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Titan Theo, E5300 and Black Ops

Passo

Passo

Passo

Associate
Joined
22 Nov 2010
Posts
8
Hi there,

I'm new around here, and new to installing hardware and overclocking, so please bear with me.

In August last year I bought the 'Titan Theo' PC from this very website. It was a pretty good PC at a pretty good price. Budget gaming is what it offered, and that is what I got. Here are the specs:

Processor Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.66GHz @ 3.00GHz
Processor Cooler Intel Approved CPU Cooler
Case Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black
Graphics Card ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
Memory Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L Intel G31 DDR2 Motherboard
Optical Drive LG GH22NS30 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter
Power Supply Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply
Sound Card High Definition 7.1 OnBoard Sound Card



Now, something I never noticed but just discovered, is that my processor has been running at 2.66GHz and not at 3.00. It hasn't made a difference with any of the games I've been playing this year. However, Black Ops just came out and my processor is holding me back. If I was to overclock the processor to 3.00 GHz (the overclock that was advertised when I bought the PC), would that increase performance:
a) safely
b) to something that will run Black Ops smoothy.

If not, is there any level of overclocking that will allow Black Ops to run properly. The recommended requirements for the game say that I should have an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. Can the E5300 be made to run as well as that processor, or should I buy something else? If so, what should I buy? I'm not looking to spend more than £80, but if it was to last me a long time, I would consider it.

Thanks for taking the time to read my long post!
 
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E5*00 series are an easy processor to overclock, I had my E5200 running at 3.2Ghz on stock voltage and was pretty much fine in every game minus the handful of titles that required more than 2 cores.

Just check your ram isn't being overclocked to high when you raise the FSB, and you should easy be able to run at 3Ghz which would give you a small booster in games, although nothing too amazing.

I don't think Black Ops is very well coded though from what I've read people with higher spec quad core system aren't getting a smooth ride either.
 
SouthEastBlue said:
E5*00 series are an easy processor to overclock, I had my E5200 running at 3.2Ghz on stock voltage and was pretty much fine in every game minus the handful of titles that required more than 2 cores.

Just check your ram isn't being overclocked to high when you raise the FSB, and you should easy be able to run at 3Ghz which would give you a small booster in games, although nothing too amazing.

I don't think Black Ops is very well coded though from what I've read people with higher spec quad core system aren't getting a smooth ride either.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. How can I tell if my RAM is being overclocked too high? I did some ground research on the dangers of overclocking, but I've yet to find out how to stop said dangers!
 
I'm not familar with your motherboard, but the MSI P35 board I used to overclock my E5200 displayed the ram divider and ram speed below the CPU overclocking options. I think in some motherboards you can unlink the ram from the CPU FSB but I'm not entirely sure.

Either way just look for memory options or CPU options in your BIOS, and it should be there somewhere.

When you find the option to change the ram divider, knock the FSB up until it says you're at 3Ghz and adjust the ram divider to get your ram running closest to stock speed.
 
Most G31 chipset motherboards will not allow voltage control and might not have much in the way of memory divider options. But I've heard good things about the Gigabyte ones on here, and that they can do these things.

The memory divider allows you to slow down the DDR2 memory when overclocking so that it does not exceed its classification. In your case the '6400' in its name equates to 800mhz. Most memory can be overclocked too, but they sometimes require their timing settings to be relaxed and/or voltage increased. I doubt even the Gigabyte would offer that. So finding the memory divider in the bios is all important. Pity each manufacturer calls this bios setting a different name making it the hardest part for an overclocking novice to find and adjust.

To get 3ghz I dont think you will have to adjust the cpu voltage. To get higher you will. I think you will get to about 3.3ghz before you rate the intel stock cooler as too noisey. Those chips are good for 3.6ghz for the orinal stepping [manufacturing process] and more like 3.8-4ghz for the later stepping - likely what you have from August last year. A £20 cooler will be required. Possibly only worth spending if you think it will be of use on a future machine or just like tinkering.

Perhaps someone with the gigabyte board could comment if the board is good for that level. My backup machine Asrock G31 can only do 3ghz on an e5200 due to the lack of voltage control and memory divider.
 
I got my brother's E5300 to 3.4ghz on stock volts with no trouble at all on this board: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-220-GI

I twinned the E5300 with some 1066mhz ram, and just locked all the settings in the BIOS, torture tested it overnight at stock settings, then just set the FSB from 200 to 266. To my amazement it was stable straight away without any voltage tweaks, and it's been running without issue for the last 4 months.

Your board is the model down and your ram is only 800mhz, but if you drop the memory multiplier 1 notch and then up the FSB until it's roughly 800mhz again, (or the system becomes unstable), you should be fine.
 
Hi guys, thanks for the responses and help. As it stands, I cannot get the machine to go above 2.75 GHz. Any higher, it fails to boot and resets it to 2.5 GHz. Here's a picture of my settings http://yfrog.com/45photo239j

Edit: I didn't try changing the FSB multiplier to 11 or 10. I'll try that now.
 
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Alright, I changed the multiplier to 10, 11, 12 and 13 but nothing will go past 2.75, other than the setting shown in the picture above.
 
If you bought the PC with an OC on it, you may well find the OC saved to one of the profiles, check your mobo manual for how to load a BIOS OC profile

Alternatively if you did want to spend that £80 you could pick up a Q6600 which would be a nice upgrade, quad core and they clock quite well too
 
Your memory is approaching DDR880 speeds there, very likely it won't run that speed without relaxed timings and/or increased voltage if at all. Take it off of auto and set it 1:1 with the cpu FSB and try running 333x9 or even 333x10, cpu should do that with ease, have had 3 E5300 over the years and 2 did 4GHz on stock and the other did 3.8.
 
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95thrifles said:
If you bought the PC with an OC on it, you may well find the OC saved to one of the profiles, check your mobo manual for how to load a BIOS OC profile

Alternatively if you did want to spend that £80 you could pick up a Q6600 which would be a nice upgrade, quad core and they clock quite well too
Click to expand...


I loaded the OCUK settings, but that caused the PC to turn off and on again twice. Now I think about it, that actually happened when I first started the PC, but I didn't really pay attention to it. Whoops!

I'll try the other suggestions tomorrow. Thanks!
 
Yea, definitely not the problem with the CPU, but more to do with the memory being clocked too high.

Hate to say this though...Black OPs don't run well on ANY dual-core CPU...the damn game is a huge CPU hog that even some half decent quad-core can hold back high end graphic cards...
 
Alrighty, once again thanks for all of the tips. I now have the processor running at 2.97 Ghz and the RAM at 880, and have had no problems for the 6 days I've had it in this setting. Thanks for the advice! Black Ops doesn't run any better, but there is a Dual Core patch coming soon, so let's hope that's the solution.

Justintime told me to change the voltage settings, but the BIOS manager warned me very vocally that I shouldn't mess with that stuff. So I didn't. I'm a scaredy-cat!

Thanks again :)
 
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The E5200 is the best overclocker I have ever used. I have been running mine daily at 3.7Ghz on air for the last year. It can even do 4Ghz stable.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Yea, definitely not the problem with the CPU, but more to do with the memory being clocked too high.

Hate to say this though...Black OPs don't run well on ANY dual-core CPU...the damn game is a huge CPU hog that even some half decent quad-core can hold back high end graphic cards...
Click to expand...

True the game's a cpu beast!:mad:
 
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