E5200 Overclocking and performance comparison.

pastymuncher · 12 Oct 2008 at 15:00

-=Vect0r=- said:
Any thoughts as to why the quad appears to bench significantly lower in Games compared to E6600 at the same clocks?

Always thought the extra cache made a small difference in framerates especially at the (relatively) low res of 1280x1024 in favour of the C2Q....

Partly because it was done a few months ago using older drivers. The quad was a waste of space for me. None of my games use the extra cores and it had two, sometimes three cores, all clocked at 3.6Ghz doing nothing but still sucking up vast quantities of power and chucking out loads of heat. We need to see a lot more games become multi threaded before quads become mainstream in a gaming pc. One of the reasons i will be giving core i7 a miss for a good while yet.

WJA96 · 12 Oct 2008 at 15:19

This is an excellent piece of work, although in some ways it makes it harder to pick what CPU to buy - but honest, thorough, research is often confusing.

Thank you Pastymuncher and 5-stars from me!

krooton · 12 Oct 2008 at 15:42

Great stuff!

Nice to know my E5200 @ 3.4Ghz is well above the E6550 @ 3ghz, the 400mhz more than makes up for the halving of cache.

Shame I can't break 3.4Ghz at all

pastymuncher · 12 Oct 2008 at 18:59

krooton said:
Great stuff!

Nice to know my E5200 @ 3.4Ghz is well above the E6550 @ 3ghz, the 400mhz more than makes up for the halving of cache.

Shame I can't break 3.4Ghz at all

That's surprising actually. As soon as i put mine in it booted at 3.33Ghz for some reason. You running 12.5x272? What voltage are you using?

pastymuncher · 12 Oct 2008 at 19:02

WJA96 said:
This is an excellent piece of work, although in some ways it makes it harder to pick what CPU to buy - but honest, thorough, research is often confusing.

Thank you Pastymuncher and 5-stars from me!

Many thanks. Coming from someone as experienced as you means a lot to me. I did it to try to help people decide and if it even helps just one person it was worth it.

krooton · 12 Oct 2008 at 22:53

pastymuncher said:
That's surprising actually. As soon as i put mine in it booted at 3.33Ghz for some reason. You running 12.5x272? What voltage are you using?

Running at 340x10.

Tried 333x11 and 333x10.5. both failed Orthos within 10 minutes.

ps3ud0 · 13 Oct 2008 at 00:08

Should have my E5200 setup up this week so hoping I can get some good results - got it so I could wait for the E0s at my leisure...

Will post what I get overclocking-wise on decent air (TRUE with 2x 38mm fans

). Noob to C2D ocing so will take my time

ps3ud0

pastymuncher · 13 Oct 2008 at 13:26

krooton said:
Running at 340x10.

Tried 333x11 and 333x10.5. both failed Orthos within 10 minutes.

What volts? Have you tried using the 12.5x multiplier? These things don't like a high fsb so you would only be running at 12.5x280 for 3.6Ghz. You would be sacrificing bandwidth and have to run the ram slower though.

ps3ud0 · 13 Oct 2008 at 14:34

Bah that doesnt sound any good - bought some nice OCZ Reaper 8500 in the hope for high FSB as the P5Q can do quite high...

TBH Im mad to complain considering how much it does oc for the price...

ps3ud0 :cool:

zykan · 13 Oct 2008 at 15:08

good effort, far too much free time!

but it's nice having something like that around for comparisons

krooton · 13 Oct 2008 at 17:35

pastymuncher said:
What volts? Have you tried using the 12.5x multiplier? These things don't like a high fsb so you would only be running at 12.5x280 for 3.6Ghz. You would be sacrificing bandwidth and have to run the ram slower though.

Is it worth it for 200mhz? I'd be running my ram 2/3rds of their max ability, lol

pastymuncher · 13 Oct 2008 at 19:10

krooton said:
Is it worth it for 200mhz? I'd be running my ram 2/3rds of their max ability, lol

You also might find that you need to increase the volts quite a bit if you are already struggling at 3.4Ghz. It was just a suggestion. There is quite a performance hit with using the high multiplier/low fsb though. I did say that in my review. This is a good choice for people that only have PC2 667 ram though.

krooton · 13 Oct 2008 at 19:33

pastymuncher said:
You also might find that you need to increase the volts quite a bit if you are already struggling at 3.4Ghz. It was just a suggestion. There is quite a performance hit with using the high multiplier/low fsb though. I did say that in my review. This is a good choice for people that only have PC2 667 ram though.

Had Vcore at 1.4, MCH at 1.4 and VTT at 1.5, no dice, 3.4Ghz seems the limit.

Still better than my E6550 @ 3Ghz though

TALON1973 · 14 Oct 2008 at 12:07

whats a decent mobo to go with the e5200 ?

i was thinking a p45 but is that overkill ? thining micro atx as well ....going media centre

pastymuncher · 14 Oct 2008 at 15:22

TALON1973 said:
whats a decent mobo to go with the e5200 ?

i was thinking a p45 but is that overkill ? thining micro atx as well ....going media centre

Well i have mine in a £35 P35 Biostar board now and it's running at 3.6Ghz. All you need is a board that allows you to increase the fsb and apply a little extra cpu voltage. Not sure about M-ATX boards but i believe Gigabyte (G33 DS2R?) and Asus (P5E VM?) do a couple of fairly decent clocking ones. There's always the (very expensive for a M-ATX board) DFI Lan Party JR P45-T2RS.

TALON1973 · 14 Oct 2008 at 16:15

yeah it was the dfi lan party that caught my eye ... but the other thing that worries me is getting my 8800gt in as well ... i was after the antext fusion ....but not sure it card will fit

pastymuncher · 14 Oct 2008 at 19:50

I believe it does take full size cards. It's a very good case and unusually for a "living room" type case, has twin 120mm exhaust fans.

PaulyD · 15 Oct 2008 at 17:58

Great work-actual in depth testing done by someone from the community with knowledge rather than reviewers who get the chip for free and don't even test properly (ahem tom's...)

Have even made my mind up the missus' build as well

e5200 it is!

Thanks for the effort you put in-i know how boring benching and testing can be!

warren_1979 · 11 Nov 2008 at 22:38

My E2140 is going on the bay soon. Looks like I've found my next chip!

swyllie2000 · 11 Nov 2008 at 23:23

warren_1979 said:
My E2140 is going on the bay soon. Looks like I've found my next chip!

Yep me too. Should give my download machine a new lease of life!