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

[80-watt Hamster]

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.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

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.

 

[Dinnercore]

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

 

[8BitZ80]

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.

 

[storm-chaser]

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.

 

[8BitZ80]

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.

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

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.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

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.

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.

 

[Edwired]

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

 

[PolRoger]

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.

 

[Ruru]

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

 

[Edwired]

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.

View attachment 192253

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

 

[Solaris17]

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

My 1.2ghz barton

and my E7200 wolfdale.

 

[8BitZ80]

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

 

[JCL]

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.

 

[storm-chaser]

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.

View attachment 192253

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.

 

[PolRoger]

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?

 

[8BitZ80]

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.

 

[hat]

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.

 

[PolRoger]

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:

 

[Tatty_Two]

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............

 

[freeagent]

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.

 

[8BitZ80]

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:

View attachment 192682

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.

 

[Dinnercore]

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.

 

[27MaD]

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.

I'm more impressed by the board tbh

 

[Andyr]

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*