# Remembering The Mighty Core 2 Duo / Quad (post your best overclock)



## storm-chaser (Feb 28, 2021)

Due to the long production run and overall popularity of the Core 2 Duo line in general, I'm going to make an assumption that most of the OC enthusiasts here have had some experience overclocking them. It's almost like a rite of passage, at least in my book. So with t*hat being said, post your best C2D overclocks here for eye candy.* Core 2 duo / quad are fair game. Essentially, anything LGA 775 related is acceptable. Nothing low end, has to be a decent OC. Laptop CPUs are allowed but must be something special (as listed below). I encourage you to post pictures with your reply and provide details on your particular overclock. 

I will start with my Core 2 Extreme X9000 CPU, an unlocked laptop processor that originally sold for $851 and was released to market on January 7th, 2008 and runs at a stock frequency of 2.8GHz. I put this chip in my Lenovo T61p and used throttlestop to OC. Got me a validation of 4191MHz, which was good enough for 3rd place overall in HWBOT in the frequency rating. 

















The Asus P5Q3 was (and still is) my go-to motherboard for LGA 775 overclocking... Matter of fact I still have the Q9650 rig sitting here right next to me, waiting to be revived.


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## P4-630 (Feb 28, 2021)

I had a E 7200 back in 2008, clocked it @ 3.8Ghz. (2,53GHz @ stock)
I don't have screenshots of it on my current PC but if you dig deep enough on TPU you would find some evidence. 

Also had a E 2200 for a short while before that, don't remember the OC's...


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## storm-chaser (Mar 4, 2021)

come on guys is this all we can do?


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## jlewis02 (Mar 5, 2021)

Best I could do with mine.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 5, 2021)

Remembering, ! Still got one here!. It's retired but I can't throw it or my old dead one away.



not the best it ever did but all the pics i have alas, this was cruisin speed , high fsb.

i got this tho.


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 5, 2021)

I recall the best LGA775 chip for overclocking in terms of percentage gain was the Xeon E5320, basically a 1.86GHz Q6600. You can get them up to around 3.2GHz easily. Not bad considering they are on the older 65nm lithography.

The 45nm chips achieve much better outright frequency though. Core 2 Duo E8400's get up around 4.2GHz and the Core 2 Quads are 4.0GHz from memory.

In recent years I've collected over one hundred LGA775 processors and so I've experimented with them a lot.


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## BarbaricSoul (Mar 5, 2021)

My E8400 and Q9650 could both do 4.5GHz (9*500fsb) at like 1.37 volts. Sadly, I don't have any CPU-Z screenshots of the OC's. The E8400 did it on both a EVGA 750i FTW and Gigabyte EP45-UD3R and the Q9650 did it in the Gigabyte board. Neither would do anything past 9*500.  9*501 would result in a instant crash.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 6, 2021)

BarbaricSoul said:


> My E8400 and Q9650 could both do 4.5GHz (9*500fsb) at like 1.37 volts. Sadly, I don't have any CPU-Z screenshots of the OC's. The E8400 did it on both a EVGA 750i FTW and Gigabyte EP45-UD3R and the Q9650 did it in the Gigabyte board. Neither would do anything past 9*500.  9*501 would result in a instant crash.


Yeah I've got about the same out of my q9650


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## xu^ (Mar 6, 2021)

Had my old Q6600 running for about 8 years @3.6ghz, replaced the Q6600 with a Q9450 that is running at a smaller oc @3.2ghz due to only having stock cooler these days on it, i dont use that System much at all, rarely gets turned on, so no pics atm.
But had the board itself since late 2007 and still going strong - Asus P5K Premium Black Pearl Ed Socket 775


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## Palladium (Mar 6, 2021)

Launch day E6300 from 1.83GHz to 3.2GHz on GA-P965-DS3. From an era when CPU upgrades were actually interesting, CPU OCing offered tremendous value and nobody really gave a hoot about VRMs.

I still have a Penryn 4-core X3380 Xeon I bought for the cheap somewhere back 3 years ago.


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## JCL (Mar 6, 2021)

This is what I could find right now. It was a fun time back then. Nice thread.


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## hat (Mar 6, 2021)

I had a Q6600 for a long time at 3.6. I never could get more out of it with my stability standards. Not my best overclock, though. That goes to the 4GHz i7 920.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 6, 2021)

i like the stories but im looking for cpuz screenshots


JCL said:


> This is what I could find right now. It was a fun time back then. Nice thread.


nice fsb speed ... definitely wolfdale territory!



storm-chaser said:


> come on guys is this all we can do?
> 
> View attachment 190964


yes Im quoting my own post.

Ironically, this was probably my worst OC on the core 2 lineup, the QX6850 was always a thorn in my side and I had a pretty good OCing board to boot, an Asus P5Q3 that I purchased secondhand from someone over at overclockers.com ... maybe it was just a bad chip .. yeah thats what Im going to go with. lol


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## jaggerwild (Mar 6, 2021)

Philly cheese Steak(me) E8400@4806.1


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## RJARRRPCGP (Mar 6, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> Ironically, this was probably my worst OC on the core 2 lineup, the QX6850 was always a thorn in my side and I had a pretty good OCing board to boot, an Asus P5Q3 that I purchased secondhand from someone over at overclockers.com ... maybe it was just a bad chip ..


Reminds me of my Q6600 G0, which is sitting on a table nearby, WHEA for "Bus/Interconnect Error" at only 360-something Mhz FSB, required more FSB term voltage and even then, I still need sub-ambient air or it will crash with that reason, even under a very low load!

I got Linpack to pass at 3.3 Ghz with Vcore required to be at least close to 1.4V, albeit CPU-Z said 1.39, IIRC. But Prime95 in blend failed with "Bus/Interconnect Error".
(before I touched FSB termination voltage and brought it to 1.3V)

Yes, it looked like not the best sample, as the VID is 1.3250V.


