchased seemed to make sense, but perhaps this particular board/memory or something doesn't work as well as it should. I was initially able to get 3.2Ghz out of this processor, pretty much right off the bat. I was even able to run with stock VCORE at that speed (401x8). It ran at that setting for a couple weeks, running 8 straight hours of dual prime 95 with stability, plus many runs of 3DMark, Sandra and a few rounds here and there of gaming. Unfortunately, after that, I took it to a LAN party to show off. Everything seemed fine for the first couple rounds of FEAR, but then things got weird. I started getting a lot of graphical anomolies, so I shut down, set the OC down to 2.8Ghz and booted back up. Then I was able to run FEAR just fine, but later when I was installing some patches for BF2, I kept getting CRC errors. I got fed up and brought it back to stock settings and everything worked fine the rest of the LAN party. When I got home, I tested for the next couple weeks and was never able to get the system stable over 2.6Ghz again. Now it won't even boot into Windows at over 2.8Ghz and anything over 2.6Ghz and the system locks up during any 3D games or benchmarks. I tried upping the VCORE, VDIMM and adjusting a lot of other settings, but nothing seemed to help. I got tired of it and finally stopped messing around with it, but after reading your response, I think I'll have to start messing with it again... ;)
 
magoo said:
You are correct.......mileage may vary......but you have to agree,what you have versus what you paid for is well worth it,no??? I have an e6300 at 2.6 currently and havent really tried hard to get it there..........The 3 Ghz statement was a bit broad.......but you understand the reasoning,correct???:D
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Hmmmm... I need to start using multiquote more often... :p

Yes, I feel that even at 2.6Ghz my CPU is worthwhile. Guess I just wanted to say that it's not like there's a guarantee a C2D will hit 3Ghz+. Inexperience, bad purchasing decisions or just bad luck could play parts in that. I guess I do agree though that it does seem *most* C2D's OC very nicely.
 
wtburnette said:
Hmmmm... I need to start using multiquote more often... :p

Yes, I feel that even at 2.6Ghz my CPU is worthwhile. Guess I just wanted to say that it's not like there's a guarantee a C2D will hit 3Ghz+. Inexperience, bad purchasing decisions or just bad luck could play parts in that. I guess I do agree though that it does seem *most* C2D's OC very nicely.
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I have two C2Ds and they are badass,plain and simple.
MBs are Gigabyte 965-P DS3 and an ASUS P5N32-E SLI, they OC like bandits.
I had an ASUS P5N-SLI that was a dud in the OC department......it wasnt the CPU because the same C2D,same memory, on the Gigabyte board is the one I spoke of above.(2.66Ghz)
The e6700 I have on my 680i board is running smoothly at 3.45 Ghz.
 
wtburnette said:
Very interesting and yes, I agree, it could be something else that's holding me back. Unfortunately, I don't have anything else I can use to test with, other then what hardware I have. Perhaps in time I'll be able to try different RAM or something to see if that helps. The unfortunate part of not working for a hardware site is I can only test on what I can afford to buy. I researched here in the [H]ardforums and the mobo/CPU combo I purchased seemed to make sense, but perhaps this particular board/memory or something doesn't work as well as it should. I was initially able to get 3.2Ghz out of this processor, pretty much right off the bat. I was even able to run with stock VCORE at that speed (401x8). It ran at that setting for a couple weeks, running 8 straight hours of dual prime 95 with stability, plus many runs of 3DMark, Sandra and a few rounds here and there of gaming. Unfortunately, after that, I took it to a LAN party to show off. Everything seemed fine for the first couple rounds of FEAR, but then things got weird. I started getting a lot of graphical anomolies, so I shut down, set the OC down to 2.8Ghz and booted back up. Then I was able to run FEAR just fine, but later when I was installing some patches for BF2, I kept getting CRC errors. I got fed up and brought it back to stock settings and everything worked fine the rest of the LAN party. When I got home, I tested for the next couple weeks and was never able to get the system stable over 2.6Ghz again. Now it won't even boot into Windows at over 2.8Ghz and anything over 2.6Ghz and the system locks up during any 3D games or benchmarks. I tried upping the VCORE, VDIMM and adjusting a lot of other settings, but nothing seemed to help. I got tired of it and finally stopped messing around with it, but after reading your response, I think I'll have to start messing with it again... ;)
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With my eVGA 680i I had the same problem with my E6600 @ 3.6GHz. It was fine for about three days, and then it just destabalized. The last week I had it, the same thing happened again at stock speeds. I couldn't stabalize the system no matter what I did, and everything tested good. Finally I threw in the towel on the eVGA 680i. On the Striker I've had the CPU at that speed without difficulty and as high as 3.93GHz but I couldn't keep it cool enough to run like that on air.
 
Dan_D said:
With my eVGA 680i I had the same problem with my E6600 @ 3.6GHz. It was fine for about three days, and then it just destabalized. The last week I had it, the same thing happened again at stock speeds. I couldn't stabalize the system no matter what I did, and everything tested good. Finally I threw in the towel on the eVGA 680i. On the Striker I've had the CPU at that speed without difficulty and as high as 3.93GHz but I couldn't keep it cool enough to run like that on air.
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I think I'm going to try testing with another video card first (which is the cheapest thing I can do since my main rig has a 7900GT, slightly higher clocked then the 7900GT in my LAN party box). Since I was having graphical problems first, maybe it was the card? Anyway, it should be pretty easy to test. If that doesn't work, I might have to get one of those Gigabyte DS3's to test. It's a fairly inexpensive board and if it works I'll be pretty happy with my decision. If it doesn't do any better then what I have now, it gives me an excuse to upgrade my son's system... :p
 
Okay, now I have a question. I swapped my video card out with the one from my main rig, set the FSB to 401Mhz, VCORE to 1.35V, VDIMM to 2.0V and the PCIe to 101Mhz. Booted up fine, got into windows. Everything seems good. Ran Sandra tests and everything is running great. Ran 3DMark05 and the score sucks. Uh oh. Checked and sure enough, my PCIe link width is showing as 1 instead of 16. Anyone know how to get this fixed?? :confused:
 
harpoon said:
People around here ain't idiots (well, most ain't, anyway ;) ) and C2D really is 'the shit' right now but if you're wanting proof that an overclocked C2D owns an overclocked X2... well, this should be plenty... knock yourself out. ;)



PS. I'll probably be called an Intel fanb0y for posting all these benchmarks. Bring on the flames! /dons flameproof suit :D
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The only problem is, those low res 1024x768 games do'nt show that large of a difference when you are playing at say, 1600x1200 or more...

At low res you are testing the cpu almost exclusively, at high res, you place the load on the VIDEO card and you get MUCH MUCH closer benchmarks.


Yes, the C2D is faster, but at high res, it is a very small difference, NOTHING like the biased tests you showed. That site, well, they did a great disservice and a bad review.
 
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