$89 Pentium Dual Core that Runs at 3.2 GHz

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Test Setup

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Platform
CPU I Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 (65 nm; 1800 MHz, 1 MB L2 Cache)
CPU II Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (65 nm; 2666 MHz, 4 MB L2 Cache)
Motherboard & RAM Gigabyte P35-DS3P, Socket 775 (Rev. 1.1)Intel P35 Chipset, BIOS F5Patriot PDC1G3200 XBLK2x 1024 MB DDR2-800 (CL 4-4-4-12 2T)
Hard Disk Drive Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD150 GB, 10,000 RPM, 16 MB cache, SATA/150
DVD-ROM Samsung SH-S183
Graphics Card Zotac GeForce 8800 GTSGPU: Geforce 8800 GTS (500 MHz)RAM: 320 MB GDDR3 (1600 MHz)
Sound Card Integrated
Power Supply Enermax EG565P-VEATX 2.01, 510 Watt
System Software & Drivers
OS Windows XP Professional 5.10.2600, Service Pack 2
DirectX Version 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Platform Drivers Intel Version 8.3.1013
Graphics Drivers Nvidia Forceware 162.18
Patrick Schmid
Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • HansVonOhain
    That was an amazing chip at the day...
    Reply
  • ripwind
    Yep - It was this very article that caused me to buy mine, along with a G92 8800GTS. My E2160 has been running @ 3.2GHZ with the stock cooler for almost 3.5 years. I'm only now considering an upgrade.

    Both that processor and that video card have scaled so well over the years that I'm still able to run what I want at 1920x1080 with reasonable settings.
    Reply
  • presto84
    I've just bought a second hand motherboard for university and it came with this CPU onboard. Remembered this article so had to look to check it was the same chip. The board has an Intel P945 chipset and supports up to 1333mhz according to the website so might be worth giving this a go.
    Reply
  • Noodletoe
    One of my all-time favorite Toms articles - used it to OC my E2180 to 3.0ghz 4 years ago and it's still running strong as my guest computer. I was just looking to upgrade the CPU to a E-6550 I found for cheap, but after re-reading this article I think I'll just leave it alone :)
    Reply