Test Settings: Overclocking Comparison
DDR3 still hasn't worked its way down to mainstream price levels, and the main reason a buyer would pay relatively-high DDR3 prices is to achieve a similarly-high overclock without "hitting the wall" on memory speed. One could, of course, pay the astronomically high prices of DDR3-1800 or even faster overclock-validated extreme-enthusiast parts, but we wanted to see how far these less-expensive kits would go.
Newer platform components may be available, but the best overclocking motherboards use Intel P35 chipsets while the same company's Core 2 Duo processors withstand much greater bus speeds than its Core 2 Quads. We dug into the parts bin to retrieve the most overclockable parts regardless of age.
Overclocking System Hardware | |
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Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-P35T-DQ6, Rev. 1.0Intel P35, BIOS F5c (10/26/2007) |
Socket 775 Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "Conroe"(FSB-1333, 65 nm, 2.67 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache) |
Hard Drive | Western Digital WD1500ADFD-00NLR1, Firmware: 20.07P20150 GB, 10,000 RPM, 16 MB cache, SATA/150 |
Graphics Card | Foxconn GeForce 8800GTX, P/N: FV-N88XMAD2-ODNVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX - 768 MB |
Power Supply | OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI - 700W |
System Software & Drivers | |
OS | Windows XP Professional 5.10.2600, Service Pack 2 |
DirectX Version | 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) |
Platform Drivers | Intel INF 8.3.1.1009 |
Graphics Driver | NVIDIA Forceware 163.75 |
Our Intel Core 2 Duo sample is held in high esteem for reaching 520 MHz FSB at its default 8x multiplier and at least 540 MHz FSB using a 6x multiplier on top boards. Using the P35 chipset's highest memory ratio, this allows a 6x CPU multiplier to reach for data rates of 2160 MHz!
Of course, we'd need a motherboard that offered top memory stability, and the most appropriate part we've found for this type of testing is Gigabyte's GA-P35T-DQ6.
In order to reach a variety of memory speeds at a fixed 6x multiplier, we needed to alter the CPU speed for each test. The change in CPU speed has an overwhelming effect on a wide range of benchmarks, so we had to limit ourselves to memory bandwidth benchmarks in the overclocking portion of today's comparison.
Overclocking Benchmarks | |
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PCMark05 Pro | Version: 1.1.0Memory TestsWindows Media Player 10.00.00.3646Windows Media Encoder 9.00.00.2980 |
SiSoftware Sandra 2005 | Version 2005.7.10.60Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark |
We'll throw a more comprehensive set of benchmarks into our latency tests.