Headroom for OCing in i3 2120?

[gam0reily]

Hello,

I was wondering how much an i3 can be OCed via BIOS (base clock and cpu multiplier, voltages,etc). Lets say, on a gigabyte Z68X-UD3.
Bcoz an i5-2400 can be brought upto 3.99 GHz, although it isnt much overclockable.

I would like to hear from somebody who has actually tried it.

Thx in advance!

 

[amuffin]

You can't overclock the i3-2120. Locked multi, everything.

 

[gam0reily]

seriously? not even like 200MHz?

 

[ngoy]

It's multiplier locked, so you can only do it by raising the bus frequency, which can typically only be done by 5% if your lucky, as most all the other components are linked to the bus.

No non K series cpu can be overclocked by much if anything. The reason the i5-2400 can be is because they can adjust the turbo boost multiplier a little bit. The i3 does not have turbo boost to play around with even. The base fsb is 100Mhz, people are lucky to get it to 105 on ANY Sandy Bridge proc. Most if not all overclocking is done by changing the multiplier and adding voltage.

See legitreviews look at it here.

 

[loneninja]

The non K versions of I5 and I7 can be overclocked some because people are messing with the turbo settings, I3 has no turbo so it can't be tweaked.

 

[geekapproved]

You can probably get about 100mhz if your board supports overclocking.

 

[gam0reily]

You can probably get about 100mhz if your board supports overclocking.

BY tweaking the voltages, ryt? coz the multipliers are locked they say.

 

[Pedrovsky]

not much tweaking in that cpu even in a p67 or z68 MB and even if you get it 100mhz higher it won't come easily and you might damage it in the process.

Now how good would it be to have a unlocked i3 with IB?

 

[amuffin]

not much tweaking in that cpu even in a p67 or z68 MB and even if you get it 100mhz higher it won't come easily and you might damage it in the process.

Now how good would it be to have a unlocked i3 with IB?

They wouldn't make an unlocked i3, that would cause everyone to buy it! This would cause less people to buy the 3570k and 3770k, because everyone knows: Dual Cores Overclock Insanely Well! Look at benchmarks, the i3-2100 is pretty dang awesome when compared to the i5. Infact it is so good, it delivers roughly 80-90% performance of the i5 while it is half of the price!

 

[Pedrovsky]

I don't think that's the main reason since a oc 2130k achieving 4.0 would still be unable to beat a i5 2500k on stock frequency... And it would actually leave room for intel to squeeze a few bucks more of the i5s placing them close to fx 8150...


But thats a different topic.

No, there is no combination of MB+i3 cpu which i would recomend or that is even worth the trouble of overcloking these locked cpus.
Even if you manage to pull out an extra 100mhz is it really worth the trouble?

Hope that helps you...

 

[gam0reily]

yeah man, ur right. Its just gonna be a lotta pain and tension at the same time. I wudnt risk that much hassle even for an increase of 0.5 GHz.

 

[amuffin]

Not that you really need to overclock...

 

[gam0reily]

Best answer selected by gam0reily.