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## zenlaserman (Mar 6, 2021)

I have a pair of LGA775 rigs still running, both run Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboards.  One is an underclocked (333x6 1.0v) Q6700, I never had it over 333x10 1.4v.  The Bad Axe 2 is the most stable motherboard I have ever seen, but it has VRM limitations and I can't get either of mine to post much over 340 base clock.  It also becomes considerably more difficult to overclock when all 4 memory channels are filled.

My garage rig runs a QX6800 and I can't go over 275 base clock with the 4x2GB DDR2 800 I have in it.  I can post at 266x14, but it takes 1.5v to do it and my old TRUE tower HSF gets overwhelmed at load.  These Kentsfields get power-hungry real quick!  I have my QX6800 set at a nice spot right now, it's 24/7 stable and runs my older games just great.

Edit: I'd like to add that Bad Axe 2 runs i975X chipset.  That chipset turns 16 this year!


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## RJARRRPCGP (Mar 6, 2021)

zenlaserman said:


> I have a pair of LGA775 rigs still running, both run Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboards.  One is an underclocked (333x6 1.0v) Q6700, I never had it over 333x10 1.4v.  The Bad Axe 2 is the most stable motherboard I have ever seen, but it has VRM limitations and I can't get either of mine to post much over 340 base clock.  It also becomes considerably more difficult to overclock when all 4 memory channels are filled.
> 
> My garage rig runs a QX6800 and I can't go over 275 base clock with the 4x2GB DDR2 800 I have in it.  I can post at 266x14, but it takes 1.5v to do it and my old TRUE tower HSF gets overwhelmed at load.  These Kentsfields get power-hungry real quick!  I have my QX6800 set at a nice spot right now, it's 24/7 stable and runs my older games just great.
> 
> Edit: I'd like to add that Bad Axe 2 runs i975X chipset.  That chipset turns 16 this year!


I suggest 1.90V VDIMM for DDR2. (especially all slots filled) And being unable to boot at only 340 Mhz FSB, could indeed be the FSB termination issue that seems to plague Kentsfield.
I must have a poo chip in comparison, because I had problems with my P45-based motherboard, one of the last to use DDR2.

But the most poo chip I had, was a Pentium E2180 that I got along with the Asus P5QL Pro motherboard in September, 2008, IIRC. I decided to OC in 2009 and I watched the chip degrade at only 3.0 Ghz, thus it acted more like an 90 nm chip from like 2005! When I was given an Acer desktop PC, I swapped the CPUs, putting the E2180 that I intend to stop OC'ing into the Acer Aspire M5630 and the Core 2 Duo E4500 into my Asus P5QL Pro.

But by sometime in the forth quarter of 2012, I got my first Wolfdale, (E8400) albeit used or NOS, of course! It was an early one, the revision is "C0" on that one! In 2013, I OC'ed the FSB to 450 Mhz and no bus-related instability, so the bus errors were clearly related to Quads, in my book, suspect that it was because of Intel pretty much cramming two dual core CPUs into a single socket, at least in the case of Kentsfield.


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## zenlaserman (Mar 6, 2021)

I run my DDR2 at 2.0v 5-5-5-15 already since it's technically 6-6-6-18 4x2GB, I can't even set those latencies on this board!  It's just $40 Amazon RAM heh

There was once a long long thread on another site about the Bad Axe 2.  Along with the 340-ish base clock limitation with quads, it could only do about 430 max  with a dual-core.  Above that and the chipset simply wasn't stable - the i975x was never as OC-friendly as P965/P35/P45.  The i975X also will not technically support the Core 2s with 333 base clock.  QX6800 is the max CPU for it.

It was advertised as "Intel's first overclocking motherboard" in it's day, and while it was nowhere near as good at OCing as the DFI and Asus boards of the day, it had support for 10 drives, 3 video cards, and pretty decent onboard sound via optical cable.  It also still had a floppy controller, parallel port, serial port, and PS/2 mouse support for us legacy hoarders heh


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## RJARRRPCGP (Mar 6, 2021)

zenlaserman said:


> Along with the 340-ish base clock limitation with quads


Also a problem with P45, I think it's the FSB termination on Kentsfields especially! Even when I got to 367 Mhz.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 6, 2021)

zenlaserman said:


> These Kentsfields get power-hungry real quick! I have my QX6800 set at a nice spot right now, it's 24/7 stable and runs my older games just great.


Understatement of the century. lol 

and yeah it looks like you've balanced out that qx6800 quite nicely.. I wouldn't change a thing, that's for sure! she's 100% dialed in.

This was my daily driver OC for the Q9650... (iirc) at 4.3GHz it was pretty solid for all tasks. Vcore could come down a bit.

Off the bugged 3:5 divider as well!

*

*


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## JCL (Mar 8, 2021)




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## storm-chaser (Mar 8, 2021)

*E8400 *





*
E8600


*



delshay said:


> Can you guys show modern games running that have built-in benchmark if possible?   ..I can then compare it to an FX-60.


Please keep the thread on topic as its theme has nothing to do with drawing performance comparisons with AMDs antiquated FX chip.

thanks!


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## 68Olds (Mar 8, 2021)

Here's an old screenshot of my E8600.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 8, 2021)

delshay said:


> Sorry I did not see "post your best overclock."   ..Please edit your posting, I will delete this posting with-in 20 mins just to keep the thread clean & on-topic.   ...my mistake


No problem. But did you not read the very first post? I clearly stated IN BOLD that I was looking for C2D overclocks. Take a look:


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## pantherx12 (Mar 8, 2021)

If I could find the old thread for over clocking LGA 775 I have my e5200 numbers on there.

