Normally, I don't link to stories about overclocking, since the majority of those worth mentioning rely on very exotic cooling solutions that are extremely expensive. When I hear about stock hardware being able to push current bottlenecks to extreme, however, I get interested. A recent HardOCP article regarding a Biostar motherboard for the new, but low priced, Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU showed some very interesting results. A CPU that is priced $800 less than Intel's top of the line Core 2 in this board was able to achieve a massive 500MHz FSB and 3.5GHz clock speed, putting the much more expensive setup to shame. From a stock 1.87GHz, that's almost doubling the clock speed of the CPU and almost doubling the stock FSB of 266MHz (1066MHz) to 501MHz (2006MHz). The impressive FSB was delivered by the TForce P965 Deluxe:
Biostar sold a small run of these boards into the US that quickly sold out but is promising more by the end of the month. We were able to obtain a huge 501MHz front side bus with the TForce P965 that was solid as a rock with a little extra northbridge cooling. This awarded us a 3.512GHz clock speed from our lowly 1.87GHz stock rating.
The availability of high-speed FSB is something that is relatively recent to us enthusiasts. For a long time when the P3 and Athlon / Athlon Thunderbird were big, most chipsets could barely choke out 150Mhz true clock speed. After 200MHz became common, it's gone up considerably. NForce 4 saw speeds of 250 and 275MHz common, with the later revisions teasing at 300MHz. With this one able to crank out 500MHz, it shows a lot of promise, not only for the board, but for Intel's P965 chipset. Lots of room for growth. While they did rely on water cooling and got lucky with a choice CPU pick, the results are impressive. Brands aside, I would like to see the P965 put to the test in other manufacturers products.