An $89 Pentium Dual Core that Runs at 3.2 GHz

KillerOfMethod

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Nice find, I hadn't even considered a pentium or celeron since that last overclocking guide where they pushed the celeron to 4ghz or whatever it was. Lately all I hear is E6300, E6600, E6750, E7850, Q6600, and some of the lower C2Ds.
 

p3matty

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What's some "relatively cheap" though decent memory for this type of overclock? Help me with the math here, but at 1:1, DDR2 would only be running at 400mhz at stock speed, and at 710mhz at the fsb1420. That's still not even the rated speed for DDR2800, so why did they mention a "10% memory overclock", and needing to up the memory voltage? Were they running a different memory ratio, and if so, why? I thought running it 1:1 was the way to go.

By the way, I'm thinking about doing something like this in the very near future. Thanks so much for this article as well as the $500 gaming rig article earlier this week.
 

warezme

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Yeah but how long will it last at 1.5v?? Im getting that speed from my E6300 at 1.325v.

Should run fine for however long you want to keep it.

Internal confidential Evga docs I have read consider up to 1.625v safe for C2D on their mobos, my quad runs fine at 1.49v and well within that limit.

 

prodystopian

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This is a great article for performance, but what about heat and power savings? I wish you guys would have talked more about the fact that this thing runs over 20 watts higher than the E6750. Also, how hot does this processer run?

I was thinking about trying this overclocking for an HTPC, but it just seems like the heat and power usage would make the E6750 a better solution.
 

PeterHighlander

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Ok... I don't want to be overly zealous toward AMD but enough is enough. I'm bordering recommending Toms be removed as a credible source for hardware info. Recent off track recommendations include the $500 PC, now this, the hardware recommendations here are so bios it actually makes me angry.

Let's get one thing clear, Intel C2D is great, but more expensive than the X2. The X2 gives up 400-600Mhz to the full blown C2D. On a stripped down C2D, 300-400Mhz.

This CPU really needs to be placed into the same class as the 4100+ on 65nm Tech. I believe the two CPUs will trade blows when fully over clocked. The Intel will take more wins. Problem is, the AMD "system" will cost you about $50 bucks less. Add to that the Quad core upgrade path and the choice becomes VERY difficult.

Why won't Tom's look at AMD at all! What about an $80 full blown AMD 690 board which has Raid, paired with a $75 cpu that will crank 3.0Gig? Now you save $50 bucks or more of the Intel and in 6 months pick up a quad core for... $100 bucks? Come on Tom's your hardware "advise" has been... well off the mark.
 

KyleSTL

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4100+? Ahh ... what?!? No clue. Honestly, if you're buying a board that cheap are you really gonna use the RAID feature. My guess is that you won't have the money to be able to blow on two HDDs if you're pinching pennies like that. 3.0 Ghz, right, with on a good day with an Scythe Infinity submerged in LN2. Pshhh.
 

tormentor22

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well sum questions supposed to be answered by Patrick Schmid, Achim Roos the ppl who did the overclocking
i really want to know what was the temp that they operated there cpu at especially that it was on stock cooling
more over the cpu life is reduced by the increase of both factors heat and voltage, so even if you could ceep it cold the life would be reduced, i think up to ~1.4v wont be bad and nearly no noticable decrease. for this cpu at this price if it served for a couple of years at 3.2G+ that would be very nice for its price.
 

erloas

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Just about the only thing that didn't make sense in their $500 build was the $100 power supply. It was a pretty good article and says what it is supposed to. That you can build a computer that will play games pretty well without having to spend $2000 on them, which is something most sites seem to forget. While extreme systems are nice they aren't practical for most people visiting the site. We've seen all sorts of people asking for recommendations in the $500-600 range on the forums.


This was about a high OCing chip that ran on a fairly basic motherboard and was cheap. They probably don't have an AMD processor listed because they couldn't find one that would also OC 80% for the same price on the stock cooler. This article wasn't about how each and every processor compares, it was about how even a low end processor can OC to high levels. How many other processors are you going to find for $90 that is going to get an 80% OC with a stock cooler. Will that $75 AMD CPU work on a stock cooler at 3.0GHz or are you going to have to spend that $50 you saved on a high end cooler in which case you haven't came out ahead in price or performance.