Suicide runs with an artic cooling freezer 7, good times.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 8, 2021)

Here is an improvement to the QX6850 (underclock/overclock), but it didn't last very long if you know what I mean


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## DR4G00N (Mar 8, 2021)

Here's my best E8400, done on chilled water. Same chip did 661 FSB on my P5E3 Deluxe.














						Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3966.21 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
					

[417ghz] Validated Dump by DR4G00N (2019-12-21 22:46:45) - MB: Asus P5E3 Premium - RAM: 4096 MB




					valid.x86.fr


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## storm-chaser (Mar 8, 2021)

EDIT: Im going through my old CPUz archives and found this one:


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## PHaS3 (Mar 8, 2021)

I do believe this was my best OC on my old Wolfdale core Core2Duo E8400. Was quite the beast... until Battlefield 3 multiplayer rendered it useless. Pun intended.


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## FreedomEclipse (Mar 8, 2021)

Q9550S


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## storm-chaser (Mar 8, 2021)

DR4G00N said:


> Here's my best E8400, done on chilled water. Same chip did 661 FSB on my P5E3 Deluxe.


Im guessing with a setup like this running your ram at CL 7 @ 1866MHz would net you a pretty good sub 50 ns latency result?


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## jaggerwild (Mar 8, 2021)

E1400@3401=70+ percent OC. not sure why my CPU-Z screens are gone................ON Chilled water, I think chicago Winter.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 8, 2021)

I think this chip can go higher but this is the best result I could find in digging through all my old OC screenshots. 







FreedomEclipse said:


> Q9550S
> 
> View attachment 191563



My old Q9550, which had plenty more potential, not sure why I left so much meat on the bone.


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## FreedomEclipse (Mar 9, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> My old Q9550, which had plenty more potential, not sure why I left so much meat on the bone.



According to my photobucket -- I had multiple attempts at hitting 4Ghz. I actually have a CPU-Z screenshot of me hitting 4Ghz, At first i thought it might of been a random google image search that i had downloaded but it is indeed mine and i know this because I think recognise the small part of wallpaper thats showing through.





Ive got a 4Ghz V1 and 4ghz V2 picture - One shown here is V2. Photobucket has eaten the V1 picture so i cant put it up but this V2 is unblurred. I did have multiple attempts at trying to hit 4ghz but i dont think i could ever get it stable which lead me to questioning the CPU stepping as some steppings did OC better than others.

My CPU cooler would have been an OCZ Vendetta 2


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## storm-chaser (Mar 9, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Ive got a 4Ghz V1 and 4ghz V2 picture - One shown here is V2. Photobucket has eaten the V1 picture so i cant put it up but this V2 is unblurred. I did have multiple attempts at trying to hit 4ghz but i dont think i could ever get it stable which lead me to questioning the CPU stepping as some steppings did OC better than others.


Yeah, I'm remembering a little more about this OC now. It was done with an MSI P43-C51 board (ddr3) and It's possible I stopped a little early due to high thermals. I think this was a 24/7, conservative 500MHz overclock with a hyper 212. Compared with the Q9650 the 9550 appears to be a complete dud. 

OT but you might look into IMGBB for your online photo hosting needs. Thats what I use exclusively now, after getting fed up with photobucket.



TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Remembering, ! Still got one here!. It's retired but I can't throw it or my old dead one away.View attachment 190977
> 
> not the best it ever did but all the pics i have alas, this was cruisin speed , high fsb.
> 
> i got this tho.


Wasn't the Q6600 a game changer for the overclocking community? I mean, isn't that really the chip that started the multi core craze that we've embarked on for past decade? Im seeming to remember it was a significant chip some why but can't quite pin down what I'm trying to say here.


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## FreedomEclipse (Mar 9, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> Yeah, I'm remembering a little more about this OC now. It was done with an MSI P43-C51 board (ddr3) and It's possible I stopped a little early due to high thermals. I think this was a 24/7, conservative 500MHz overclock with a hyper 212. Compared with the Q9650 the 9550 appears to be a complete dud.



Mine would have been done on a Asus P5Q Pro. Pretty damn good board at the time. Never did like the yellow memory slots though.


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## 80-watt Hamster (Mar 9, 2021)

Stumbling upon this thread inspired me to see what could be (quickly) done with my E5450 on a P5QSE PLUS.  Got to desktop at 3.6 with decent temps, but not stress stable.  Anything higher blue-screens.  Haven't so far found settings that will produce a higher CPU clock without pushing the RAM past DDR2-800.


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## FreedomEclipse (Mar 9, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> Stumbling upon this thread inspired me to see what could be (quickly) done with my E5450 on a P5QSE PLUS.  Got to desktop at 3.6 with decent temps, but not stress stable.  Anything higher blue-screens.  Haven't so far found settings that will produce a higher CPU clock without pushing the RAM past DDR2-800.



big part of the problem is the budget board. Some heatsinks on the VRMs will help though but probably not worth the effort


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## 80-watt Hamster (Mar 12, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> big part of the problem is the budget board. Some heatsinks on the VRMs will help though but probably not worth the effort



Well, it seems there's some headroom left.  Swapped out the RAM and dropped in better cooling, and got to 3744 @ 1.16V with temps around 50C.  I'll post a screenshot once I hit a wall.


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 12, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> Wasn't the Q6600 a game changer for the overclocking community? I mean, isn't that really the chip that started the multi core craze that we've embarked on for past decade? Im seeming to remember it was a significant chip some why but can't quite pin down what I'm trying to say here.



The Q6600 cost US$530 and basically performed the same the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 which was a US$1000 chip, but then you could also do an easy +800MHz overclock on top of that. That made them fly off the shelves. And yeah I think it was one of the first quad cores on the market so that would've been an absolute steal back in 2007.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 12, 2021)

Anyone know what model is the most rare core 2 processor in existence? I always hunt down the more obscure chips whenever researching a new platform. Then, luck permitting try to find them still for sale on ebay.


