Hi, I've got a e6300 and I'm looking to overclock it, only mildly, at least up to the same performance as a 6400. What i need to know is, how do i actually do it?? really i dont know where to start. I saw 2.4ghz is pretty straightforward in a system with almost identical components in a web-review. I built my own pc with later overclocking in mind, and I feel the processor is unable to cut it as much as the graphics card (Leadtek 7600gt). thought they would make a good match,but in stock form the cpu is holding the gpu back a bit. (medieval 2 can't handle any shadows whatsoever, & grass density has to be chopped by too much (in the .ini) in my mind in oblivion). For those interested, 7600gt would be better suited to a 6400 in standard form than an e6300 out of the box.

ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP iP965,
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300,
250 Gb Samsung SP2504C SpinPoint P1
256Mb Leadtek 7600GT, PCI-E (x16),
1Gb (2X512Mb) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDr2 (2nd cheapest on website)
500W Tagan TG500-U25 Dual Engine SL
LiteOn AllWrite SHM-165P6S-09 Black
Samsung SM940BW 19" Widescreen LCD 4ms (Gorgeous CHEAP monitor 10/10)

Standard heatsink and fan, phong 2 case, 22 degrees celsius average case temp with fans at low.

Need help in regards to fsb speeds, memory speeds & timings, etc, and just...what i have to do!

Many thanks,

What made you suggest the CPU being the factor in your gaming woes?

the 7600 gt is a mid-low performance card these days, compared to the 8800 giants. Besides, when it comes to rendering all those things mentioned, its done by the GPU. CPU deals mainly with the AI, and some other stuff which I should know about (but I can't remember :D)

I don't really like the idea of me promoting my own thread, but here goes:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic70998.html
Bring your overclocking questions there, I've put some time in writing that, and I want to improve it furthur. Besides, overclocking really belongs in the cooling forum.

Agreed. Hell, compared to the 8800s my 7950GT (which is much more powerful than a 7600GT) is kind of like a mid-range card... that cost me $350CAD :(

Unless you unlock those extra pipelines, its a mid-low performance card :D

What extra pipelines? The 7600GT doesn't have any. Its G73, not G71.

Huh? I thought.....

Nvm, I'm not an advocate for pipeline unlocking. Risks of destroying the card is just way too high....

Agreed. Hell, compared to the 8800s my 7950GT (which is much more powerful than a 7600GT) is kind of like a mid-range card... that cost me $350CAD :(

You should have bought the eVGA e-GeForce 7950 GT.

Why so you could have traded it in and got an eVGA e-GeForce 8800!

Yep eVGA is the best nVIDIA video card.

where can I find information on that tradein? o.O

Even if its a mid-low card compared to what is available, its not a low card for today's games. Sure it won't handle FEAR at 1680x1050, but it will run it at somewhere around 1280 by something, or at least my (eVGA)7800GS does and they are similar in performance. I can also run C&C3 at 1680x1050 with full AA and details.

I've got a stock speed 6400 processor.

I really don't think overclocking your CPU would show noticeable improvement in this case. Overclocking your graphics card would show a much noticeable improvement.

Get back to us with some overclocking results :D

Hmmm....yes...welll...thankyou i guess. Evidence for cpu being the weakest link. Medieval 2, lowest detail 1024x768, shadows on = about 10fps. No shadows full detail, well i cant remember but it was at least 29fps+. Looking at task manager at both these settings shows cpu usage at maximum with shadows on, about 50% with shadows off. Looks like the onus of shadow production falls on the cpu. As far as oblivion is concerned, having grass on kills the framerates and brings observed cpu usage up several notches, bringing grass density down by tweaking the .ini file brings framerates up dramatically as does it bring cpu usage down. As with medieval, framerate is disproportionatley low with (instead of shadows) grass on and all else on minimum with a low low res than with all at maximum and no grass. Yes a faster video card would help with oblivion, but a speedier cpu would be able to wade through the grass calculations a bit better. Dont mean to be picky, but a higher cpu speed would help matters, and move the balance between cpu + gpu capability from something like 40/60 to 50/50, where neither is holding the system back graphically.

