The Most Memorable Overclocking-Friendly CPUs
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Forebode
Posts: 197 +45
I've been overclocking since jumpers on the board.. I remember also doing the lead pencil amd overclocking... had a stable OC on 3770k at 4.7, could go higher but seemed like a good balance.
Went to ryzen.. didn't see a reason to manually OC. The boost (though not all cored) capped at the same cap a manual (on all cores) would cap. In benchmarks I could see the difference, but In games, not really. It didn't seem worth the hassle. I don't even OC my vcards anymore, out of the box they boost themselves as long as power and temp allow.
I could be age.. but I'd rather the device just auto--boost itself to the highest possible point based on cooling and power. After all these years, I'm kinda surprised no one has just aftermarket, soddered the die to the heatsink. I'd by a [insert cpu here] soldered to an nh-d15... Dislike liquid cooling and side windows, rather have sound dampening with hydraulic fans.
Went to ryzen.. didn't see a reason to manually OC. The boost (though not all cored) capped at the same cap a manual (on all cores) would cap. In benchmarks I could see the difference, but In games, not really. It didn't seem worth the hassle. I don't even OC my vcards anymore, out of the box they boost themselves as long as power and temp allow.
I could be age.. but I'd rather the device just auto--boost itself to the highest possible point based on cooling and power. After all these years, I'm kinda surprised no one has just aftermarket, soddered the die to the heatsink. I'd by a [insert cpu here] soldered to an nh-d15... Dislike liquid cooling and side windows, rather have sound dampening with hydraulic fans.
Wow !! good memories ! first build ever !
My barton 2500+ OC over 3200+ stock speed with an all copper Thermalright SP-97 and good old OCZ DDR 3200 (400mhz) with the copper heatspreader !
add to that an ATI 9800 pro bios flashed to an 9800xt spec and speed .
Always tweeked my PC since that time ... and bought 'OC worthy ' component
thanks for that flash back !
My barton 2500+ OC over 3200+ stock speed with an all copper Thermalright SP-97 and good old OCZ DDR 3200 (400mhz) with the copper heatspreader !
add to that an ATI 9800 pro bios flashed to an 9800xt spec and speed .
Always tweeked my PC since that time ... and bought 'OC worthy ' component
thanks for that flash back !
Love the G0 stepping Q6600 in the picture, that was one of my two best overclockers as well.
Historic good overclockers I've had:
Athlon 500 overclocked via Outside Loop Afterburner GFD to 700mhz
Athlon 700 overclocked via Outside Loop Afterburner GFD to 950mhz
Athlon 1Ghz Thunderbird (Dresden purple core) to 1.4Ghz
Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz OC to 3.6Ghz
Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 2.4Ghz OC to 3.6Ghz
Core i7 920 2.66Ghz OC to 3.4Ghz
Core i7 2600K OC to 5Ghz
My current i7 7700K @5Ghz is a super mild OC, not as large percentage wise as previous OCs, but not really trying to either. Got lazy in my old age
Historic good overclockers I've had:
Athlon 500 overclocked via Outside Loop Afterburner GFD to 700mhz
Athlon 700 overclocked via Outside Loop Afterburner GFD to 950mhz
Athlon 1Ghz Thunderbird (Dresden purple core) to 1.4Ghz
Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz OC to 3.6Ghz
Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 2.4Ghz OC to 3.6Ghz
Core i7 920 2.66Ghz OC to 3.4Ghz
Core i7 2600K OC to 5Ghz
My current i7 7700K @5Ghz is a super mild OC, not as large percentage wise as previous OCs, but not really trying to either. Got lazy in my old age
Neatfeatguy
Posts: 1,611 +3,043
I'd say the most impressive CPU I've had in terms of overclocking prowess was the Athlon x2 64 3800+ (Manchester) on the 939 socket.
Base speed was 2.0GHz. I was able to bring her up to 3.1GHz. Blew me away with how well I could push the OC. 55% OC over the base clock, I was floored.
A year or so later I wanted something newer and was hoping I could get a solid OC out of my next CPU that crossed my path; Athlon X2 5800+ (Windsor) on the AM2 socket.
Base speed was 2.8GHz. I wasn't able to get her stable past about 3.14GHz. One core ran without errors, but the second core always started throwing errors no matter what kind of tweaking I did. I was sad the OC potential I found in the X2 3800+ Manchester didn't find it's way to this newer CPU.
Last CPU before my current:
Phenom II x4 940: Base = 3.0, best OC was 3.71
Current CPU:
i5-4670k: Base is 3.4, currently running at 4.4.
