E5200 Overclocking and performance comparison.

[pastymuncher]

Update 20/03/09

Now includes E2140 results from 1.6-3.6Ghz and E8500 E0 results from 2.4-4.5Ghz. All done with the exact same components and drivers to give true comparisons.

Hi guys, i know some of you have been waiting for this so here it is at last. Bear with me as this is my first review.

I set about doing this to try to offer some help to those who have been wondering if it is worth upgrading from what they have. I have done a full suite of benchies with a E2140, E4300, E5200, E6600 and E8500. I also have partial results from a Q6600. Benching was performed in my main rig to keep it all consistent. The specs are as follows:-

Asus P5E X38 with bios 903.
2x1Gb Crucial Ballistix PC2 8500.
Zotac 8800GT @701/1836/1950
Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer
Zalman ZM750-HP Psu.
Seagate 7200.10 320Gb sata2 hdd
Samsung 20x DL DVDRW
TT Aluminium Armour.
High end watercooling setup.
178.13 WHQL driver.
8.09.04 Physx driver.
Windows XP Home SP3.

E2140 - 1.6Ghz - 8x200 - 1mb L2 - 65nm Conroe core - SLA93 - FPO/Batch # L732A988 - Vid 1.2125.

E4300 - 1.8Ghz - 9x200 - 2mb L2 - 65nm Allendale core - SL9TB - FPO/Batch # Q641A275 - Vid 1.3250.

E5200 - 2.5Ghz - 12.5x200 - 2mb L2 - 45nm Wolfdale core - SLAY7 - FPO/Batch # 3827A333 - Vid 1.1625.

E6600 - 2.4Ghz - 9x266 - 4mb L2 - 65nm Conroe core - SL9ZL - FPO/Batch # L702C486 - Vid 1.3500.

E8500 - 3.16Ghz - 9.5x333 - 6mb L2 - 45nm Wolfdale core - SLB9K - FPO/Batch # Q820A837 - Vid 1.212.

Q6600 - 2.4Ghz - 9x266 - 8mb L2 - 65nm Kentsfield core - SLACR - FPO/Batch # Can't remember - Vid 1.3500.



I tested at the following speeds:-

E2140 - Stock (1.6Ghz) - 8x200, 1.22v, ram @800mhz.
- 2.4Ghz - 8x300, 1.25v, ram @960mhz.
- 3Ghz - 8x375, 1.35v, ram @999mhz.
- 3.6Ghz - 8x450, 1.472v, ram@1081mhz.

E4300 - Stock (1.8Ghz) - 9x200, 1.3v, ram @800mhz.
- 2.4Ghz - 9x266, 1.3v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3Ghz - 9x333, 1.4v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3.4Ghz - 9x378, 1.475v, ram @1008mhz

E5200 - Stock (2.5Ghz) - 12.5x200, 1.16v, ram @800mhz.
- 3Ghz - 12.5x240, 1.16v, ram @960mhz.
- 3.6Ghz - 12.5x280, 1.325v, ram @960mhz.

E6600 - Stock (2.4Ghz) - 9x266, 1.31v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3Ghz - 9x333, 1.35v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3.6Ghz - 9x400, 1.45v, ram @1066.

E8500 - 2.4Ghz - 9x266, 1.2v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3Ghz - 9x333, 1.2v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3.6Ghz - 9x400, 1.2v, ram @1066mhz.
- 4Ghz - 1.285v, 9.5x421, ram @1058mhz.
- 4.5Ghz - 1.4v, 9x500, ram @1000mhz.

Q6600 - Stock (2.4Ghz) - 9x266, 1.31v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3Ghz - 9x333, 1.4v, ram @1066mhz.
- 3.6Ghz - 9x400, 1.456v, ram @1066.


The E5200 has a disadvatage when it comes to benching as it has a high multiplier but a low fsb. This means it has less bandwidth available and i could'nt run the ram as fast as i could with the other cpu's. Drop the multiplier and increase the fsb and it more than makes up the difference. More about this later. The benchies i used are:

3Dmark 01, 03, 05 and 06. Default settings.

Aquamark 3. Default settings.

Super Pi 1m, 16m and 32m.