Finally, bit hard to post overclocking results when i did'nt get an answer to the question of HOW DO I OVERCLOCK

I will post the results though.

ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP iP965


your board is a better overclocker than my own, you should be able to get 2.6-7ghz easy

*edited by Didou* do not quote complete long posts, be concise.

yeah would be nice! dont want to go quite that far now, making a psuedo 6400 is the plan for the moment. I get the idea about raising the fsb to make the desired clockspeed, but what about the memory? i got fairly cheap kingston ddr2-800, where does cheapo ram fit in with this overclock?? do i need to bring the speed down?? will the cpu and memory need more voltage for a small overclock? The standard intel hsf is complete excreeeeeement to put in by the way

well I use to run Kingston 800 when i first o'c'd my system, was only able to get it to 2.4 stable

Right ok thats what i expected pretty much, wouldnt be dissappointed if this cheap stuff made it that far, but i need to know, when you overclocked to 2.4, what speed was the memory set at? if i get this right, if at all, it needs to be brought down to 533mhz or something?? did it need extra voltage?? listen, im begging for some insight here! explain! numbers! details! anything!

Thanks

lol you were in my same seat, so I know how you feel. You should be able to keep the memory stock at 800, 1.85 v. put the fsb at 1350 to start, I'm assuming your timings on your ram are 5-5-5-15. If so those are fine. vcore for the cpu shouldnt have to change to put it at 2.4. I read that some have put the 6300 to 2.9 on your board with fans.

Thanks! 2.9 sounds like a cheque my ram cant cash :) .....ok so thats memory kept at stock 800 speed, just bringing the fsb speed up to make 2.4?? besides the voltage issues. Yep memory is 5-5-5-15 pure gold quality from kingston lol. Thanks for the help on this, what kind of temp increase did you see from overclocking? i dont want to roast that thing.

i saw a temp max at full load of 42C on a zalmans 9700. Let me know how it goes.

will do, adding extra case fan for 3 in total for a solid cooling setup. (Phong 2 case, 3rd 120mm to side opening above cpu, phong 2 is great for non-sli) I'll post some benchmarks, fps in games and temps when all done. Cheers

You should have bought the eVGA e-GeForce 7950 GT.

Why so you could have traded it in and got an eVGA e-GeForce 8800!

Yep eVGA is the best nVIDIA video card.
Meh, BFG is the only one with 24/7 Tech support. I feel it's worth it to spend the extra money on a BFG card just because they actually have pretty good tech support, and it's always an option to ask them to give you a new card if you got a broken one.

Hmmm....yes...welll...thankyou i guess. Evidence for cpu being the weakest link. Medieval 2, lowest detail 1024x768, shadows on = about 10fps. No shadows full detail, well i cant remember but it was at least 29fps+. Looking at task manager at both these settings shows cpu usage at maximum with shadows on, about 50% with shadows off. Looks like the onus of shadow production falls on the cpu. As far as oblivion is concerned, having grass on kills the framerates and brings observed cpu usage up several notches, bringing grass density down by tweaking the .ini file brings framerates up dramatically as does it bring cpu usage down. As with medieval, framerate is disproportionatley low with (instead of shadows) grass on and all else on minimum with a low low res than with all at maximum and no grass. Yes a faster video card would help with oblivion, but a speedier cpu would be able to wade through the grass calculations a bit better. Dont mean to be picky, but a higher cpu speed would help matters, and move the balance between cpu + gpu capability from something like 40/60 to 50/50, where neither is holding the system back graphically. I will post the results though.
CPU really has nothing to do with grass calculations. The things the CPU handles are AI and Physics mainly. The video card does pretty much everything else. And a Core 2 (of any speed) is unable to bottleneck such a weak card as a 7600GT. Not that a 7600GT is a garbage card, it's not. It's just that it's not nearly powerful enough to be bottlenecked by a Core 2.

