what is the best ever processor to overclock, your views

[coleman]

i am am interested in what you all think is the best cpu to overclock, since intel and AMD started
all opinions will be counted.

 

[kyeana]

anyone i can get my hands on

 

[coleman]

lol, i would suggest that the q6600 is a good overclock er although i have never oc this processor.

 

[br3nd064]

For dual, probably the e8500 or e8600 E0.

For quad, probably the q6600 G0.

 

[roadrunner197069]

e1200 or e2140, both OC 100%. You can get faster chips but not any that OC 100%.

 

[pjmelect]

The best overclock I ever had was a Zilog 2.5Mhz Z80, I overclocked it to 10Mhz that is a 400% overclock.

 

[br3nd064]

The best overclock I ever had was a Zilog 2.5Mhz Z80, I overclocked it to 10Mhz that is a 400% overclock.

That's pretty sweet. What year was that?

 

[coleman]

what is a zilog, i have never heard of that processor,


Obviously the e8600 or e8500 are going to have the best results because tier stock speed is quicker, But what about the e8200, is the ratio better. if you can get a e8200 to 3.8 - 4ghxz and a e8600 to around 4.5 before you need some major cooling, then the e8200 actually is a better overclock er

what are your thoughts

 

[br3nd064]

You can run into problems with the e8200 and it's low multiplier. For 4 ghz, the e8500 only needs an fsb of 421, while the e8200 needs 500. This creates problems be cause most motherboards don't support a 2000mhz fsb.

 

[coleman]

good point

 

[drumr1829]

what is a zilog, i have never heard of that processor,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80
its old!

 

[kaison_gr]

Intel Celeron 300A overclocked very easy to 450Mhz

 

[4745454b]

The best ever? The Intel Celeron 300a comes to mind. By changing the FSB from 66MHz to 100, you turned your cheap 300MHz CPU into a fast 450MHz CPU. At the time, Intels fastest ran at 450-500MHz, so this was a big deal. Another good Intel CPU to overclock would be the 805. For awhile, it was the only dual core CPU that existed that was under $100. People could overclock it to 4GHz, though you really needed water cooling to do that. (and even then it ran hot as h3ll.) People later realized that using the 820 was better.

AMD had their 2500XP. This one was simple, change the FSB from 166 to 200. Many 2500s could handle this, and you turned your lowest end Barton core CPU into the highest end 3200+. There were many other popular Athlons, including the 2100+ or the 1600+.

If you mean current CPUs, the Q6600 and 7200 would be current favorites. Many of these are able to hit close to 4GHz. Considering the price you pay compared to other chips, they are good deals.

 

[JonathanDeane]

For just over clocking the Pentium 4 in some models was nice, you could get 3Ghz+ out of some of the 2Ghz. I think Northwoods did best in that area.

Not on stock cooling of course but mine did do it on air

(the thing still runs but I never use it, just so out of date to me)

 

[cybot_x1024]

clearly if its overclock against price, nothing beats the celeron 420. i overclocked this to 3.84 ghz on a stock core 2 cooler from 1.6ghz. this is a cool 140% . Who knows you could hit 4ghz+ with an aftermarket cooler

 

[modtech]

I'd say the E7200 is a better overclocker than the E8500 in terms of raw amount overclock. But overall the E8400 has the best balance of cache, price and multiplyer and there are E0 revisions of this though few people know this. 2160/2180 are also extremely good OCers.

 

[smartel7070]

From personal experience

Current cpu's : E2160, E8400

Old tech : Celeron 300A, Pentium 166 (I ran mine @ 233 with custom cooling)

 

[gingerbee]

xp 2600+ did pretty good

 

[mitch074]

The Pentium 75 was a serious contender, with several samples reaching 120 Mhz; mine could run rather reliably at 112 MHz (which, coupled with a 75 MHz FSB, a 430TX chipset, some SDRAM and 512 Kb of L2 cache, translated into Real Nice performance (tm))

I'll second the Celeron 300A: from low-cost to top performer with... er... nothing (mounted on an Abit BH6 and undervolted, it ran surprisingly cool; coupled with a P-III cooler on front and original cooler in back, it never went past 33°C under load).

Another one was the Athlon 600 (Socket A version) which could (on some models from late bins) overclock to over 1 GHz on air; a colleague of mine did so, and I saw the machine. Aghast is too weak a word to describe my state at the time.

More recent CPUs include the first K8: whoever forgot to mention Opteron 14x and their insane overclocks need a memory check. In fact, most low-clocked K8s are solid overclockers (a Sempron at 1.6 can reach 2.6 or even 3.0 without too much trouble; 2.4 is a BIOS setting away with stock cooler and voltage)

The Intel Core2 are also solid overclockers.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

I'd have to pick the e8600 E0 stepping for the best current chip. The 10x multiplier and new stepping make it a great cool-running overclocker.

 

[modtech]

Yeah the E8600 is wicked sick but so is the price.

 

[FHDelux]

Pentium II 300Mhz SL2W8, mine did 554 but 450 - 504 was average. In that same era, the Celeron 300A was excellent 450 - 504 on those as well, but it was a crap shoot, the PII was guaranteed to goto 450+.

I tell ya though....Nothin beats that Z80 though lol, 400% overclock is untouchable. That must have been incredible speed back in that day.

 

[coleman]

im liking all the replies, learning in the process lol
i guess it also depend on weather you get a good processor or not.

any other thoughts or personal experiances

 

[smartel7070]

Imagine a 400% oc on a E8400 .... it would run at 12ghz !!!! I guess you would need some serious cooling though !

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Almost any Core 2 Duo processor will overclock by about 1GHz. My lowly E6420 (stock 2.13GHz) has been running at 3.2GHz for a year and a half without a problem. It could go even higher, but I was uncomfortable with the voltages.