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## agent_x007 (Mar 12, 2021)

I think the most rare is Core 2 Extreme QX9775.
You can go rarer, if you want ES stuff though.


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## antuk15 (Mar 12, 2021)

Mine...... Doesn't seem that impressive at first.

But look at the FSB speed and then what chipset it was achieved on


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## Hyderz (Mar 12, 2021)

I had a Core 2 Duo E6320 (1.86ghz base and overclocked to 3ghz)
Paired with 4gb of ram with (8800GT 512mb later upgraded to HD5770 1GB)
The 5770 was held back by the processor even at 3ghz, it scored around 7k in 3dmark and then when i paired with i5 2500k the score was 12k

Had this system from 2009 to 2012, Games played around that time are Crysis 2, Alien vs Predator, Company of Heroes, Half Life Episode 2.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 12, 2021)

Forgot about my T61 before the upgrade to the X9000 CPU. This (T9300) is a locked chip but you can exploit one potential route to improve your base clocks. Once again, throttlestop to the rescue, this time in the options menu you can hit dual IDA mode, which gives you a slight overclock w/ a 13.5 multi.


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## Deleted member 205776 (Mar 12, 2021)

antuk15 said:


> Mine...... Doesn't seem that impressive at first.
> 
> But look at the FSB speed and then what chipset it was achieved on
> 
> View attachment 192061


Nice FC2 trainer you got there


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 12, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> Anyone know what model is the most rare core 2 processor in existence? I always hunt down the more obscure chips whenever researching a new platform. Then, luck permitting try to find them still for sale on ebay.



Not that I know of, unless you're willing to pay silly money for a Core 2 Extreme. I take a bit more interest in the historically significant ones like the E6300, being the first Core 2 Duo on the market. It helps that nobody else gives a damn about them and they're super cheap.

If you can find a computer recycling center, you can sometimes pay for old chips in bulk that are being sold for gold recovery. LGA chips are often still in working order because their pins aren't bent (because they obviously don't have any) like the AMD ones usually are.


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## Dinnercore (Mar 12, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> Anyone know what model is the most rare core 2 processor in existence? I always hunt down the more obscure chips whenever researching a new platform. Then, luck permitting try to find them still for sale on ebay.


I think the E8700 is up there in terms of rarity. It was scrapped and never really launched publicly, but some seem to have gotten out back in the day. It's the 775 variant of the X5270. I only got some of the Xeons. Finding an E8700 would be a holy grail for me.


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## agent_x007 (Mar 12, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> come on guys is this all we can do?
> 
> View attachment 190964


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## freeagent (Mar 12, 2021)

It was a hot day that day.. 

Box fan beside the pc kinda day 






Oh yeah I forgot about those crappy Dominators.. they only did like 1100mhz. All of my G.Skills went faster and tighter.


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## 80-watt Hamster (Mar 13, 2021)

I think this is the limit for this chip without going down the rabbit hole.  Further than I thought it'd go, TBH.  Setpoint of 1.3V with LLC.  Any more volts and either the Hyper 212+ or the IHS TIM can't keep up.


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Mar 13, 2021)

You make me wanna buy a core2 duo motherboard now. Looking at these screenshots brings me back memories of teenage day reading up tomhardware trying to overclock my asus P5BE-PLUS. The core 2 architecture is seriously a good one that it was still able to keep with intel haswell, that is 10 years after its released.


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## Dinnercore (Mar 13, 2021)

I do believe this is the highest I went on ambient cooling. Yes its technically 771, but I ran it on a 775 board with the mod. 









						Intel Xeon @ 5111.05 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
					

[b2axuw] Validated Dump by Osmium-OC (2020-10-17 15:10:24) - MB: Gigabyte EP45-EXTREME - RAM: 2048 MB




					valid.x86.fr
				








And I got just a little higher on DICE.









						Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 5909.17 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
					

[h4zhi1] Validated Dump by Osmium-OC (2020-08-07 18:46:34) - MB: Gigabyte EP45-EXTREME - RAM: 2048 MB




					valid.x86.fr
				




I went into this thinking 6GHz should be no problem but with X-OC and 775 as a slightly tricky platform I ran into a few roadblocks along the way. I hope I can get some free time soon and try again, it is such a fun platform to OC.









						OsmiumOC`s CPU Frequency score: 5909.17 MHz with a Core 2 Duo E8500
					

The Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 5909.2MHzscores getScoreFormatted in the CPU Frequency benchmark. OsmiumOCranks #null worldwide and #null in the hardware class. Find out more at HWBOT.




					hwbot.org


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 13, 2021)

MIRTAZAPINE said:


> You make me wanna buy a core2 duo motherboard now. Looking at these screenshots brings me back memories of teenage day reading up tomhardware trying to overclock my asus P5BE-PLUS. The core 2 architecture is seriously a good one that it was still able to keep with intel haswell, that is 10 years after its released.



My favorite thing about the LGA775 platform is the LGA771-to-775 mod where you can run higher-binned Xeon server chips that are great for overclocking on the consumer boards. You just have to double check compatibility first if you plan on doing it. I've done the mod on a couple Gigabyte P35 boards and it's great fun.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 13, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> I think this is the limit for this chip without going down the rabbit hole.  Further than I thought it'd go, TBH.  Setpoint of 1.3V with LLC.  Any more volts and either the Hyper 212+ or the IHS TIM can't keep up.
> 
> View attachment 192211


This is basically the Xeon equivalent to the Q9650, right?

Anyone out there who's done the 771 to 775 conversion?

I did this with a xeon x5470, a harpertown piece that runs stock at 3.3GHz, faster than any other 4 core retail chip on the market at that time)

The reason I selected this chip to replace my Q9650 is for the 10x multiplier. Which is a great choice if you have limited overclocking capabilities because right out of the gate, it's going to run a smooth 4.0GHz with zero tuning.