Nuclear MC. Default settings.

Cinebench R10. Default settings.

Fluidmark v1.00. 1280x1024, Default settings.

Lightsmark 2007. 1280x1024 Default settings.

Company of Heroes Opposing fronts in built test. 1280x1024, all set to high or
Ultra where available and 8x AA.

World in Conflict. Built in test. 1280x1024, high no AA.

Crysis. Crysis benchmark tool, all high no AA, 1280x1024.

Far Cry. Hardware OC Benchmark. 1280x1024, default settings.

Prey. Hardware OC Benchmark. 1280x1024, default settings.

All tests run 3 times and average scores taken. One of the reasons it took so long. Anyway, here's the first lot of synthetic benchies:-

As you can see, it's a bit of a mixed bunch. Sometimes the E5200 is beaten by the E4300 and sometimes it's the other way around. What is impressive is that it beats the E6600 in 06. It get's a hiding in Aquamark 3 though. This is mostly due to the low fsb. As a experiment i dropped the multiplier down to 9x and increased the fsb to 266 to get the same 2.4Ghz as the E4300 and E6600 and it beat the pair of them in everything but Aquamark. The E6600, Q6600 and E8500 were all still out in front. Probably the extra L2 Cache was having an effect here. The E2140 is hopelessly overwhelmed and the lack of cache (only 1mb remember) is hurting it.

On to the next batch.

I was extremely impressed by the E5200 here. In NuclearMC, it beats even the E6600 in everything but the Alu test and it is'nt far behind in that. Most impressive. Do the same with dropping the multiplier and increasing the fsb and it does beat the E6600. The poor E2140 and E4300 get left behind quite considerably although they do respond very well to clocking. The E5200 is'nt far behind the E6600 in Super Pi either. The E8500 is all powerful which is to be expected.

 

[pastymuncher]

Update, 20/03/09

The next batch.

Why did i include Fluidmark i hear some of you ask? Well i included it because you can make large gains by clocking your cpu. Just look at the gains for the E4300 from stock to 3Ghz and 3.4Ghz. Same with the E2140. The same thing applies to some games as you will see later. Once again the E5200 shows what it can do in Cinebench R10. It beats the other two in everything but the OpenGL test where the E6600 has a slight lead once more. Bear in mind that the E6600 has the ram running at 1066mhz and more bandwidth available to it. Do the business with the multiplier/fsb on the E5200 and it pulls ahead again. Nothing can keep up with the mighty E8500 though.

Onto the games.

The poor little E2140 is hopeless here although there are massive gains to be had from clocking it it still lags behind the other's. This is the E5200's achilles heal. It get's beaten by the E4300 and E6600 here. Even the E4300 at 3.4Ghz beat the E5200 at 3.6Ghz and the fsb/multiplier buisiness did'nt work here. Even clocking to 4Ghz made very little difference. An extra 1.8fps in prey and an extra 4fps avg in WiC. I just could'nt get any more out of it. It can't be cache as the E4300 has the same amount. It still does good for a budget cpu though. Wic, CoH and Crysis are GPU dependant but you can clearly see that clocking the cpu does make a big difference to your minimum fps. The average hardly changes but the minimum does, especially in CoH and WiC, making for smoother gameplay. Prey seems to like the extra cache of the E6600 as that starts off well even at stock. The E8500 show's it's dominance here. Nothing at all can keep up with it. The Q6600 although i only benched it with the two games i did play most of my games on it while i had it and my experience was dissapointing to say the least. It was wasted on me as my pc is just for gaming so it was sold off rather quickly.

Overclocking. I could get into windows at 4Ghz (12.5x320) no problem with 1.4v. I could even run some of the benchies at that speed. However, i could not get it prime stable even with 1.43v. I certainly was'nt going to give it any more than that after my E8500 experience. I also could'nt get it prime stable at 3.8Ghz (12.5x304) with the same voltage. Prime would fail after a couple of hours. However, it was rock solid at 3.6Ghz (12.5x280) at only 1.325v with load temps in prime of 38 degrees (my rad is on a windowsill). I have yet to find it's max clock but expect it to be around 3.7-3.75Ghz. Not bad for a cheap cpu. I will let you know how high i can get it. My second pc has a P35 mobo so it clocks well. If you are interested the scores i got at 4Ghz are:-

NuclearMC.
Alu score - 7298.
FPU score - 9419.
MT score 2T - 17648.
Total score - 14211.

