Cranking Things Up a Notch
We curbed the limits of our Core 2 overclocking to best-represent the maximum frequencies value-seekers with this hardware will probably be using long-term. But the enthusiast in me just couldn’t stop with little or no voltage increase to these E0-stepping chips, knowing I may never again set up this aged platform for testing. Plus, I had already put a considerable amount of tweaking time into this very hardware a few years back, and still had notes handy detailing how high my chips would go, and the voltages required to get there.


At 1.45 V in the BIOS, 1.416 V at idle, or 1.384 V under load, this Core 2 Duo E8400 is stable at 4.5 GHz. It’s seen a fair amount of testing at these settings, but I’d drop voltages and top out in the 4.2-4.3 GHz range for daily use. At this high of a front-side bus frequency, I limited tweaking to CPU clock speed, and didn’t maximize the RAM configuration, running DDR2-1000 @ 5-5-5-15 timings. The Common Performance Level was left at default tRD 09. My success in RAM tweaking on this platform has come with 1 GB sticks of CAS 4 DDR2-800, and with this particular 4 GB kit, voltage requirements have far outweighed any gains.
I don’t like to push Core 2 Quad voltages as high, but would quickly reach the limits of this fairly modest Xigmatek HDT-S1283 air cooler anyway. The Q9550 is stable at 3.7 GHz set to 1.3625 V in the BIOS, resulting in 1.240 V under load. Again for daily use, I’d drop voltage a tad and be in the 3.6-3.65 GHz range, while keeping an eye on temperatures during those hot summer months. This front-side bus results in DDR2-1045 data rates, and with a little bump in voltages, I was able to further tweak the Common Performance Level to tRD 07, boosting memory bandwidth up to 8.36 GB/s.

To be honest, I originally had no intention on publishing this data, and only ran a few applications just for my own fun and knowledge. But the deeper I got into this, the more the information seemed worthy of sharing. Pushed to 4.5 GHz, the Core 2 Duo E8400 is able to match the single-threaded performance of Core i5-3570K at its 3.8 GHz Turbo Boost frequencies. While we know our K-series Core i5 itself has plenty of headroom for higher clock rates, we are still impressed by how well our four-year old E0 stepping Wolfdale-based scales. While the Core 2 Quad's gains are less impressive, we are eager to jump to the next page and see the impact during gaming.
- Old Vs. New: Six Intel Processors, Benchmarked
- Test System Configuration And Benchmarks
- Results: Synthetics
- Results: Audio And Video
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: Compression
- Game Testing Methodology
- Results: Borderlands 2
- Results: Crysis 3
- Results: F1 2012
- Results: Far Cry 3
- Results: Hitman: Absolution
- Results: StarCraft II: Heart Of The Swarm
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Results: Tomb Raider
- Overclocking: More Voltage, Higher Clocks
- Overclocking: 3D Game Performance
- Power Consumption
- Performance Summary
- How Do Five-Year-Old CPUs Hold Up Against Ivy Bridge?
Also, amoralman, did you read this? It's basically assuring you that your C2D is still awesome as a budget processor.
Also holy crap on 1.45 vcore on the C2D
I find it shocking that my E6600(which I still hold in high regard, is far far worse than a 50 dollar Celeron. My mind is blown.
That said, today's quads have a more efficient and better architecture than those of yesteryear, and the 3570K is a popular choice for enthusiasts.
intel made all their leaps forward with this architecture, and killed AMD in the process. And has never really moved past it... 6 years on and it still stands toe to toe with the latest and greatest.
I'm not that surprised really.
i have both and the 3570k is significantly faster than an e6600, i always had problems with the e6600 not being fast enough for my taste, its a night and day difference between the 2