Base speed was 2.0GHz. I was able to bring her up to 3.1GHz. Blew me away with how well I could push the OC. 55% OC over the base clock, I was floored.
A year or so later I wanted something newer and was hoping I could get a solid OC out of my next CPU that crossed my path; Athlon X2 5800+ (Windsor) on the AM2 socket.
Base speed was 2.8GHz. I wasn't able to get her stable past about 3.14GHz. One core ran without errors, but the second core always started throwing errors no matter what kind of tweaking I did. I was sad the OC potential I found in the X2 3800+ Manchester didn't find it's way to this newer CPU.
Last CPU before my current:
Phenom II x4 940: Base = 3.0, best OC was 3.71
Current CPU:
i5-4670k: Base is 3.4, currently running at 4.4.
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 5,414 +10,153
Still have an i5 3750k, 3.4 base, ran 4.3 on an under volt and 4.6 on stock non boost voltage. Stupid undervolt at 3.8 let me push power usage under 35 watts. One of the last Costa Rican chips made before nite shut down the plant.
Buddy had a q9650 he ran at closet to 4 ghz on water. Amazing how long that platform lasted before finally going obsolete on performance a few years ago.
Buddy had a q9650 he ran at closet to 4 ghz on water. Amazing how long that platform lasted before finally going obsolete on performance a few years ago.
I also bought the 3570K (I assume that's the one you meant). I figured it was a great processor at the time and I could overclock it when it started to feel a little slow. Weird thing is, it still feels quick - which meant I never got round to overclocking it. There's a lot of fancy new hardware out at the moment so I am tempted to build a new PC but my current PC is more than fast enough to deal with the software development and gaming that I do.
MarkHughes
Posts: 340 +342
Still rocking a n i7-2600K, not overclocked it in any serious fashion just what the bios easy setting allowed (4.4ghz I think) on the stock cooler. It still feels fast and responsive even though it's about 8 years old now. A new gfx card would freshen that computer right up using the same cpu.
Ted Ingersol
Posts: 17 +11
Seriously. Overclocking is a lot easier these days. Back then, you had to flip some DIP switches and pray you didn't kill your motherboard. I have an AMD Thunderbird 1.33GHz CPU and the Asus board I bought could only got to 1.2GHz. It took me 4 hours to download the AMD whitepaper pdf using AOL's crappy dial-up so I could overclock the motherboard and use my CPU. It worked too, ran it just fine at 1.33GHz until I decommissioned it.
GLenn63
Posts: 148 +55
I had the HP pentium 800 with intergrated graphics back when win 98 was just evolving into win 2000. I was just trying learn how to operate a pc then. So my in first adventure into tweaking I put in the biggest glitchy bug ridden voodoo graphics card that cost $300. Voodoo went out of business shortly after so there was not any driver support for it. Nvidea and raden then came out to dominate the market.
The Athlon 1000 was already mentioned. Mine did +1,4GHz. And then I destroyed it by misplacing a shim.
But nobody mentioned the Haswell i7 5960X. The first versions of that CPU were not great overclockers, but my later version could easily hit 4,7GHz on 2 cores. Instead of the default boost clock of 3,5GHz (on 1 core?)
But nobody mentioned the Haswell i7 5960X. The first versions of that CPU were not great overclockers, but my later version could easily hit 4,7GHz on 2 cores. Instead of the default boost clock of 3,5GHz (on 1 core?)
BadThad
Posts: 1,356 +1,633
Great old article, brings back some memories! I still think my favorite out of the bunch was Celeron 300A. I built several of these systems and ALL of them overclocked to 450 MHz without adding any voltage. I had one customer that used a 300A@450 system for 10 years!
I was a little surprised at the Pentium D making the cut. I had one of these and it was SUPER HOT when not OC'd. When I oc'd it, the heat was unbearable and I ended-up going back to default.
Still today my wife is using an old Q6600 system! One of the most solid builds I've ever done!
I was a little surprised at the Pentium D making the cut. I had one of these and it was SUPER HOT when not OC'd. When I oc'd it, the heat was unbearable and I ended-up going back to default.
Still today my wife is using an old Q6600 system! One of the most solid builds I've ever done!
