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CPU bottleneck?

shahpor

shahpor

shahpor

Associate
Joined
13 Mar 2007
Posts
832
Hey guys.

Just a quick question regarding my CPU.

I was wondering if my CPU was holding my system back and whether it was worth upgrading or not?

I have a 2.33GHz Q8200 C2Q.

The rest of my main spec is:

Asus P5Q-Pro mainboard
4Gb Corsair XMS2 6400C5 RAM
Gigabyte GTX260-216 896Mb Graphics card

What do you guys reckon?

Thanks.
 
Hmm, been a very long time since I overclocked anything! :)

Just not sure I am really up for it these days. Getting old you know :)

Don't even know how.

But besides overclocking it, it is definitely holding me back and could do with upgrading?
 
Ok, time for a noob question, but how does one go about overclocking a CPU these days? :)

Also, for the sake of argument, if the choice was a new CPU instead, what would you guys pick? Would there be another 775 CPU worth having or is it a case of i3/5/7 is the only way?

Thanks.
 
Yeah, noticed the overclocking section of the board after I browsed here. :)

Figured there would be some kind of problem. :)

Not that I doubt what has already been said, but is 3GHz a realistic target without much effort?

I figured I would need at least a new cooler as I am currently running the Intel reference one.
 
Thanks for that Big Wayne and Redmint.

Hmm, I guess this is one of those try it and see situations?

If it did manage to get to 2.8GHz, would I notice the difference?

And, if like Redmint says, the RAM won't play ball with the increased MHz, I guess it would be new CPU time?
 
Thanks guys.

I have all the programs you suggested Wayne.

Am just off to download the Intel Burn Test and see whats what.

Will let you know :)
 
Cheers Wayne.

I did have a quick try at IBT with Core Temp running (doing a Standard stress).

Seems at the moment I am doing about 40-45C at idle and 60-65 under load.

Not sure how good that is to be honest.
 
Ok, well had a quick go at clocking it anyway.

It did not go well :)

Running at 400FSB, I could not run Prime95 without crashing with cpu voltage at 1.35 and DRAM at 1.86

Tried 1.45v and had to stop before a crash cause my CPU was about to melt at 82C.

Also, for some reason, after the first BSOD, CPU-Z was reading my CPU at 2.6GHz with a multiplier of 6?
 
Another quick update:

Put the CPU voltage back to 1.35v and upped the DRAM to 1.9

Seems to be stable under Prime95 for the moment, although I haven't give it a proper test.

One of the reasons is that even at 1.35, my CPU temp hit 79C, so it looks like a new cooler before anything else.

Any recommendations? Ideally I would like one where you don't have to remove the motherboard to fit a backing plate, but I know that is not possible for the best ones out there.

Thanks.
 
Sorry, can't run Prime95 at the moment (about to do WOW raid :))

What I can tell you is under low load (5%-20%), the temp is between 45-50C depend on which core you look at.

Will run Prime as soon as I can, but I am not expecting good results.

So it looks like a new cooler before anything else can happen. Although to be honest, that was to be expected. :)
 
Hey guys.

I ran my standard system on Prime95 Small FFts for about half an hour.

My hottest core (Core 0) ended up about the 67C mark. My coldest (Core 1) 62C.

Guess I should start browsing coolers :)
 
Yeah, was looking at those when I was browsing the overclocking section here.

They do look pretty good.

From what I can see, there isn't much in it between the Corsair and CoolIT?

As for cases, I do like the look of the Coolermaster CM-690 :)
 
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