Overclocking and Final Words

Our Core 2 Duo E6750 sample was a particularly great overclocker, at stock voltage with a retail Intel heatsink/fan we were able to run the system at 3.68GHz (460 x 8.0):

With further voltage tweaking slightly faster speeds should be possible, but at default voltage we were quite impressed. Whether or not this is a testament to the maturity of Intel's 65nm process has yet to be seen, but this next batch of Core 2 processors that will be appearing in the summer could be great overclockers. It's not a tremendous surprise given that Intel's 65nm process should be quite mature at this point, as Intel is on the cusp of introducing its first 45nm processors. Intel has always been strong in the manufacturing department, but now it's more like the good ol' Pentium/Pentium II/Pentium III days of overclocking because it is shipping CPUs we actually want to overclock.

While we await the official release of Intel's 1333MHz FSB CPUs, we now know not to expect much from them, which is why we're expecting to see a price-parity with current 1066MHz chips from Intel. It looks like the big performance increase for Intel this year will come from Penryn, and if reports from Taiwan are to be believed, the performance crown may not change hands this year after all.

Our brief comparison between AMD and Intel at the $180 price point continues to illustrate how it's not architecture, but pricing that can actually determine a recommendation at this point. While AMD is still competing using its original K8 architecture, its pricing is such that its CPUs can easily stand up to Intel at price points less than $300. Once Penryn hits, the same may no longer hold true but for now you can't go wrong with either manufacturer; it's not a bad time to be buying a CPU.

Gaming Performance
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  • zsdersw - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    That's the P35 chipset. The article coldpower was pointing to is P965.. and he said modified his statement with "here", meaning "in the article mentioned".
  • TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    So you think that's relevant? People are going to buy 1333 FSB for the P965???? Again, are you crazy? P965 doesn't even support 1333 officially. P35 is what's important.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    And besides.. the marginal improvement in overall system performance that P35 brings to the table doesn't prove or reliably suggest that Core 2 is particularly dependent on memory bandwidth or speed.
  • TA152H - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    You're seriously confused.

    Most of the information out now shows that you get pretty good performance with higher performance memory running at high clock speeds, especially for DDR3. It's now becoming common knowledge. But, they test DDR2-800 for some reason. To really see the performance of 1333 FSB, they should be using it with the proper memory instead of obsolete memory running at inadequate clock speeds. Luckily, there is another site that promised to do that in the very near future. Why they couldn't figure that out here is a mystery to me though, it kind of hits one in the face.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    That's the expectation: higher performance with memory running at higher speeds. None of that suggests that Core 2's performance hinges upon extracting more and more out of the memory/chipset, though.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    .. or, rather, that Core 2's performance depends on extracting more and more out of the memory/chipset.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    All I'm saying is that you're barking up the wrong tree. coldpower's reference was to the P965, and then you started talking about P35 as if it had something to do with the results of the P965. They're separate.
  • TA152H - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    Are you unable to understand things in context?? Or are you arguing just to argue?

    The P965 is irrelevant, therefore his post is irrelevant, and therefore he has no point. The P965 doesn't matter for FSB 1333 processors, the P35 does.

    My point was that they should be running memory at 1333 speeds, which means the P35. He brought up some nonsense that was irrelevant, and now you think that it was, and the P35 isn't. It's like the Twilight Zone.
  • coldpower27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - link

    No, my post is completely relevant, if your going to argue about official support on the P965 for 1.33GHZ FSB processors then DDR3-1333 is rejected to it being not officially supported by the P35 Express chipset, the only chipset to have official support for that is X38.

    If you need to prod others then I believe it's you who are the one that can't stand losing an argument.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    An established chipset on which the Core 2 processors run is not irrelevant to the issue he was addressing: Core 2 performance vis-a-vis memory bandwidth/speed.

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