Super pi 1m - 13.515 Sec.

Prey - 185.5 fps.

World in Conflict (Min/Max/Avg) - 34/110/62.

I did'nt bother with any of the others as it was not stable. My E4300 can boot into windows at 3.6Ghz (100% overclock) and the E6600 at 4Ghz but neither are stable so i did'nt count them. It would seem that the temp sensors are stuck on quite a few E5200's. Mine reads 32/34 degrees at idle with Realtemp and Core Temp which is wrong as my E6600 does'nt hit that on load. It seems to be ok for reading load temps though. Well, as long as they are over 32/34 degrees anyway.

Update, 20/03/09. I cannot get the E5200 stable beyond 3.6Ghz. It does'nt matter what motherboard it's in (tried 3 different ones), what cooling (air or water), or what voltage. I have tried up to 1.52v which is too much for a 45nm cpu. I am not going to try any more as it is'nt worth frying it for a couple of hundred mhz. I have settled on a permanent overclock of 3.33Ghz with 1.26v. Considering it needed 1.325v for 3.6Ghz this is a good "half way house" and is more than enough for the job it is doing, general purpose/internet pc. I have become a little "disillusioned" with the E5200 though. I was expecting more from it. Maybe it's just that i got used to massive overclocks from the Core2Duo's and i expected too much in the first place. Whatever it is there are a lot of very poor clocking E5200's around. There are quite a few people with very good motherboards that cannot get their E5200's past 3.2Ghz for whatever reason. Most top out at 3.6-3.7Ghz while some very rare ones will hit 4Ghz. These are extremely rare though. From my experience they hate high fsb's. Anything over 300 and you are very lucky indeed.

So, after all this testing what have i learnt? Benching is really boring. Seriously, it is. I hope i don't have to bench anything else for the rest of this year. Back on subject. What did i think of the E5200? Well, for the price i paid (can't say how little as it's against forum rules) it is an unbeatable cpu. It has excellent performance and overclocks well. It is also cooler running and more energy efficient. It is now sat in my second pc and the whole pc is drawing 84w compared to the 87w it did with the E4300. bear in mind that the E5200 is also running 700mhz faster than the E4300!!

Is it worth upgrading too. This is a tough one and not as clear cut as you may think. If you have a E2000 series then yes. It is considerably faster, especially if the extra cache is needed and the E5200 runs cooler and uses less power. If you have a E4000 series cpu then no not really. Performance is similar in games, the E4300 beats it in some synthetic benchies and loses to it in others. The E4000 series are still good cpu's, especially when clocked. Just look at my results to see the gains. If you have one at stock then give yourself a slap and get clocking.

If you have a E6000 series then no. It beats the E5200 in most things and has the extra 2mb of L2 cache which will help in programs that make use of it. Again, if you are running one at stock, get it clocked and reap the rewards.

What if you are building a new budget rig? The E2000 series was a good budget cpu to go for but not now. The E5200 has double the cache, is more power efficient and is cooler running. It is faster clock for clock by quite a bit. It can also be had for a similar price. What about the E4000 series? These should'nt even be considered for a new rig. They are overpriced and use an older 65nm process. There is no question. The E5200 is the new budget king.

The biggest surprise i got from all this was the E2140. I only paid £18 for it off the bay and it is a full retail one. At stock it is next to useless and is only fit to work in a internet pc. Get it clocked though and it shows large gains. Wow, did this thing clock!! 3.6Ghz from a 1.6Ghz cpu!! A massive 2Ghz, 125% overclock. It certainly put's the other's to shame from a clocking point of view even it struggles performance wise. I was going to stop at 3Ghz as i did'nt think it would go any further. How surprised was i when it booted at 3.6Ghz and then passed a quick 10 rounds of linx stress test and then did'nt even crash once during benching. Here's a screenie to prove it:-

As you can also see from the E8500 scores, pretty much anything over 3.6Ghz left me GPU limited as the gains from clocking got smaller and smaller. This is evident from some of the game and 3DMark benchies. I will stick my 4870 back in to see if it free's up any more performance as i have never benched it before.

