E1200 Celeron Overclocking

[Tooks]

I've had a P3 1Ghz Coppermine machine for downloading tasks for a while now, and decided it was a bit long in the tooth. I had 2GB of DDR2 spare, so purchased a Celeron Dual Core E1200 CPU along with a Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H 630i based motherboard to bring it into the 21st century. No big budget, so pretty cheap too!

I haven't seen many, if any, overclocking results with these E1200 CPU's so thought I'd make a thread to see how others are getting on.

I've got mine to 2.7Ghz so far, but struggling to get any further, as the graphics go west at the windows boot up screen. I've tried volts up to 1.5v but it doesn't seem to make any difference. I'm limited by the options in the bios too, no FSB/chipset voltage adjustments or graphics tweaks.

Having said that, 2.7 is 1.1Ghz over its stock frequency, so not too bad (I guess we've been spoilt by the E2XXX chips!), and load temps are low to mid 50's with the stock intel cooler. The cooler is one of the new low profile units the same as that packed with my E8400, and they do seem to run a lot quieter than the old ones.

I'll post some Orthos/CPU-Z pics when I've taken it as far as I can, but so far 1M Super PI is 29s, and the 3dmark06 score with the onboard 7100 GPU is 403! For reference my 1Ghz coppermine/1GB SDRAM with a PCI FX5200 scored 2m 54s 1M Super PI and 83 in 3dmark06.

Anybody else messing with one of these at the moment?

Any requests for benchies?

 

[Tooks]

Yeah, I suspect so. It is a bargain basement rock bottom budget board after all!!

It's only got single channel memory capability and voltage options, as I said, are pretty limited, but it was this or a G31 based board. I went for this N630i as it had better onboard audio including a HDMI connector and one of the other duties of this machine will be digital tv recording, something the P3 couldn't manage. Oh, and it was cheap!

I only really needed to be able to hit 2Ghz for the TV tuner software, so it's easily achieved that, so job done I guess.

 

[Tooks]

I've got a spare GPU knocking about, so I'll give that a go and see what happens. Hadn't realised that onboard GPU's limited things in such a way. A long time since I've had one actually!

 

[Tooks]

What CPU is that with Vegetarian?

Got any tips on bios settings?!

 

[Tooks]

I should point out that it's the motherboard that is imposing the single channel RAM issue, although even that doesn't seem to be noticeable in windows and the browsing/tv recording/downloading I'll be using it for.

It's obviously not the fastest CPU on earth, no way, but it's very cheap and seems to have overclock potential. That 2.7ghz is on the stock 1.325v by the way.

 

[Tooks]

Ah I see, the 10x multi on that chip will help a bit.

I've got a pci-e graphics card to slot in later on, so I'll see if ditching reliance on the onboard graphics helps me clock this E1200 to 3Ghz+.

 

[Tooks]

Yep, tried up to 1.55v!

I've just fitted an 8500GT PCIE card, and disabled the onboard graphics, and still I get as far as the windows xp splash screen before it hangs. That's at 2.8Ghz. Anything less than that and it's fine.

So, that's 350FSB x 8 multi, and I get the same problems even at 350FSB x 6 multi, so I suspect it's the board that's limiting things now. The FSB limit for me seems to be 345.

With your E2180 at 3Ghz, I presume that's with a 300FSB?

Never mind, I'm happy with 2.7Ghz. It's not my main PC, and it's nippy enough at that clock speed and records and plays back the digital tv stuff it was setup for just fine.

It was a strict budget upgrade, max £75, so I don't think I'd have got much more for the money to be honest, at least brand new anyway.

The 8500GT is my brothers, so I'd best drop that back off to him tomorrow!