I had a few on this list: Phenom II x4 550, Duron 600 and the mighty Barton 2500+ great times
Also had a friend with a 2GHz Celeron Northwood. OCed it to 3GHz, still a piece of garbage, waste of sand
I'd have put the Sempron 2800 on the list, that was a monster OCer, still have the 2nd place HWBOT spot and it spent all its life at around 60% OC
Also had a friend with a 2GHz Celeron Northwood. OCed it to 3GHz, still a piece of garbage, waste of sand
I'd have put the Sempron 2800 on the list, that was a monster OCer, still have the 2nd place HWBOT spot and it spent all its life at around 60% OC
i5 750 overclocked 2.66@3.8GHz (+42%) + MSI P55GD65 MB - 13 year on air with Scythe Zipang2+140mm cooler - everything works completely silently even with a full load of 100% on all cores with a temperature of 75-80C. Silver thermal paste from Gigabyte, which came with the old system motherboard. The temperature of the cores at rest - 32-35C, voltage 1.32V). Best processor (and MB) in my life...it never turns off, only to S3(STR) mode and back again (sleep for 1-2 sec and start for 1-2 sec on work state) - for months without bugs and bsods. XP+W7. Occasionally reboots due to some needs ...
This processor with motherboard has already survived the infamous Thinkpad T with first series i5 (Arandale) series, which worked for about 10 years without any overclocking and whose motherboard burned out...
The most interesting thing is that I have an MSI laptop even older than this bundle, but it is still alive, although the screen has burned out for a long time (and it is impossible to find a new one on the market with the same quality). So it still has a live battery for 9 cells 90Wh+ and it still holds it for more than 35 minutes at a load of 100W..
Now this quality is simply not to be found. It's not on the market...
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I love this article, Steve!
I was a bit older when I got into computer gaming, but my i5-3570k really served me well and OC'd nicely. Complete with 8 whole GB's of DDR3 1600Mhz of RAM!
I was a bit older when I got into computer gaming, but my i5-3570k really served me well and OC'd nicely. Complete with 8 whole GB's of DDR3 1600Mhz of RAM!
Vanderlinde
Posts: 430 +273
I miss the Slot A CPU's in that overview.
The good part about it was, AMD found it cheaper to produce 750Mhz Slot A models and simply downclock them to 700, 650, 600, 550 and 500Mhz. You'd either had a proper board with a FSB that was capable of doing 120Mhz at least or you hack-saw the case open and installed a Golden finger device so you where free to set the desired voltage, multiplier but also L2 cache devider.
I had a 600Mhz Slot A Athlon which would overclock to 714Mhz. That does'nt sound like alot but it was a world of difference back in the days. Additionally the whole FX line where certainly guaranteed to run at 4.6Ghz up to 5.5Ghz if you had the proper cooling and / or hardware for it.
The good part about it was, AMD found it cheaper to produce 750Mhz Slot A models and simply downclock them to 700, 650, 600, 550 and 500Mhz. You'd either had a proper board with a FSB that was capable of doing 120Mhz at least or you hack-saw the case open and installed a Golden finger device so you where free to set the desired voltage, multiplier but also L2 cache devider.
I had a 600Mhz Slot A Athlon which would overclock to 714Mhz. That does'nt sound like alot but it was a world of difference back in the days. Additionally the whole FX line where certainly guaranteed to run at 4.6Ghz up to 5.5Ghz if you had the proper cooling and / or hardware for it.
godrilla
Posts: 1,361 +890
My best cpu was the i7 980 xe at 4.3 ghz about 24% overclock. This Cpu lasted me 10 years and I was able to play Metro exodus at extreme settings with a 1080ti ftw at 3440x1440p at 60 fps. Now even a core i9 9900ks is almost obsolete after 3 years although can still handle 4k 120 120hz just fine.
My core to duo e6600 oc from 2.4 ghz to 3.3 ghz. which was a better overclock percentage but still felt slow when paired with a 8800 ultra and eventually gtx 285 ftw.
For me the i7 980xe was the best cpu because It probably went past the standard of what is considered future proofing for a 10 year experience.
My core to duo e6600 oc from 2.4 ghz to 3.3 ghz. which was a better overclock percentage but still felt slow when paired with a 8800 ultra and eventually gtx 285 ftw.
For me the i7 980xe was the best cpu because It probably went past the standard of what is considered future proofing for a 10 year experience.
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I7 920 is still the most impressive CPU made to date; still capable of playing all modern games other than operation Ubishaft DRM (AC Origins, but AC Valhalla runs fine). Got mine running @3.8Ghz/1.14Ghz above stock base clock and 870Mhz above stock turbo...all on a $43 Hyper 212 Evo air cooler wit 12GB RAM@1044Mhz. Still holds up fantastic for PC Gaming @1080p and 3440p at ultra/max settings.
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