I hope this answers some of your questions and helps some of you decide what to go for. If you have any questions post away.

Update 20/03/09. This has become more of a general cpu comparison guide now rather than just for the E5200. It's more than what i orginally set out to do and has taken over 100 hours of benching and tweaking to compile all of this info. Each test was carried out 3 times at each cpu speed and then i took the average from the three so you can see it all adds up. The Super Pi runs took the longest, especially with the E2140 at stock. Poor little thing. At least anybody that has a dual core and wants to upgrade to a faster one can look at my charts and see if the upgrade is actually worthwhile doing so.

If you want a gaming rig then the mighty E8000 series is the way to go. Most E8400's will go past 4Ghz easily and if you notice, i tested the E8500 at E8400 speed on purpose. I went down to 2.4Ghz to give a direct comparison with the other cpu's and even then it is faster at the same speed. It just shows the improvements that Intel has made over the E6000 series. The 45nm core cpu's are a big improvement over their 65nm older cousins.

Since i started this the E5200 has risen from £53 to nearly £70 on some retailers sites. This is too much in my opinion and if you really want one you should shop around for the best deal's. A quick check around reveal's it still for sale at £54-57 so it pays to look. The E5300 can also be had for the same price or just a couple of pounds more than the E5200 and the extra .5x multiplier may come in handy if it does'nt like a lot of fsb.

 

[pastymuncher]

stunning work and much appreciated, quick Q I have an e6600 which I can only really run at 3.0 due to my mobo limiting my fsb to 333, would there be any gain in real terms with a e5200 @ 3.6 ish ? obviously given your experiences I value your input.

Thanks in advance

Sorry for the delay. In your case it would be worth it. It is easy to compare on my charts as well as the E5200 @3.6Ghz results are diectly above the E6600 @3Ghz results. You would see a nice boost. However, what is holding back your E6600? Is it the cpu or an Asrock mobo? If it's the mobo you would see a bigger gain by changing that and clocking the E6600 further as the extra cache appears to help it pull away in games. It is the more expensive option though and the 333 cap will not hold the E5200 back at all. You just want something new to play with.

And..... relax.

Interesting post, I'd completely overlooked the E5200 as OCUK list it with 1MB cache. With 2MB and a 12.5x multi ... it has to be a pure winner.

Good effort

AD

OCUK still has the wrong description after all this time. I think that a lot of people are overlooking it due to the fact that they state it only has 1mb of L2 cache. Pity because it's a fantastic little chip.

Thank you all for your comments. They are much appreciated. As a side note, i already have this back to 3.6Ghz prime stable in my second rig which uses a £35 Biostar TP35D2-A7 P35 motherboard, AC Freezer 7 Pro, 2x1Gb Patriot PC2 5300 and a ATI X1600XT (being replaced with a brand new, very cheap, HD3850). Going to try for 3.7Ghz next and then when i find the final max i will post a screenie of it passing prime for 8+ hours along with the settings so that others may use them.

 

[pastymuncher]

Well done! The question is do i upgrade!!!? (well, you did already answer that)

Here's something that may help you decide. A while back my son wanted an upgrade from his 3Ghz P4. I got hold of a cheap E2180 and put together a rig from my spare parts and compared it to the E4300. The rig was:-

E2180 (10x240)/E4300 (9x266) both at 2.4Ghz (his mobo restricted his clock as it had no voltage options).
Gigabyte P31 DS3L (one of the best boards i have ever used).
2x1Gb Geil Ultra PC2 6400.
ATI X1900XT.
Samsung Spinpoint 320Gb sata2 hdd.
Samsung 20X DL DVDRW.

I only tested using 3DMark etc but my results were as follows:-

3DMark06
E4300 - Total - 5556 / SM 2.0 - 2104 / HDR/SM3.0 - 2394 / CPU - 2082.

E2180 - Total - 5507 / SM 2.0 - 2092 / HDR/SM 3.0 - 2376 / CPU - 2041.