Edit: I sat on this for 20 min so i missed the posts above regarding the 771 to 775 conversion.


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 13, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> This is basically the Xeon equivalent to the Q9650, right?
> 
> Anyone out there who's done the 771 to 775 conversion?
> 
> ...



I seem to recall @Edwired had an E5450 that was a crazy good overclocker:



Edwired said:


> I have the xeon e5450 that can do 4.3ghz below 1.296v or there about cant remember exactly



My E5450's normally sit at 4.0GHz at 1.35V. But I guess since they're the highest binned E54xx chip available, there's no real limits to how much of a silicon lottery win you can get.

They're a great chip with the lower 65W TDP and they run very cool. Definitely my favorite SKU.


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## 80-watt Hamster (Mar 13, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> This is basically the Xeon equivalent to the Q9650, right?
> 
> Anyone out there who's done the 771 to 775 conversion?
> 
> ...


Yeah, this is on a converted board/chip.  I grabbed an E5450 because X54**s were going for quite a bit more than I was willing to pay. Funny you should mention 4GHz; that seems to be the top of this unit's happy place on the current board and cooling.


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## Edwired (Mar 13, 2021)

Yeah the xeon E5450 I had was awesome chip I basically pushed it to 4.5ghz @ 1.35v I still have the cinebench screenshots on my computer. But I sold it to a guy in my country he reported to me that he have it running 4.0ghz @ 1.25v the last I heard from him. I had it with a modded bios asus p5q deluxe with upgraded arctic thermal pads on the vrms and arctic mx-4 thermal paste on the northbridge and southbridge. I wished I didn't sell it in the first place but I wanted xeon x5675 and asus p6x58d-e


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## PolRoger (Mar 13, 2021)

An LGA 775 nostalgia thread!...  I still have a few parts on the shelf from the C2 Duo/C2 Quad era.

I'm still lamenting the loss of my ASUS Rampage Extreme (REX) motherboard several years back. 
I believe something with the board's X48 NB/MCH chip started acting up (overheating) and my last attempt to get it running failed to boot. 
I still have two other working boards... Both P45 chipset. One is DDR2: (Biostar TPower I45) and the other is DDR3: (Gigabyte EP45T-Extreme)

Fired up my combo again today to tinker some more with it. Its been a while and I think the last time was for another storm-chaser thread here on the TPU Forums.


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## Kissamies (Mar 13, 2021)

Stable, but throttled as I had such a crappy cooler back then. The date on the right corner is correct.


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## Edwired (Mar 14, 2021)

PolRoger said:


> An LGA 775 nostalgia thread!...  I still have a few parts on the shelf from the C2 Duo/C2 Quad era.
> 
> I'm still lamenting the loss of my ASUS Rampage Extreme (REX) motherboard several years back.
> I believe something with the board's X48 NB/MCH chip started acting up (overheating) and my last attempt to get it running failed to boot.
> ...


Yeah there was some sort of chip defect in the x48 series the last I seen or heard of online. I know the feeling when losing the board completely. As I had a asus p5q premium I paid way too much for it something like €155 as the seller said it working fine but my heart sank when I had it in my hands seen the state of the cpu socket even did the pain staking realigning all the pins back to their normal positions it barely worked correctly took me ages to get it gaming but nothing but troubles so I had wiped my hands with that board and got asus p5q deluxe that when it did well with the E5450 I think that cpu didn't get overclocked/overvolted at all before it came to me


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## Solaris17 (Mar 14, 2021)

There are two processors in existence I would love to own again.

My 1.2ghz barton

and my E7200 wolfdale.


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 14, 2021)

I found a screenshot of my best overclock and apparently it was my Core 2 Duo E8400 SLB9J at 4.2GHz on 1.28V, so there was definitely more left on the table. I still have the same chip and could dig it out to try again, but since then I've acquired three more SLB9J's and so I don't know which one it was lol


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## JCL (Mar 14, 2021)

Same board, mems, and vid card from 05/09. Different chip though maybe. I have another 8500 and the 8600 I posted earlier but have much better cooling now. This thread motivated me to put a H2O block on it. It is gore but effective.


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## storm-chaser (Mar 14, 2021)

PolRoger said:


> An LGA 775 nostalgia thread!...  I still have a few parts on the shelf from the C2 Duo/C2 Quad era.
> 
> I'm still lamenting the loss of my ASUS Rampage Extreme (REX) motherboard several years back.
> I believe something with the board's X48 NB/MCH chip started acting up (overheating) and my last attempt to get it running failed to boot.
> ...


This looks like a well sorted OC. I bet it's rock solid at this clock frequency.... I probably wouldn't change a thing, at least for a daily driver OC.


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## PolRoger (Mar 15, 2021)

It has been quite some time since I've run DDR2 as I usually gravitate towards running 775 on DDR3 motherboards. This E8400 has a somewhat high VID @1.3v it can probably overclock up towards ~4.2GHz(+) with ~1.4v... But I have doubts about this sample being able to reach/run at (500x9) ~4.5GHz?


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 16, 2021)

I found my "gold sample" E8400 that I mentioned earlier. This is quite interesting because I was able to pull even more voltage out of it. Now I'm running a quality power supply (very low ripple) and a good motherboard. The thermals are also down as I'm running a dual heatpipe cooler. I could try pushing the clock speed up but I don't know if my RAM will like it.

One thing I forgot about LGA775 is just how low the power consumption is. Even overclocked at these speeds the E8400 system is only pulling 144 watts from the wall at full load.


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## hat (Mar 16, 2021)

4.2GHz from a 45nm dual core isn't exactly a big ask. IIRC this was around the time when Intel started using the extra dinky half height stock coolers. The Core 2 architecture was so damn good, they left a ton of headroom on those chips. We won't see this again until either Intel or AMD comes out with a super kickass architecture, and the other player is left unable to deliver for years.


