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

[storm-chaser]

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 that 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.

 

[P4-630]

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...

 

[storm-chaser]

come on guys is this all we can do?

 

[jlewis02]

Best I could do with mine.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

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.

 

[8BitZ80]

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.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

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.

 

[storm-chaser]

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

 

[xu^]

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

 

[Palladium]

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.

 

[JCL]

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

 

[hat]

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.

 

[storm-chaser]

i like the stories but im looking for cpuz screenshots

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

nice fsb speed ... definitely wolfdale territory!

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

 

[jaggerwild]

Philly cheese Steak(me) E8400@4806.1

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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.

 

[zenlaserman]

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!

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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.

 

[zenlaserman]

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

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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.

 

[storm-chaser]

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!

 

[JCL]

 

[storm-chaser]

E8400

E8600

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!

 

[68Olds]

Here's an old screenshot of my E8600.

 

[storm-chaser]

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:

 

[pantherx12]

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.