3DMark05
E4300 - Total - 10979 / CPU - 7747.

E2180 -Total - 10590 / CPU -6792

3DMark03
E4300 - Total - 18338 / CPU Test 1 - 167.6fps / CPU Test 2 - 22.6fps.

E2180 - Total - 17664 / CPU Test 1 - 134.3fps / CPU Test 2 - 20.3fps.

3DMark01
E4300 - Total - 31176.

E2180 - Total - 27559.

The E2180 did go on to hit 3.6Ghz but the gains after 3Ghz were minimal and the extra heat was not worth the minimal performance gains so we settled on 3Ghz for it.

Now while these scores are not comparable to my scores above it does show the E4300 beating the E2180 in every benchmark. The E5200 beats the E4300 in most of the synthetic benchies, sometimes by a considerable margin (Cinebench and Nuclear MC especially) but is let down a little in games. The E6600 is the clear winner here and probably due to having double the L2 cache. Well the E5200 has double the cache of your E2180 so logically it should be better in games than the E2180. Basically the E4300 is better than the E2180 and the E5200 is (mostly) better than the E4300. The E2180 also drew more power than the E4300 for some reason so the E5200 would be a good choice for power reduction too. Of course, it runs cooler too.

I would go for it if i was in your position and the E2000 series are getting good prices on the bay at the moment as well which would offset the cost of changing.

 

[pastymuncher]

Hi pastymuncher,

Thanks for that it's not an Asrock mobo it s a gigabyte Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H matx mobo, it'll run a flaky 360 fsb but is rock solid at 333-350. obviously with a higher multi I can do some damage limitation with regards to overclocking.

I'll pop the e6600 up tonight will be sad to see it go as it'll be cracking but onwards and upwards eh

Thanks again for the time and patience displayed, and all the help given to date

With the E5200 you only need 280 for 3.6Ghz. If you play around with the multiplier though, say drop to 11x and increase the fsb to 333 (still 3.66Ghz) and increase the ram speed you will see what i meant about the high multiplier/low fsb holding it back. One thing's for sure though. You will not be dissapointed.

 

[pastymuncher]

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.

 

[pastymuncher]

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]

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.

 

[pastymuncher]

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.

 

[pastymuncher]

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.

 

[pastymuncher]

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.

 

[pastymuncher]

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.

 

[pastymuncher]

ok, so to make it short - E5200 @3.6GHz will be pretty the same as E8500 in games? Presuming both will be used with same GPU - is OCed e5200 going to give same performance as e8500 (or e8500Q4GHz)??

No. The extra cache of the E8500 makes a lot of difference. In games that make use of the extra cache the E8500 will crucify it. You can tell that from the E5200/E6600 comparison and that was at the same clockspeeds. Get a E8500 to 4Ghz+ and it will be much, much faster. Bear in mind that the E8500 that i had then was one of the first C0 versions and not the E0 beastie that i have now. The graphics drivers were different too. The E5200 is a good budget chip but has no answer to a E8500.

 

[pastymuncher]

Well looking at the E5200 @3.6Ghz and E6600 @3Ghz in the games above, the E5200 only just pulls ahead of the E6600 despite the extra 600mhz clockspeed. The E8400's are faster clock for clock than the E6600 so i reckon that the E8400 would still be faster. Because the E5200 does'nt like high fsb's you have to use the 12.5x multiplier to get the best clocks. This also means that with the E5200 you can't run the ram so fast so have less bandwidth available. I could only get 960mhz out of my 1066 kit with the E5200 while all the other cpu's (apart from the E4300 @ stock) could run at 1066mhz. There is also no guarantee that the E5200 will even hit 3.6Ghz. There are quite a few on here who have them and are stuck on 3.2Ghz.

Surely you are'nt thinking of downgrading to a E5200? Your motherboard supports overclocking i believe. Why not clock your E8400?

 

[pastymuncher]

I really don't know. I reckon the E8400 with the 6mb of cache would be better although Crysis is'nt particularly cpu limited. It's just badly coded. Now your rig is going to be out of balance. You don't have a top end card with a budget cpu as a rule. Bit of a false economy on your part there. How could you save some money when you already had the E8400 anyway? If you get a E5200 that does'nt clock well you are going to regret it big time.

