Overclocking an E5300

pig_dog · 16 Nov 2009 at 15:41

I'm running an R0 E5300 on a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L with 4GB of Kingston HyperX PC2-8500 RAM.

So far I've managed to get it 1 hour OCCT stable at 3.6GHz. I've kept the FSB/DRAM ratio at 1:1 as I think I've heard that it's best performance wise to keep this ratio if possible. I've adjusted the core voltage to 1.312 for this overclock and the FSB is running at 1108, quite a bit higher than my RAM's rated frequency of 1066. I'm still using the stock Intel HSF but as my case has fairly decent airflow the temp doesn't go above 60 on load.

My query is if I want to push this to 3.8/4.0Ghz then what's the best way to go about it? Would the extra couple of hundred MHz be worth losing the 1:1 FSB/DRAM ratio?

Thanks

pig_dog · 16 Nov 2009 at 20:38

Should I be testing the stability with something else or is OCCT enough?

pig_dog · 17 Nov 2009 at 23:11

Anyone?

MeddlE · 18 Nov 2009 at 01:13

Ignore the 1:1 FSB/DRAM ratio, just get it so that your RAM runs at the speed you want. My better halfs e5300 is clocked at 3.6 on a 12x300 fsb with the ram at 3:4 so that it is running at 800. I haven't pushed it any further because I don't need it to be running at the ragged edge of its capabilities but an easy 1GHz overclock is plenty. Using a Titan Fenrir and the temp never goes above 44 on full load.

I used two instances of Prime 95 to stability test, it quite happily passed 12 hours without a hiccup.

pig_dog · 18 Nov 2009 at 13:46

MeddlE said:
Ignore the 1:1 FSB/DRAM ratio, just get it so that your RAM runs at the speed you want. My better halfs e5300 is clocked at 3.6 on a 12x300 fsb with the ram at 3:4 so that it is running at 800. I haven't pushed it any further because I don't need it to be running at the ragged edge of its capabilities but an easy 1GHz overclock is plenty. Using a Titan Fenrir and the temp never goes above 44 on full load.

I used two instances of Prime 95 to stability test, it quite happily passed 12 hours without a hiccup.

Thanks for the reply.

So is there no performance advantage to having your FSB/DRAM ratio at 1:1?

MeddlE · 18 Nov 2009 at 16:35

Only in benchmark programs, nothing that you would drastically notice in games or the like. Sometimes you can get too focused on getting that extra 100 points in 3dmark that actually means very little in real terms, I've been a victim of this myself in the past.