• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Worst C2D chip

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

||Console||

Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2004
Ok ppl we always read about the ppl that got nice OC's I want to see how manny ppl got a really bad chip . So post it up if you got a chip that is very bad @ Overclocking
 
I am certain mine isn't the worst but it is not that great either. My 4300 can "only" reach 3.1GHz (1.25V) on a Zalman 9500. What drives me insane is that there is absolutely no way to get it even half stable past this no matter what vcore.
 
GTengineer said:
I am certain mine isn't the worst but it is not that great either. My 4300 can "only" reach 3.1GHz (1.25V) on a Zalman 9500. What drives me insane is that there is absolutely no way to get it even half stable past this no matter what vcore.
give it more volts
 
imposter said:
give it more volts

I have taken it up to 1.5V and it is still unstable. There doesn't seem to be any vcore less than 1.5V that allows me to go from 3.1 to 3.2GHz. I don't want to take it higher than that until I modify my water cooler setup to fit the 775 socket. I use a 64bit multithreaded engineering application so when both cores really get going the temps start reaching 65C according CoreTemp at 3.1GHz.
 
GTengineer said:
I have taken it up to 1.5V and it is still unstable. There doesn't seem to be any vcore less than 1.5V that allows me to go from 3.1 to 3.2GHz. I don't want to take it higher than that until I modify my water cooler setup to fit the 775 socket. I use a 64bit multithreaded engineering application so when both cores really get going the temps start reaching 65C according CoreTemp at 3.1GHz.
Perhaps your RAM will not take anymore frequency. I know that OCZ is capable of more than 850 MHz thought, just not at those settings. Try loosening up those timings and/or raising the voltage on your RAM (try 2.0V-2.1V)
 
my E4300 peaks at 2.1ghz.

but before you all say OMG your chip suxxors, it is in an arock dual mobo, running off DDR pc3200 ram.

soooo who knows what it can hit. infact if we want to make fun of my system, lets talk about the worlds worst BH6 ram I have. it wont clock over 200mhz. this stuff was supposed to be the 3rd coming of god(2nd coming was of course BH5 chips). so much for 230mhz at 2-2-2 timings that everyone else got. mind you I purchased the ram 3 or 4 years ago... so some of you might be wondering what the heck Im talking about.
 
ancalime said:
Perhaps your RAM will not take anymore frequency. I know that OCZ is capable of more than 850 MHz thought, just not at those settings. Try loosening up those timings and/or raising the voltage on your RAM (try 2.0V-2.1V)

I am running my RAM asynchronous (unlinked) with my Asus P5N32-E SLI PLUS (650i). In other words I can run it at whatever speed I want independent of my FSB so when I try to OC to 3.2GHz my RAM stays at the 850MHz setting at which it is stable right now. Wouldn't that make the issue null when it comes to OCing the CPU? I have run MEMTEST with these RAM speed and timings without any errors for a few hours.
 
Last edited:
Interesting thread. Mine seems to top out on air cooling at about 3.5Ghz or so. I don't see that as bad at all, a 1.5Ghz overclock is pretty good, but it certainly gets hot when I put it that high.
 
That's not strictly true rainless, at matching pricepoints the x2's are good, it's when you get a 'good' oc'ing C2D that AMD can't currently compete.

C2D's are odd, each chip does really well with moderate voltage increases up to a point then the next 100MHz takes a massive increase. Ex: mine does [email protected] load read by AiSuite and CPU-Z (just one notch up from the VID-set voltage reading) [email protected] load, [email protected] load, and [email protected]. It's a very steep curve and the temps take a jump too once you start increasing voltage. For summertime and so my comp isn't a spaceheater and I don't need crazy fan noise I just use 3.4G, a 200MHz increase, while nice for the e-peen, is only about 6-7% it just makes me feel bad for semi-impulsively buying an e6600.
 
Last edited:
MadMan007 said:
That's not strictly true rainless, at matching pricepoints the x2's are good, it's when you get a 'good' oc'ing C2D that AMD can't currently compete.
Well with even the 'bad' oc'ing C2Ds representing those high 2.Ghz-low 3GHz clockers, I would say rainless' comment is accurate.
 
Prices have gone all crazy lately, with Intel's pricedrop and AMDs wierd sales on 'off' models price-point comparisons are hard but 'blow the doors off' is still overstating it imo. Depends on the usage and which comparison you're doing as well.
 
Last edited:
rainless said:
The problem with this premise is that any C2D at stock can blow the doors off the whole line of AMDs current CPUs :)

(Speaking from the old gaurd E6300, E6400, E6600, E6700, and X6800. I don't know much about the newer chips.)
Rain this has nothing to do with AMD im trying to get a idea how bad it could be oc wise on some C2D's
 
Most people don't post their 'bad chip' results unfortunately. The worst I can vaguely recall are some e4300 results pushing just around 3GHz, aside from when other things like mobo are the limitation. ~3GHz is a very realistic and fair expectation, and more is common enough.
 
Last edited:
||Console|| said:
Rain this has nothing to do with AMD im trying to get a idea how bad it could be oc wise on some C2D's

Ah. Gotcha.

And I agree that the clocking on these things is weird. I knew a guy on here who couldn't overclock his E6400 past 3.1ghz no matter WHAT he did.

My only point was that there's really no such thing as a "bad OC" per say, because at almost any OC at all the C2D makes a huge performance leap.

For example, I stopped overclocking my E6400 at 3.654ghz... and at that speed it's considerably faster than an X6800 (according to Tomshardware at least) But even at the 3.1 ghz we were talking about for the other guy's E6400, it would still be faster than an E6600 (to give non AMD examples). Possibly even at 2.8ghz, and that is with 2MB less cache.