In terms of future upgrading of the system, this build is also using a motherboard that supports the next generation of Intel CPUs as well along with the current generation of quad cores. The upgrade potential of this system and an AMD system is going to be fairly similar. In fact, unlike the AMD system, we know with 100% certainty the minimum we can expect in the upgrade where as the upgrade potential of the AMD system is still unknown. Its likely to be pretty good for the AMD system, but the Intel system is likely to improve as well, but the certainty of what you will get with AMD is still unclear.


The thing is, even if they put an AMD system into the article as well, if it didn't perform as well as the Intel system they showed then you would still complain that it was unfair and simply done to show the bias against AMD. Their last article, which you were just complaining about, with the low cost system which is where AMD is supposed to be strongest and you still didn't like it. There was no bias there for one system or the other, they showed that at similar costs you could build a system from either company and they would be about equal. It was just about as unbiased as you can get.
 

menetlaus

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What's happened here lately? Tom's used to be my main source of hardware reviews, but the quality just isn't here anymore.

Case in point is on Monday: Several other review sites had posted Barcelona reviews, Toms had a slideshow of the best IFA Booth Babe. Yesterday Tom's posted that the Barcelona has officially unveiled the Barcelona - a day late and a dollar short from where I'm sitting.

Others: Foxicon only "review" that read more like a paid promotion of their 8800 linup with no new information, a laptop gaming comparison with one machine running XP the other running Vista (saying that's what came pre-installed isn't justification IMHO). Then there is the beer cooling comparison - yes I know it was for a laugh, but spend the effort on improving CPU/other charts before spending time on stuff like that.

On the topic of the charts, half the time I'm looking for a product that isn't there and have no idea of how to compare it to what it is on the charts. Specifically mobile CPU's: I was recently looking at an AMD TM5x CPU and couldn't find any info on Tom's saying how it compares to the 2 AMD chips that are on the charts, a blurb saying that a core 2 duo CPU not shown is best compared by clock speed to the ones that are, and the AMD's TM or other TL processors are best compared by .... (?)
What about mobile graphics? I understand that it is virtually impossible to make a chart like with the desktop graphic cards, but a list of the cards by power (or a tier-type table) would be VERY helpful, even as a rough starting point. Laptops are the fastest growing computer market after all.

This review:

Page 2: "Knowing about the multipliers, it becomes obvious that such a processor can only be overclocked by increasing the other multiplier, which is the system clock speed. The only exceptions are the Extreme Edition processors, which come totally unlocked to allow users flexible overclocking. "

Umm... where to start... what are you trying to say here? Do the extreme editions of CPU's have other ways to increase speed (besides multi/FSB)? What I think you meant was: only the Extreme editions have an unlocked multiplier, the rest of Intel's Core 2 product line is limited and can only be overclocked by increasing the FSB. The "knowing this" at the start was about the CPU being limited to a 9x multiplier - saying it can be operated lower than 9x doesn't mean it can't be run higher. Note: Most will say this CPU has a locked multiplier, but since it can be reduced I prefer saying limited to 9x.

Page 3: "we discovered a pretty interesting detail. If you do not change the CPU voltage when overclocking and set this item to "auto", the P35-DS3P will automatically increase the CPU voltage, which helped to run the processor at up 3 GHz without manual fine-tuning."

<sarcasm> You DISCOVERED it? what's next... you will stumble across the auto memory settings? </sarcasm> Maybe you need to discover the EXCELLENT overclocking guide in the overclocking forum here. Most guides, including that one, I've seen say to first overclock your processor with voltage set to auto because it's easier, BUT be warned that the auto setting always over-supplies power to the CPU. So what is usually recommended is to use auto until your running a speed your happy with, then switch to manual voltage and lower it to the lowest one that keeps the system stable - this way it produces less heat which may lengthen the lifespan of the processor (along with consuming less power, and may keep the fans operating at a lower RPM/quieter)

Summary of the conclusion: This is a very nice processor for $89, but in winrar or gaming it cannot compete clock for clock it with the 4MB of cache on the e6750.

In July you showed the e4300 with a price of $120, this is virtually the same processor but with 2MB cache, it should now be found for less than two months ago. Why not suggest it as a better option for a gamer-friendly budget overclock?