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## PolRoger (Mar 16, 2021)

PooPipeBoy said:


> I found my "gold sample" E8400 that I mentioned earlier. This is quite interesting because I was able to pull even more voltage out of it. Now I'm running a quality power supply (very low ripple) and a good motherboard. The thermals are also down as I'm running a dual heatpipe cooler. I could try pushing the clock speed up but I don't know if my RAM will like it.



What is the VID for your E8400 sample? Core Temp will show VID for LGA 775 cpus.

I would think that your chip could do 500 fsb x 9 multi... Running @ 1/1 ratio your memory would be doing 500MHz DDR2-1000.  I don't know too much about your Gigabyte P35 chip set motherboard or what kind of memory sticks your running but I think your E8400 has more overclock margin.


I swapped an E8600 into my combo which has a 1.25v VID and is a better overclocking chip. I had a couple of nice clocking dual cores back in the day but they are long gone now. I did manage to hold on and keep two nice C2Q samples though.

This is with ~1.4v vcore in BIOS  with droop under load (board has no LLC) down to ~1.375v:


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## Tatty_One (Mar 16, 2021)

Had to dig this out from a 13 year old FS thread, my 2008 beloved E8200 with a max multi of x8, for 550FSB+ back then serious motherboards were needed, she would do 4.5gig but only single threaded benches such as SuperPI but would sit at 4.4gig stable 24/7............


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## freeagent (Mar 16, 2021)

This is my e6300, my first Intel CPU after my last, very expensive weekend with AMD lol   

I think that was as fast as the cheapest 667 ram I could find to get me in the door could go. I lost a lot of screens. I traded that CPU and cash for an e6600.. boo.


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 17, 2021)

PolRoger said:


> What is the VID for your E8400 sample? Core Temp will show VID for LGA 775 cpus.
> 
> I would think that your chip could do 500 fsb x 9 multi... Running @ 1/1 ratio your memory would be doing 500MHz DDR2-1000.  I don't know too much about your Gigabyte P35 chip set motherboard or what kind of memory sticks your running but I think your E8400 has more overclock margin.
> 
> ...



Is VID the same as the Normal CPU VCore that shows as the default value in the bios? I didn't check but it might be 1.25V. I'm running a different SLB9J right now that does a similar 4.2GHz at 1.25V overclock and CoreTemp is reporting the VID as 1.2V flat, but that particular chip runs about 10C hotter though and so it would be hard to get very high overclocks.

I've tried going higher than 4.2GHz and either my setup is unstable (probably the RAM) or my cooling is inadequate. Although I do have some Team Group Xtreem Dark CL4 DDR2 that I probably should've been using from the start that I might throw in to help the cause.

Edit: I swapped the other chip (from post #67) back in and the VID is 1.2875V. It won't entertain doing benchmarks at 4.5GHz and I'd probably need to pump 1.4V into it to get 4.4GHz stable, so I don't think I'll be able to get it up there. The laws of diminishing returns make anything beyond 4.2GHz too difficult on my E8400's. They'll happily chug along at 4.2GHz all day at under 1.3V with standard DDR2-800 and a stock heatsink.


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## Dinnercore (Mar 17, 2021)

Speaking of golden samples, I still have one treasure that I'm kinda afraid to even use. It is by far the best C2D I have in my collection. Ambient cooled btw.









						Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 5006.66 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
					

[r7wdt1] Validated Dump by Osmium-OC (2019-04-14 06:13:03) - MB: Asus P5Q-E - RAM: 2048 MB




					valid.x86.fr
				




And about the whole VID thing, I personally don't believe the VID value is any indicator for OC potential. I think it is just an offset by factory to compensate for different leak currents and sensor discrepancies. It does not really say how much a chip scales with frequency. I have had high VID chips, like 1.285V 45nm Wolfdale chips that scaled much better than most of my low VID Wolfdales. 

Only distinct characteristic I could make out is: High VID chips tend to run cooler while low VID chips get hot very fast. This is an observation from ~20x 45nm Wolfdale samples I have tested. Again not all behave like that, but most do. The sample I posted above has a VID somewhere in the mid-range if I remember correctly, 1,24V or something similar and it reaches 45°C @1.45V. My lowest VID sample (~1.15V) can not clock as high on 1.45V and reached 60°C on the same cooling solution. I mean the sensors are not precise but a 15°C gap is significant enough to show a difference.


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## 27MaD (Mar 17, 2021)

Dinnercore said:


> Speaking of golden samples, I still have one treasure that I'm kinda afraid to even use. It is by far the best C2D I have in my collection. Ambient cooled btw.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm more impressed by the board tbh


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## Andyr (Mar 17, 2021)

Makes my E6400 at 3.2GHz look pretty pathetic. From memory we also had an e4400 (might even have been an e4300) at 3GHz in a tiny case with zero airflow... 

Happy days! *Grumbles about overclocking in AMD*


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## Biolante (Mar 17, 2021)

Intel Xeon X5470 @ 5011.01 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
					

[akri7y] Validated Dump by biolante (2018-02-27 16:00:18) - MB: Gigabyte EP45T-UD3P - RAM: 4096 MB




					valid.x86.fr
				




recently I've tested a x5270 wich can do 5.12GHz on air https://hwbot.org/submission/4618662_biolante_hwbot_prime_xeon_x5270_4161.14_pps


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## bombatomba (Mar 17, 2021)

Ah, I had my old Q6600 (packed in an HP xw4600) OC'd up to 3 GHz...

Yeah, I know very lame, but back then (2011) I didn't have the time or money for anything but a tiny piece of electricians tape (applied with a steady hand).  But good times, such nostalgia.  I went from almost ten years of rocking a Pentium 4 to a quad-core monster.  Wish it hadn't died.

