Tom's Hardware > Forum > Overclocking > CPUs > [Solved] [CPU] Speed issues and new to O/C, please help

[Solved] [CPU] Speed issues and new to O/C, please help

Forum Overclocking : CPUs [Solved] [CPU] Speed issues and new to O/C, please help

Hi,

I've used these forums for a while now and found them amazingly helpful the past few years, never had to ask a question so here goes, hopefully I'm in the right category :-)

I've been upgrading an old machine and was thinking about overclocking it, question being, is it worth it? I have a feeling the graphics card is being bottle-necked severely by the cpu speed and upon further investigation found the cpu isn't running at full speed anyway (idles at 1600MHz but only 2400MHz under load from winrar benchmark/hardware test) so I think it's time for a tune-up...

1. How do I get this thing running at the labelled 2.66GHz/is there something holding it back?

2. Can I overclock this up to say 3.0GHz or higher ? if so, how?

I've bought a decent cooler and the highest reading I've gotten from Core Temp is 51c while running games for over 2 hours.

I've also downloaded cpu-z to check everything out but how do I post that info so you guys can see, I somehow doubt you want the 50-odd pages of information it puts out?

Basic info:
OS: WinXP 32-bit SP3
CPU: Core 2 Duo e7300
MB: Gigabyte G31M-S2L / p35
RAM: 2x Kingston KVR800D2N6 PC2-6400 @400MHz 6/6/6/18
GPU: GTX560 1Gb (out of place much?)

Core speed: 1600.2x6.0 when idling 2400.1x9 under load
Bus Speed: 266.7MHz
Rated FSB: 1066.7MHz

Thanks in advance, these forums are great :-)

Reply to FD84

Best answer

1. Yes. You are seeing SpeedStep in action. You CPU throttles back automatically to an X6 internal multiplier when the CPU load is low, then jumps tp full speed when the load increases.

2. Yes. I would estimate that you have a good chance to exceed 3.3 GHz.

The G31/G41 is an economy chipset with a limited FSB freq. Upper limit is about 340 - 360 GHz depending on your particular motherboard.

Here's the guide you need.
Shadow's Gigabyte motherboard OC guide:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] _11_0.html
It's for an EP35-DS3L but all the Gigabyte Core2 BIOS's are similar. The G31 will have fewer options.

Go through the guides. Then take your core voltage off Auto and set your memory voltage to factory recommended values. Change the System Memory Multiplier from AUTO to 2.00. You need to set the Memory Frequency to twice the FSB. Then when you increase the FSB, the memory clock will rise in in proportion with it. At an FSB of 266 MHz, your memory clock should be at 533 MHz.

Now you can start the "test, increase core voltage, retest" cycle while running Prime95 to load the CPU cores.

Don't worry about trying to overclock your memory. The possible gain is not worth the loss of stability.

Keep your core voltage under 1.45 volts and your load temps under 70 C.

One of my G41's will run at 352 MHz, but not 353 MHz. It is stable at 3.87 GHz with an E6500.

The Wolfdale CPU's are pretty efficient An inexpensive cooler will take you to the limits of your motherboard.

Reply to jsc

Thanks for the info, will give it all a go over the next few days as I only have one pc here and no printer so I might hi-jack a laptop so I can refer back if anything goes wrong. Thanks again for your help, didn't think to look for a guide specialised to my mb

Reply to FD84