Overclocking Limit. Core 2 series.

Not considering heat, the Front Side Bus will be the key limit. It is difficult to find a board that will work at 550MHz. If yours will, reduce the CPU multiplier to 8 (cpu: 4.4GHz) or 8.5 (cpu: 4.675GHz, if you board has that option), and try that.

I don't know the current value, but $75 is better than when it became available - it was ~$275. I think you got a good deal, anyway.

ok so if there was a magical motherboard that had an infinity fsb then ignoring heat/memory limitations then the cpu could go higher? that is to say the motherboard limits acheivable cpu speeds via fsb limits on the mobo.

also im not running at 550mhz. im at 467. 467*4 = 1868. stock multiplier = 9. so 467*9= 4.2 ghz

thanks for the answer

I had an E8400 from 2007 to 2011 and then sold it to a friend and it still runs great. From day 1 it was clocked to 4.050Ghz or 450FSB. This was on an EP45 UD3 motherboard with Corsair DDR2 800 cas 5-5-5-15. Running the RAM at a 1:1 ratio with the FSB overclocked the RAM to 900Mhz cas was left at 5. ZeroTherm Nirvana NV 120 cooler.

The chip was plenty cool and I could have pushed it higher but I wanted to make sure it would last. Great chip, I got my moneys worth out of it for sure.

The bad news with your setup is that older P965 board will probably not overclock as well as a P45 board. The chip will probably top out in the 4.2-4.4Ghz range with the right board.

In fact I also had a P965 DS3 with an E6600. It still runs today as well as far as I know at 3.4Ghz. I did not think the P965 would even work with a Wolfdale.

weird i just got the ep45 ud3 for another system for $45. with the new i7's older used stuff is going cheap. great for facebook/word processor users.

yea i got it higher, but it would sometimes freeze up. the mobo officially does not support a wolfdale, but with a bios update to f14 it will work. i bought these as a budget system for a friend. it took me a long time for it to be stable, and for some reason whenever i turn the thermal monitor off in the bios it wont boot. Im pretty sick of messing with settings and im happy with the results anyway.

What do you think about the p43 chipset? Im putting a core 2 extreme qx9650 in a GIGABYTE GA-P43T-ES3G. this board has ddr3 which with the price of ddr2 today is the reason i bought it. also the extreme was really cheap too. i even saw some core 2 quads going for higher than what i paid for the extreme on the bay. The price of the same ammount of slower ddr2 was almost the same as the mobo AND ddr3 1600 ram.

Yeah the Core2 chips have really retained their value. With DDR2 so expensive and decent LGA775 motherboards so hard to find now it is crazy not to go with a full upgrade. Especially since even the cheap Sandy Bridge chips are so fast.

The P43 chipset is decent. From what I remember the P45 and then the X48 ( although somewhat rare ) were the most solid overclockers.

I hate to think what you might have paid for a QX9650. Being an EE chip it should overclock fine with the P43 since you are not relying on the FSB to overclock it.

mabye i should have gone with an i7 but i paid $225 for qx9650 and $75 for the ddr3 lga775 mobo and that was my budget. to say that the core2 have retaind thier value id have to disagree. maybe some of the ones that came out latter havent dropped as much, but they werent nearly as expensive to start out as the earlier ones. i remeber paying ~300 for a e6600. now you can get one for $45. Too bad ddr2 is expensive now or you could build a really cheap pc.

i built a pc for a family member for $300 with a core 2 overclocked a little runs great for everyday aplications.

Seriously you paid $300 for a QX9650 and motherboard??

Gigabyte Z68 Sli/Crossfire capable motherboard $130.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

i5 2400 $190

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Total $310.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/49?vs=289

On a Z68 board the 2400 can be overclocked via the Turbo Boost function 4 bins over stock. So basically from 3.1 to 3.5Ghz and max Turbo from 3.4 to 3.8Ghz.

The 2400 even beats a QX9770.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/48?vs=363

You could have had an i5 2500K and motherboard for $350.

meh hopefully ill be able to overclock the qx9650 higher than 3.8. and im not sure why they would test both those at stock speeds when both are made for overclocking... but with the extra $50 i can buy either 50 $1 tacos or 1 $50.

if i remember ill post some results when everything is setup. im planinng on increasing fsb to 1600 then increasing multiplier.

p.s. try not to be such a dick its not very cool  

Since the Sandy Bridge chip is about 30% faster clock for clock than the Core2 architecture you better hope it hits 4.5Ghz to equal the i5.

And I was not not being a dick. It's not like I flat laughed in your face for pissing away your money on dead tech. I mean Moore's law and it's not 2007 anymore and all that.

I'm sure you might even find one or two people in a hole somewhere who have built a computer before who think that spending $300 on an LGA775 chip and motherboard is a smart idea for a new build. Maybe. Somewhere.

If I find them I'll be sure to send them your way to applaud your savvy business acumen.