Listen, faced with what i have seen turning graphic options on or off in isolation with fraps on and switching back to taskmanager to look at cpu activity, for both games, that is the only conclusion you can draw, namely that the cpu is heartily involved in some graphical operations. although in oblivion the card draws the grass, the cpu i would speculate actually simulates the grass in the game world and implements the swaying algorithym and perhaps also calulates shadows on to it. As far as the total war series goes, I would not be alone if i said that the engine is quite cpu reliant, not just simply ai and mechanics, but the shadow side of graphical operations. If you look to benchmarks where the effect of the grade of cpu is under the spotlight, in some games its performance can have a huge effect on in game fps. Namely a x2 3800 can have just 40% of the fps of a 6700 core 2 or extreme in Oblivion for example, where the vid card was a 8800gtx.

Well when the new heatsink arrives I'll take my 6300 to 2.4ghz and post the results/observations. Really, what else would you make of the behaivour i described in my original post!

Yes, that's because an 8800GTX is so stupidly powerful that almost any CPU except a Core 2 can limit it. What you don't seem to be understanding is that a 7600GT is just way too weak and crappy to be bottlenecked by a Core 2. Maybe a Pentium 3 could bottleneck it but never a Core 2.

The other thing you don't seem to be understanding, is that the CPU is at 100% because it is calculating AI, and processing the game thread(s). It is in no way contributing to rendering of any kind. If you want proof of how terrible even Core 2s are at rendering video, download 3dmark03, 05, or 06 and run the CPU tests. Where the video card might get 30FPS, the CPU gets 2FPS.

The problem is your video card so go get a new videocard. We know what we are talking about and we are trying to help you but we won't be able to solve your problem if you keep insisting that you are CPU bound and refuse to listen to everyone else's advice.

Hey MetalX, cool it dude.

I really have to agree with MetalX on the fact that your GPU is the bottleneck, and not the CPU. CPU bottlenecking is generally unheard of in games, although recently its found that the 8800GTX would shift the bottleneck from GPU to CPU.

Of course, if you're adamant that its your CPU bottlenecking your whole system, you are more than welcome to conduct your own tests and find out for yourself. In fact, if you discover something that noone else has discovered before, you're doing pretty well. Of course, methodology would count here, simply overclocking your CPU and finding a 2fps increase isn't going to rock the enthusiast computing community. Unless you had 1fps to start with....

As far as most of the enthusiasts know, most things graphical (including shadows, grass, etc) would be handled by the GPU. We also know that the GeForce7600 is a pretty low end card, compared to the other stuff you can get around these days.

Anyway, feel free to overclock the CPU, and report back to us. Like I said, you might be on to something.

The only thing you could be onto is the fact that something might not be installed correctly. That could cause your CPU to work too hard, and cause lag in games. Sorry for getting mad earlier, it seems I have to learn to keep problems in my life from making me lash out at people on internet forums ;).

I wouldn't discount that the CPU has something to do with rendering some graphics, but if there's such a significant bottleneck like you mentioned, it should affect every aspect of gaming performance, not just on one specific came, at one specific setting. It just doesn't make sense at all.

Hi, yes well ok im now a few posts behind, yes i know the vid card aint the greatest, but observing what i did, which is exactly how i wrote it on the board, the idea that its cpu related is quite compeling. Theres only one way to settle this, which is to post overclocking results. Yeah i might get a 4fps increase,which wont set the world on fire, nor even my underwear for that matter, but it would prove the point. Well, thats whats got me interested in overclocking my cpu, but not really my gpu, as i dont see the greatest all-round return for it, and as I might as well wait a while and upgrade when the card has had some good use, say 6 months, and then go out and buy its natural successor, the 8600. That would be kinda nice cos I would have had each cards intended replacement! (6600, 6600gt 256mb agp (not that easy to find!), 7600gt and then 8600) cant really include 6600 in that lineage i guess as its too close, but the step up to the 6600gt was actually larger than i imagined.

