Help with E5200 Overclock

I know, I am a senior, but for many reasons I have not been around this board much in the last 5 or so years. Well then I read about the e5200 and it's excellent overclocking ability, and I guess the bug bit me again...

So I ordered the E5200 together with a Gigabyte EP43 (ICH10 south bridge) and 4GB of corsair PC8500C memory.

So far I am stable at 300MHz x 12.5=3.75GHz and memory at 1200MHz (300x4) with slightly relaxed timings (777-18 instead of 555-15) and at 2.0V. Processor has original heatsink and no voltage increase (runs at about 1.25V under load).

I am quite happy, as this is almost an out of the box result, but of course I want more...

A couple of questions - sorry if I am a little rusty or

- the e5200 does not seem to be unlocked - is that correct?
- in cpu-z it shows the multiplier drop to 6 when idle and jump to 12.5 when busy - I guess that is power/performance throtteling?
- the memory appears to be good to 1260 or so with the current timings, the cpu however does not like fsb over 310 or so - I had it running briefly at 318 (=3.97GHz) but that's not stable. I bumped up cpu core voltage to 1.35 briefly, but no real change.
- I am almost under the impression that the board does not want to go over 310 or so - not sure, but there are other voltage adjustments on the board, which I have not really touched yet - they seem not to be documented very well though.

If anyone with a similar set-up could weigh in here I would appreciate it

Thank you

Yomama

Yomama said:

- the e5200 does not seem to be unlocked - is that correct?
- in cpu-z it shows the multiplier drop to 6 when idle and jump to 12.5 when busy - I guess that is power/performance throtteling?
- the memory appears to be good to 1260 or so with the current timings, the cpu however does not like fsb over 310 or so - I had it running briefly at 318 (=3.97GHz) but that's not stable. I bumped up cpu core voltage to 1.35 briefly, but no real change.
- I am almost under the impression that the board does not want to go over 310 or so - not sure, but there are other voltage adjustments on the board, which I have not really touched yet - they seem not to be documented very well though.

Click to expand...

- Only Extreme procesors are upward unlocked, all are downward unlocked.
- You can disable Speed Step in the BIOS so the multiplier won't decrease when idle.
- The chip is the FSB bottleneck not the motherboard. The highest FSB I've seen on an E5200 is ~330 and that's with Extreme cooling. 320 should be possible with High End Air or Water Cooling.

Think about it, 300 FSB is a 50% overclock from the stock 200, and that's pretty good. A 320 FSB would be a 60% overclock, I wouldn't expect more. Between 50-60% is great IMO.

Hope this helps.

Thing to do would be to drop the multi and turn the fsb up. That'll tell you whether it's a fsb limit or cpu speed limit.

Bobnova said:

Thing to do would be to drop the multi and turn the fsb up. That'll tell you whether it's a fsb limit or cpu speed limit.

Click to expand...

Thank you Bob and Matt,

I just double-checked and it appears that the multiplier in fact IS unlocked. However, even dropping the multi to 10 (from 12.5), the board does not go over 310MHz. I am beginning to believe that the chip (retail) is better but the mobo may need extra cooling or a voltage hike somewhere - or both.

Very impressed with the corsair memory - stable at 1240 with 777-18

I have the E5200 and 4GB of Corsair on a mobo that i kept reading great things about.
I can't get past 2.72ghz!
It's insane. Its got to the point that i can't be bothered with o/cing it cos it invariably fails

That's bizare, have you turned down the memory multiplier so you're not overclocking it's balls off?

Even my craptacular ecs g31 mobo can crank my e5200 up to 3.4 or so (while overclocking the balls off my ram, hence my running it at 3.0).

LufbraDan23 said:

I have the E5200 and 4GB of Corsair on a mobo that i kept reading great things about.
I can't get past 2.72ghz!
It's insane. Its got to the point that i can't be bothered with o/cing it cos it invariably fails

Click to expand...

And, what mobo might that be?