E4300 won't clock, what cpu next?

[benlanky]

Hi

As you can see in my sig, my e4300 used to clock to 3ghz comfortably, but since I changed to Vista Ultimate I can't get it to clock at all, which is really slowing everything down....

I've had enough of trying to get it to work and was wondering what the next step would be, BUT this time I don't want to have to clock it too far.

So what are the recommendations for next upgrade? Cost needs to be under £100, preferably under £60 if possible. The 2180 seems really popular, but hard to clock, any other options?

Thanks for any help

 

[benlanky]

E7200 if you can stretch to it:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-219-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793

Should be good for 3.6-4Ghz with a bit of luck

That does look good, in fact maybe it's too good for the rest of my system!

I assume this would be a fair bit better than the 2180? Easier to clock?

Just a bit worried that my mobo may not be up to the task, any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[benlanky]

Any help on this? I'm keen to get things sorted out for the weekend.

A friend of mine suggested getting a second hand Q6600, but would the E7200 be better?

Thanks for any help

edit: should have said that it's for gaming mainly, with a bit of surfing too. Crysis, COD4 that sort of thing.

Cheers

 

[benlanky]

I don't know what to expect from that motherboard bundled with a E7200 / Q6600. It's probably not gonna clock to far as it's a 965 chipset...

Thanks for the reply, I had a sneaking feeling that the mobo might be causing some problems, I knew I should have gone for a p35 when I did it last year....

Any recommended ones, is the Gigabyte still the default option?

If I can do that an overclock the 4300 that will keep me going for a few more months then I can look at quad core options.

Bit of a curveball this one, but are there any decent AMD options yet? I miss my old 939...

Cheers

 

[benlanky]

MSI P35 Neo2 FR here.

Fantastic board, great layout and clocks my E7200 to 4.1ghz on air. I've also got an Abit IP35 Pro with a Q6600 which is nice but I much prefer the MSI.

That's quite an impressive speed, looks like a lovely board too.

Which processor do you prefer?

Thanks

 

[benlanky]

Also remember the E7200 is half the price of a Q6600...

You could get an E7200 and a P35 mobo for the cost of just a Q6600...

That is a very tempting option, saves me from having to swap the processor over twice as well.

So, MSI P35 Neo2 FR mobo and e7200 looks like the way to go.

Thanks for the help, come on Overclockers do a package deal, just for me

 

[benlanky]

Hi

Been doing a bit more reading around and the E7200 is the one I'll go for. What I'm still not 100% on is the right mobo to match it, so here's a few options:

1. Keep my board and hope it will clock...
2. Get the MSI and blow my budget
3. Go for a B Grade board from the clearance section like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-099-GI&groupid=595&catid=689&subcat= or this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-313-AS&groupid=595&catid=689&subcat= saving me about 35 quid

What would Brian Boitano do?

 

[benlanky]

hold on a second, switching OS shouldn't be affecting overclocks, switched from XP to vista, no problems, exact same overclock i had on XP, since there done in BIOS, what exactly is the problem? you can't change the clock speed anymore or it won't boot to windows?

It's a while since I tried it, it will clock a tiny bit, but won't go very far. Think it's running at about 2.2 at the moment, which is lame. Won't boot to windows.

It's a good point though, but I couldn't think of any reason it would change with vista, eventually got sick of it and fancied a change!! If you can think of a reason to save me 120 quid I'd be pretty happy though

 

[benlanky]

Thanks for all the replies, didn't get a chance to look at the thread last night (got lost in Liberty City ) and when I look today there's loads of responses

I've been thinking about the changes that happened when I upgraded to vista and the only bits of hardware I changed were the hard drive and I added some more ram. Makes me wonder now if my board can't cope with 4 x 1gb of ram and an overclock....

It's either that or I dislodged something (like the heatsink) - I'll have to check it tonight. I'll have a look at updating the Bios too, but running vista shouldn't have any effect on that should it?

Thanks again for all the tips, any more things to check?

 

[benlanky]

I'll try removing the newer ram first, them flash the bios, then overclock again. If it works I'll replace the ram and see if that's causing the problems. I'll check the fan etc is properly in place at the same time.

This could be the cheapest upgrade yet!! (or I'm going to blow £120 if it doesn't work lol)

 

[benlanky]

Tried a couple of things so far and running 3dmark06 shows all four memory slots are full, but only 3072mb in use..... tried removing the newer bits, but the marks stay about the same. So it seems the board is having problems seeing all four, but it's not harming the results / performance. Details here http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=6742570

Slightly embarrassed here, but I've never flashed my bios before. I assume that I burn the file to a cd (unzipped), set that as priority boot in the bios then restart. I haven't got a floppy... (insert floppy joke here....)

Cleaned a bit more dust out too... damn these wooden floors

 

[benlanky]

Out of interest, here's my 3dmark06 score and details from pre-vista days: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2763265

Nearly 2500 points difference