Ah, thanks for the memories.


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## Dinnercore (Mar 17, 2021)

Biolante said:


> Intel Xeon X5470 @ 5011.01 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
> 
> 
> [akri7y] Validated Dump by biolante (2018-02-27 16:00:18) - MB: Gigabyte EP45T-UD3P - RAM: 4096 MB
> ...


That X5470 is super impressive to me. Quad beyond 5Ghz on air, well done.

EDIT: Or did I misinterpret and the X5470 was not on air? Still, nice sub.


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## Disparia (Mar 17, 2021)

Was able to build my department a number of Q6600 workstations back in the day. Only clocked them from 2.4Ghz to 2.8Ghz, but it was from bus/ram increase and not just multiplier adjustment. No speed records or anything, but nice boost and they were very dependable.


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## Biolante (Mar 17, 2021)

Dinnercore said:


> EDIT: Or did I misinterpret and the X5470 was not on air? Still, nice sub.


no the Quad was on water. yes the penryn core had impressive performance to offer. Unfortunately Intel didn't released six or eight cores for consumer boards 
with more voltage this could clock pretty well I assume 








						Intel Xeon X7460 @ 3338.28 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
					

[461p1z] Validated Dump by biolante (2019-12-31 10:54:48) - MB: SUPERMICRO X7QC3 - RAM: 16384 MB




					valid.x86.fr


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## JCL (Mar 17, 2021)

One from the other day, the pi one was from 1/2008. That was probably my best pi time and I think that particular chip is in another computer. If I have time I will switch them out today and see.


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## freeagent (Mar 17, 2021)

Cant remember what this was for, I think I was having problems with my 295. I had to RMA it that summer.


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 18, 2021)

I found it!!! I thought this video was gone because crypto hackers had taken over the TigerDirect youtube channel and all the videos were gone, but it's back up now after they restored the channel.


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## basco (Mar 18, 2021)

does anybody know which ram divider was bugged in p45 chipset ? 5:6 or 3:5 or other ?
thanks in advance


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## Dinnercore (Mar 18, 2021)

basco said:


> does anybody know which ram divider was bugged in p45 chipset ? 5:6 or 3:5 or other ?
> thanks in advance


I know that 3:5 is bugged on p45. 5:6 I'm not sure.


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## PolRoger (Mar 18, 2021)

After revisiting C2D/C2Q these last few days I've found my skills to to be rather rusty. It has been harder running high FSB speeds along with good memory performance and stabilty then I remember. Finding the proper balance between Vcore/MCH/VTT and GTL Ref voltages has been kind of challenging. I remember once when this tech was current gen trying to dial in a 600FSB overclock on this motherboard but in hindsight I think my settings were probably rather relaxed.

I guess for now I'll keep plugging away at it. To aid with my settings I've found running HyperPi 32M to be useful tool... It will give an "out of round" error message or even BSOD if my settings are not "dialed in" well enough.

E8600 533FSB DDR2-1066 1/1 ratio:





Same settings AIDA stress:





My setup... Cooling is a Megahalems with a 2000RPM Delta fan. The USB floppy disk is for running MemTest (tuning overclocks) so I don't "bork" my Windows install.


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## JCL (Mar 19, 2021)

PolRoger said:


> After revisiting C2D/C2Q these last few days I've found my skills to to be rather rusty. It has been harder running high FSB speeds along with good memory performance and stabilty then I remember. Finding the proper balance between Vcore/MCH/VTT and GTL Ref voltages has been kind of challenging. I remember once when this tech was current gen trying to dial in a 600FSB overclock on this motherboard but in hindsight I think my settings were probably rather relaxed.
> 
> I guess for now I'll keep plugging away at it. To aid with my settings I've found running HyperPi 32M to be useful tool... It will give an "out of round" error message or even BSOD if my settings are not "dialed in" well enough.
> 
> ...


I'm with you as far as the rust goes, that G.Skill ram cooler too, I have it on my board also. Trying to remember how changing one setting affects others. I found some old bios templates from back then but the settings I ran seem to be different and aren't working so well now. That chip I thought was in another computer was in fact the chip I was using. Now it is in another computer and will stay. I worked a some with that chip but it was stubborn. I have an 8600 to use now and maybe I can sort everything out. I have a couple 8500's if someone would like one. Clean etching work fine.


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## freeagent (Mar 19, 2021)

I noticed that the last time I fired up the old Rampage. It was a little tougher then I remembered to get it to where I had it. Between PL, GTL, etc. I couldn't remember anything I thought I would never forget lol. Mind you I didn't spend much time with the X3360 on there right now. I don't have my e8600 anymore sadly. The board really shined with it. I was able to get it up to 600fsb and I am positive it had more to go but my G.Skill PC8500 didn't like it past 600MHz at all. Maybe I will plug it in this weekend and see if it still works  Its been about 5 years since I turned it on last. I did get it to 471, but pretty sure I was able to get more out of it before.. but not much.. dam 3MHz will haunt me.


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## PolRoger (Mar 19, 2021)

One thing that irks me is when you try to boot up a kit of ram and one of the sticks has gone dead/won't boot just from sitting idle/unused on the shelf for extended period of time. I have two different sticks from two different DDR2 kits that are now dead this go around.  Last summer I was buying some 2x8GB DDR3 kits off of Ebay and was testing them upon arrival... I did some re-testing of a few of my other old kits and I had two sticks out of a 3x2GB Corsair Dom kit (Hyper IC) dead/won't boot!


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## PooPipeBoy (Mar 19, 2021)

PolRoger said:


> One thing that irks me is when you try to boot up a kit of ram and one of the sticks has gone dead/won't boot just from sitting idle/unused on the shelf for extended period of time. I have two different sticks from two different DDR2 kits that are now dead this go around.  Last summer I was buying some 2x8GB DDR3 kits off of Ebay and was testing them upon arrival... I did some re-testing of a few of my other old kits and I had two sticks out of a 3x2GB Corsair Dom kit (Hyper IC) dead/won't boot!