 

[pastymuncher]

I just did some searching around and found your original thread. You really should have listened to the guys that gave you good, solid advice. Now you are going to end up having your plan backfire on you.

 

[pastymuncher]

Well, not exactly. I wanted to ask about it casue I'm getting so many different advices - you say its not worth it and that e5200 will be slower than e8400, when on other forums people saying it actually very similar. So at the end getting OCed [email protected] or e7300 with same OC I will get same performance in games as had with e8400 stock...
I know it may not look like a best idea to downgrade a cpu, but I needed that money before so sold e8400, now need a new cpu - that is why I asked.
Do you think that [email protected] or [email protected] would be a lot slower than e8400@stock with GTX280 and gaming in 1920x1200?

Do some research yourself instead of expecting other's to do it for you. You have already shown that you don't listen to what people say otherwise you would'nt have got rid of the E8400.

Look at the comparison between my E5200 @3.6Ghz and the E6600 @3Ghz. The E5200 just about keeps up with the E6600 in games. The E8400 is faster at 3Ghz than a E6600 at 3Ghz due to it's improved architecture so the E5200 will be slower at 3.6Ghz. If you can't even get to 3.6Ghz on the E5200 it will be a lot slower. Like i said, there are plenty of people on here that are stuck at 3.2Ghz.

As for the E7300, aside from the fact it's almost £100 and your idea of "saving money" is all but out the window, it only has half the cache of the E8400 so that will let it down in games which make use of the cache. I have no experience of using one of these so you will have to check out the E7300 clocking thread.

 

[pastymuncher]

It's like I didn't listen to people, I asked for opinion and received a lot answers, different. Having two different opinions you can pick only one - I didn't ignored those advices, just decided differently.
Please, don't get me wrong - your test is great and showes a lot and its great for everyone, you did a great job. I had to sell that cpu that time, needed money very quickly, didn't want to sell any other part, decided then to downgrade on cpu. I hope it will not be a huge difference and I hope I will get really good e5200 that OC like crazy...

By the way, here's a cpu test that showes e5200@4GHz and pretty huge improvement in fps in Crysis. I believe that getting 3.6GHz will give a lot as well, don't have to get 4GHz...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/22/athlon-x2-7750-vs-intel-e5200-oc-review/4

The difference between my test's and their test's is that they used a GTX 280 which is much more powerful than the 8800GT that i used. As i said before, Crysis is more GPU dependant than CPU dependant. I also gave the results for min/max/avg fps instead of the single score they gave.

Another thing is that it's rare to even get one to 4Ghz prime stable. Mine boot's into windows and even runs some tests at 4Ghz but it's by no means stable. I can't even get it stable at 3.8Ghz and judging by other people's results on here mine is a good one. My rig is fairly high spec too and has high end custom watercooling. As they are a 45nm Wolfdale core you can't give them loads of voltage to get stable or you risk de-grading the cpu. I had this happen with my first E8500.

 

[pastymuncher]

Ouch.. that had to hurt - what did you do with it? Did you RMA it?

It still worked at stock speeds with stock volts. It was previously clocked at 4.2Ghz prime stable for 24hours with 1.45v. I stupidly tried for more with 1.52v and almost got stable at 4.4Ghz but gave up. Set everything back to the settings for 4.2Ghz and it would'nt get stable again, not even with 1.5v. I could only get stable at 3.8Ghz and that was with 1.45v. Well my Q6600 i had at the time did that so i stuck the E8500 on the bay with a full explanation of what was wrong with it and ended up selling it for more than i paid for it. At the time they had only been out for around 3 weeks and were out of stock everywhere. The guy was happy with it so it worked out ok for me.

 

[pastymuncher]

Very nice post
But i think we need a full wolfdale comparsion

So get back to your bench!

Can't. Have'nt got the GT anymore. I certainly am not going to start from scratch again. Took me bloody ages to do all of that. I still have all of the cpu's though.

Actually, i have'nt run a single benchmark on this Wolfie.