 

zenmaster

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Sorry, but even the X2-6000+ can't touch this chip when both are fully OC'd.
Check the reviews at X-Bit LABs for lots of good articles.

They did not compare the chips directly, but the X6000+ was over 10% behind the E6850 in most benches.
Even if an OC to 3.3Ghz (10%) yielded a 10% boost (Unlikely) it still would have lost.
Also OC's to 3.3Ghz are tough since AMD has already boosted the TDP on that chip from 89w to 125w so they could get the 5600+ chip running at 6000+ speeds.

The E2160 clearly beat the E6850 when the E2160 was OC'd to 3.2Ghz.
Perhaps the hand-picked X2-6400s would come close but still would lose on clock.
Maybe, just maybe you could OC to match performance.

You can still get a cheaper AMD System, but even the fastest X2 can't really touch any of the C2Ds.
If they were better, AMD would sell them for more like they used to.
However, they are selling at bargain bin prices because that is they need to do when the chips are compared.

It's just not the folks you consider "FanBoys" making these claims.
It's AMD with their pricing.
 

BaronMatrix

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So all you suckers who put out for the higher clocked chip now know how C2D commoditized the CPU and kicked the bottom of the ASPs.

Excuse me I didn't mean suckers, I meant enthusiasts.
 

menetlaus

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This review was about a high OCing CPU, yes, but - I'm sorry, this chip doesn't exist in a vacuum. Personally I prefer to buy something that has the highest overall rating for what I'm willing to spend. At $90 this CPU has a great maximum overclocked performance, but sacrifices on power efficiency, produces a lot of heat, and is will be NOISY with the stock fan.

An AMD x2 5600+ (or 6000+) is $150 (170) on newegg, they offer similar performance at stock speeds but will be quieter, eat less power (which will offset the cost difference over time), requires a cheaper motherboard, and will do MUCH better in gaming. So at max OC this CPU may win in a performance/cost comparison, but would never be recommended overall because of the issues I just mentioned.

If a fan was added the costs for a complete system would be similar to the 5600+, this solves the noise issue. While this overclocked CPU will show better performance numbers, it still loses overall thanks to the power efficiency/gaming performance on the x2’s.

 

erloas

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Its very true that you can just get a more expensive processor and end up with better results. But that doesn't mean that AMD would be the better choice still. For just about the same price as the X2 6000 you could get an E6550 ($5 difference on Newegg right now) and OC both of them and end up ahead with the Intel processor again. The E6550 will break 3GHz at lower then default motherboard voltages and with that decrease in voltage ends up running at about the same heat or less then it did at default levels, or at least it did on my brothers system.

Also the difference in price $90 vs $150 its going to take quite a while to make up $60 in energy costs, though we don't know how quickly since they didn't include power usage of this system but considering they are using it with an 8800 GPU the power difference of the CPU isn't going to make a huge difference on the total power usage of the system.

If you want to stay with a low end OCed CPU for one company then you had better stay with a low end OCed CPU for the other company to have any real comparision. And if you want to move to a mid range CPU running at stock then you had better do that with both companies as well.

Just keep the comparisions on an even level. You can't just change the focus of the article and then claim it is wrong based on a new set of criteria that was never implied in the first place. The focus was on the highest % OC they could get out of a chip. Not the total cost of ownership or the fastest possible performance out of any chip.

AMD has its strong point, but at this time higher % OCing isn't really one of them. I know at least two people that will probably have me build them a system soon and I'm very likely to use AMD in both of those situations but there are plenty of other situations where I would use Intel too.
 

joefriday

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Here's more information that should dispell at bit of the FUD in this thread:

Winrar Performance:
993288_070404_PentiumeOC_winrar_thumb.jpg


Encoding:
993288_070404_PentiumeOC_tmp_thumb.jpg


Gaming:
993288_070404_PentiumeOC_hl2_thumb.jpg

993288_070404_PentiumeOC_d3_thumb.jpg

993288_070404_PentiumeOC_fc_thumb.jpg

993288_070404_PentiumeOC_ss2_thumb.jpg

993288_070404_PentiumeOC_gq4_thumb.jpg


Source: PC online. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://www.pconline.com.cn/diy/cpu/reviews/0704/993288_9.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3De2160%2B3Ghz%26hl%3Den%26lr%3Dlang_zh-CN%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:eek:fficial%26hs%3DDpq%26sa%3DG%26as_qdr%3Dall
 

KyleSTL

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What are you talking about? The 6000+ consuming less power? Than what? A Pentium D 840? Your facts are non-existant.
 

zenmaster

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Actually the X6000+ will not use less power.
AMD had to really crank up the power to make it run that fast.
There is a reason AMD had to up the TDP from 89w to 125w!!!!