I've spend many hundreds of hours of my life trying to fix hardware that doesn't work, then it works, then it doesn't work, then it works, then it doesn't.....but at least it hones your troubleshooting skills.

Although with RAM it can often just be due to oxidized or dirty contacts. A bit of a wipedown with IPA solves quite a few of those issues. Still, old hardware can be just plain temperamental.


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## phill (Mar 23, 2021)

I knew I had some of the 775 overclocking I did...  I've a few screen grabs from all of the testing I've done but I think there's a load more...

     


How I miss my original Rampage board....  And my 4870 X2 as well....  Good times


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## Aranarth (Apr 1, 2021)

My q6600 was dead stable at 3ghz.

8400 was stable to 3.5ghz in same board.

Probably coulda gotten both up much higher but that was plenty far enough for me.
Pretty much one of the easiest overclocks I've done. Just flip the multiplier, set the ram, and let it go. No voltage adjustment at all.


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## rvdevil (Apr 1, 2021)

Got these two to remember that good old days!


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## RJARRRPCGP (Apr 2, 2021)

Aranarth said:


> My q6600 was dead stable at 3ghz.


Mine was, too! 3.0, was a walk-in-the-park!


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## crispysilicon (Apr 3, 2021)

Ah memories. Look carefully and you'll notice a few fun things. 

I still have the RAM from this setup in my closet, that was some great RAM. Also had to patch the microcode to get all the features working (it wouldn't do SSE4.1 before patching if I remember right?)


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Apr 3, 2021)

Damn I missed the days when Front side bus was a thing. I remember AMD criticise intel for it being slow versus their hypertransport integrated memory controller. Despite that Intel was still beating the AMD Phenom 1 in performance. Most important of it all it the fun overclock flexibility with FSB, seriously fsb is just soo good despite its limitations.

EDIT : I think the current AMD io die is a good spiritual successor to the FSB. The intel core 2 quad is the "original glue" before AMD did it with chiplets. AMD uses two core2duo die having it communicate through the front side bus.


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## FreedomEclipse (May 10, 2021)

A little hint of what im currently trying to get up and running...






Unfortunately its been sitting in the bag at the back of the shelf for so long that im going to have a beard before all the updates are completed (its been 2h30min already...) #DualCoreProblems

Trying to get this laptop up and running as a second machine as it packs more of a punch over my Clevo W310CZ. The screen is also bigger.


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## MIRTAZAPINE (May 10, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> A little hint of what im currently trying to get up and running...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I see this keyboard and I know its an acer gemstone. Iconic design back in the day. Even with duocore problem this is a worth machine for its looks. Old laptop have personality which many current thin design lack.


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## FreedomEclipse (May 11, 2021)

I wish i had an 8gb ram kit for this thing. you can get everything under 8GB for pennies but an 8GB kit is £100+

The laptop was running hot since i last worked on it a year ago. 70-80'c during windows update but repasting sees it around 65'c

Unfortunately unlike the picture in my previous post this one is rocking a 8600M GS and not the GT


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## 80-watt Hamster (May 11, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> View attachment 199930
> 
> I wish i had an 8gb ram kit for this thing. you can get everything under 8GB for pennies but an 8GB kit is £100+
> 
> ...


I have a similarly-spec'ed Dell XPS. Repaste did not solve its thermal issues.


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## FreedomEclipse (May 11, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> I have a similarly-spec'ed Dell XPS. Repaste did not solve its thermal issues.



Unfortunately i think im discovering this now. Just transferring files across ethernet sees temps hit 72c

::EDIT::

It must have been doing a scan of some sort. Now temps are 60-65'c


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## FreedomEclipse (May 13, 2021)

Running into a few other 'issues' with this laptop. the HDMi is Realtek and it seems they didnt want to pay money for HDCP and all the different codecs like DD & DTS which means that plugging this into my Yamaha AVR will only do 2.1 audio not 5.1

The only way to do 5.1 is via TOSLink through the 3.5mm jack. Absolute bummer.


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## unclebalaji (May 15, 2021)

storm-chaser said:


> Anyone know what model is the most rare core 2 processor in existence? I always hunt down the more obscure chips whenever researching a new platform. Then, luck permitting try to find them still for sale on ebay.


and then for those chips, I remember there being an extreme black edition, and along that, intel made a dual socket board for those chips. It is extremely rare afaik to find the dual socket board.

This just reminds me of being a broke teenager with a Q6600 desktop that was shared with my family. I remember browsing tom's hardware and anandtech and other forums, just in shock how much performance can be squeezed from a Q6600, and it was sitting a few rooms away from me. Mind you, I cherish my socket 478, but the Q6600 was the bee's knees at the time in terms of price/performance for quad core cpus. Alas, I have that Dell Inspiron 530, albeit with either a ram issue or the yellow light of death. The cpu works just fine. Time to go find some lga 775 boards on ebay.



FreedomEclipse said:


> A little hint of what im currently trying to get up and running...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I remember back in like '09/'10 during the netbook craze, some guy in my area was selling his Vostro 1500 with a T5000 or T5100 with the 8400m GS for $300. I headed to his place, with the money I saved up working @ ShopRite, and bought it off him. I was ecstatic. I also had a busted up T61, and decided to swap the cpu with the Vostro, and my, at the time, it held up pretty well in games and just general use, compared to my 478. I miss those days.


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## FreedomEclipse (May 15, 2021)

unclebalaji said:


> I also had a busted up T61,



There is a big community for old refurbished *IBM *Thinkpads. Nobody realised how modular those laptops were back in the day and i have seen so many people build pretty strong laptops from parts salvaged from dead laptops bought off ebay.


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