Now, mind you, I haven't been able to take my E6400 up to 4ghz like some people... haven't tried really... But I think anytime you can overclock just about any chip even 700mhz... and get the performance you get out of these... you have no right to call it "bad."

Which I guess means we're merely arguing over symantecs. Maybe you should've said "lowest" instead of "worst." There's just a lot of negative terminology.

And I am a doctor of journalism after all... :)
 
rainless said:
The problem with this premise is that any C2D at stock can blow the doors off the whole line of AMDs current CPUs :)

(Speaking from the old gaurd E6300, E6400, E6600, E6700, and X6800. I don't know much about the newer chips.)

Are you comparing these at similar price points or similar clock speeds? Because if we are talking price points, that statement is wholly inaccurate.

When we are talking about running at stock speeds and paying the same price for a CPU, AMD competes very well at the low-midrange. Intel has a significant clock per clock advantage, but AMD has dropped prices to the point where they have a sufficient clock speed advantage to outperform the competition at stock speeds.

Below $115 Intel doesn't even have a legitimate answer to the X2 Brisbane chips. After that every Intel chip is matched with a competitor that has at least a 4-600mhz clock speed advantage, and matches or bests it in general performance. Of course at the high end AMD is suffering because their fastest chip is about as fast as an E6600, but the low-midrange is just fine.

For example look at how the X2 5600+ ($175) consistently beats the E6400 ($194, but still dropping):

http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rid=136851

I don't want to take this thread off course, I just wanted to correct what I felt was an inaccurate statement.

The worst chips I've seen are some of the E4300s that had trouble hitting 2.8ghz with good motherboards, quality ram, and a ton of voltage. That said though, a 1ghz overclock is nothing to sneeze at, its just that its E6XXX brethren had raised the bar so high. At 2.8 those E4300s were still faster than even the best clocking X2s.
 
funnyperson1 said:
Are you comparing these at similar price points or similar clock speeds? Because if we are talking price points, that statement is wholly inaccurate.

When we are talking about running at stock speeds and paying the same price for a CPU, AMD competes very well at the low-midrange. Intel has a significant clock per clock advantage, but AMD has dropped prices to the point where they have a sufficient clock speed advantage to outperform the competition at stock speeds.

Below $115 Intel doesn't even have a legitimate answer to the X2 Brisbane chips. After that every Intel chip is matched with a competitor that has at least a 4-600mhz clock speed advantage, and matches or bests it in general performance. Of course at the high end AMD is suffering because their fastest chip is about as fast as an E6600, but the low-midrange is just fine.

For example look at how the X2 5600+ ($175) consistently beats the E6400 ($194, but still dropping):

http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rid=136851

I don't want to take this thread off course, I just wanted to correct what I felt was an inaccurate statement.

The worst chips I've seen are some of the E4300s that had trouble hitting 2.8ghz with good motherboards, quality ram, and a ton of voltage. That said though, a 1ghz overclock is nothing to sneeze at, its just that its E6XXX brethren had raised the bar so high. At 2.8 those E4300s were still faster than even the best clocking X2s.

Umm... I explained what I meant in the post right above yours.

And I did mention in that same post that I didn't know much about newer chips... (The X2 5600+ would certainly fall into that category.)

Last I checked the highest CPU they had was the 5000+, and in that case I was right. Besides, as I pointed out above, the idea was that ANY OC on a C2D would be a good OC in terms of performance. For example, your X2 5600+ is a 2.8ghz chip (which you were comparing to a 2.13ghz chip) whose max OX was only 3.03ghz. That would be sort of a below average OC on the slowest C2D that I know much about, the E6300.

But granted, the part of my statement about any of those four C2Ds being faster than any current AMD CPUs (including new ones I didn't know existed) was out of date, and I retract it.
 
Last edited:
rainless said:
Umm... I explained what I meant in the post right above yours.

And I did mention in that same post that I didn't know much about newer chips... (The X2 5600+ would certainly fall into that category.)

Last I checked the highest CPU they had was the 5000+, and in that case I was right. Besides, as I pointed out above, the idea was that ANY OC on a C2D would be a good OC in terms of performance. For example, your X2 5600+ is a 2.8ghz chip (which you were comparing to a 2.13ghz chip) whose max OX was only 3.03ghz. That would be sort of a below average OC on the slowest C2D that I know much about, the E6300.

But granted, the part of my statement about any of those four C2Ds being faster than any current AMD CPUs (including new ones I didn't know existed) was out of date, and I retract it.


Heh, I had that typed up for a while, I got distracted and submitted later. A lot has changed since the time you mentioned, for example the introduction of AMD's 65nm dual cores which start at $65 and hit 2.8-3ghz almost all of the time (my 65nm 3600+ does 3ghz, and could go higher with some better cooling). The 5600+ doesn't really max out at 3.03ghz, most of the ones I have seen hit at least 3.2, absolute max is 3.3-3.5 on air.

Also Intel released the E4300 a couple months back that was an Allendale core with 2mb of cache and was the worst overclocker of the C2D family with many people struggling to get past 2.8-3ghz. Later some of the 6300s/6400s were also Allendale core chips and showed similar signs of overclocking below expectations. This week they released a bunch of new CPUs to fill out the C2D line, but I don't know too much about how they clock.

I think we agree about the "bad" clocking C2Ds though, even at 2.6-2.8ghz these are incredibly fast CPUs. The only reasons they are considered poor overclockers is because the first C2Ds raised the bar so high.
 
Back