The TDP of the E2160 and E6850 are 65w.
So the fact that the E2160 is going over the E6850 power numbers by about 10% would seem to indicate it would use far less power than the AMD's.

And no, those processor will not be able to compete at the higher cost.
Take note that the X2-6000+ loses handily to the E6700 in these charts.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-e2160_14.html#sect0

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/02/20/does-amds-athlon-64-x2-6000-have-any-kick-left/page5.html#3d_gaming

However, the E2160 competed quite closely to the faster E6750.
 

menetlaus

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Depends on what you want out of a system, If you only care about CPU performance numbers and CPU cost - then your right.

BUT if you include overall system cost (AM2 mobo's are cheaper), power efficiency (OCing takes lots of juice), and cooling noise (stock fan) - then the 5600+ or 6000+ are very competative with the lower C2D's. At stock the 5600+ would dominate the e2150. I know AMD currently has no answer to the mid to high end C2D's when overclocked (but those don't touch the price/performance of the "lower" ones)
 

caamsa

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Yahoo....((sarcasm)) you shave off a few seconds on some benchies you never run or use ever unless your benching you system for braging rights. Is there someone here who is keeping score???? Even from a gamers point of view I argue that this chip is pretty good at stock. Those benchmarks make me laugh, some of them are almost dead even with the chip at stock. A few games you get a good increase but as long as you get over 60 fps you should be doing quite well. Most are a lot over 60 fps. The boring truth is.........the best chip for ((you)) whether it be AMD or Intel is the best chip ((you)) decide it to be for youself and what ((you use)) it for. Take this article for what it is.....nothing more nothing less. Read it, learn from it, move on......I actually enjoyed the article.
 

PeterHighlander

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Quick reference point for a "budget gaming systems".... Supreme Commander. If it can't run a 6 or 8 player game pretty well... then it's not a gaming system.

To the person who questioned a 65nm AMD X2 chip and overclock potential... Your ignorance makes you the poster boy as to why I'm upset with sites like Tom's and their lack of attention to a viable alternative. 3.0 is very likely and in a properly vented case, very doable on stock cooling. Infact, it was a review at Toms that selected a "budget" $130 Intel cpu then slapped on a $50 cooler! Again, to that I say... 4100+ and $100 bucks in my pocket or for an upgraded video card.

To the person who questioned raid on an $80MB... Yes I would run it. I run NForce raid now, why wouldn't I run it on a less expensive MB? It's less expensive because of sites like Tom's and peoples perception.... I guess that's good for me.

As for the future. Here's how I perceive reality. Early tests show the new AMD core (Barc) will be close to current C2D. If AMD doesn't kill intel... I get a cheaper Quad core at less money. Early tests also show intel's next core will not bring more speed... but perhaps a better OC... maybe not even that, perhaps just better power numbers. Any way you cut it... the AMD quad core upgrade path is very attractive.

If you had 600 bucks to build a gaming computer capable of running Supreme Commander, how would you spend it? No doubt Intel CPUs are faster and also as a system $100-$150 more expensive. That money is usually better spent on the next step video card and/or 2nd hard drive.

And so... How about this. Bench two gaming "systems".. like in the $500 review. Except, instead of the same video card for both, since the AMD system is less expensive, upgrade the graphics! See the point? Bench a "stock" 4100+ with say $80 mb and $60 PC800 memory against a C2D with a mb capable of the 5.1+ sound and raid, maybe requiring PC1066... and all of a sudden the AMD system has room for an 8800GTS where the Intel gets an X1950Pro.... Sound fair? Heck if PC1066 is actually required, the AMD system can be raid + 8800GTS.

That's the point! $600 budget system, spend it all and get the most.

The horse is now dead.