Thanks for the interest guys, dont worry about getting mad, i kinda wrote with a tone intended to do that! sorry.....

If it was really a bottleneck, a 10% overclock should see a roughly 10% increase in fps.

If you had 100fps to start with, and a 10% overclock gave you a 2fps increase, that would've happened anyway if the CPU wasn't the bottleneck.

You'll almost always see increase in performance if you overclock, instances where this doesn't happen is when something else is a severe bottleneck (gaming with a 6200LE, and overclocking your QX6800 for example).

I hope you get the idea.

Yeah totally, im not expecting miracles, but making my 6300 an approxiamate 6400 or taking it further to 2.4ghz would be handy anyway. I expect to get something proportionate to the overclock in fps improvement terms, and i might go for a mild overclock on the graphics card too sometime after this, but im not expecting much bearing in mind i wont change the stock vga cooler anytime in the near future just for overclocking purposes as it seems like too much hassle for not a great deal of return, but, well, we'll see! As for strange bottlenecks, well there shouldnt be anything wrong with the setup, latest nvidia drivers, p5b deluxe motherboard, ddr2 800 and processor all check out fine on cpuz and what have you, plus its defraged regulary, and ad-aware and virus swept. I was a huge bf2 fan but now too busy, so i'm well up on chopping back services and startup programms on the msconfig util (to free up memory). Those loading times on my old 34.5gb p4 were horrendous :) could anyone get lower than 117mb commit charge by the way???

Well, as said, results on there way when they arrive, i'm pretty anal so they'll be thorough!

I might as well wait a while and upgrade when the card has had some good use, say 6 months, and then go out and buy its natural successor, the 8600.
I'm not sure if 8600s are going to be released. They probably will be but Nvidia is planning to release the G90 (Geforce 9800GTX) within a year. Lets just hope they don't make a model called the Geforce 9800PRO or 9800XT ;) Wouldn't that cause a hell load of confusion.

lol or the cut price 9750, well i mentioned it cos i saw some pics supposedly from a chinese web-site where they know about such things, oh well...

would be nice to make a cut price step up to dx10, but then again i always wanted to have something that was once top of the line, just to say i owned it once. Tried to get an x850pte but out bid on Ebay last year, maybe i can have another go next year on one of those 7900gtxs or 1950xtxs everyone will be trying to get rid of :) (well, i do need some convincing to splash out on vista any time soon)

It wouldn't really be worthwhile getting a 7900gtx or 1950xtx. They'll still be expensive, newer cards of about the same price would be of much better value.

Of course, you get to boast about owning "the best of the series".

The best I've ever owned (within a series) was an X800XT. And a few months later, they released the X1950XTX (in case you're wondering, I didn't get it when it was first released). But I can boast about owning the best ever AGP card, when it was the best :P

BTW, cooling your GPU has the potential to give the best bang for buck when it comes to overclocking. With the abovementioned X800XT, I spent AUD$50, and managed to sqeeze 25% more core & ram, which resulted in the same increase in fps on games which were running slow (ie: X3 Reunion). I can't see how that wasn't a good move.

Of course, you get cards like the X1950Pro which has very little headroom. Spending $50 on it would be a waste of money, unless you're looking to lower system noise.

Pretty irrelevant this, but just updates what i wrote earlier, pc now fixed and ready for overclock, fitted zalman 9500 blue led copper monster, silver 5 paste and creative audigy S.E sound, to replace the onboard asus job thats total pants. Temp differences are amazing, full load in a warm room brings CPU temp to about 36 degrees celsius after 15mins, with heatsink fan and 2 case fans (140mm&120mm) on lowest setting. The dust clogged intel HSF managed about 60 celsius plus. Audigy is good replacement for onboard audio. Overclocking results will come when i have time, next week.

Lol... the Zalman 9500 would kick the standard cooler's **** anyday.... If it had one :D


Looking forward to overclocking results.