PC Club Enpower Sabre Extreme: E6600 Made Easy
by Jarred Walton on August 29, 2006 4:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Overclocking
We mentioned earlier that since a standard Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard is used, end-user overclocking is entirely possible. (The same should hold true for versions shipping with the MSI P965 boards.) There is risk involved with overclocking, and individual results will vary. After updating to the latest F4 BIOS and finishing the initial benchmarks, we gave overclocking a shot. The installed memory is pretty generic and we didn't want to push things too far, so we set the memory to a 1:1 ratio and decided to see if the CPU and the rest of the system could handle running at 334 MHz front side bus. We did have to increase CPU voltage slightly: we used 1.3875V, and though the system did POST at lower voltages it was not fully stable during stress testing. Other than that the 25% overclock was extremely easy to achieve.
What more is there to say about a $370 CPU that can easily overclock to the performance level of a stock $1150 CPU? This is using the retail processor heatsink and fan, and even under extreme stress testing the system remained stable and the HSF stayed under 45°C. We could have certainly gone farther with the overclock (see below), but most people will be more than happy with a 3 GHz Core 2 Duo processor running inside their computer system.
We will include results from the overclocked system in our benchmarking results for reference. In some instances, the increased clock speed will have a dramatic impact on performance. In other areas, the system bottleneck is elsewhere and the added CPU performance does little to help. Depending on how you plan to use the system, it may not even be worthwhile to overclock it. Perhaps down the road once the warranty has already expired and after adding a faster graphics card, overclocking will become more beneficial.
After fully testing the 25% overclock, we decided to push things a bit further. With a bit more voltage to the CPU, memory, chipset, and FSB (+0.1V), we also managed to run our full set of benchmark tests at 9x350, and then we tried 9x366. The CPU fan was definitely working harder to keep the processor cool, and we don't actually recommend these higher settings unless you're okay with potentially frying a $300 processor. A better CPU heatsink would alleviate our concerns, and we will be sticking with the 9x333 results as a setting that we consider truly stable and attainable by most users. The 9x366 result was "mostly" stable - our gaming benchmarks completed without problems, but 3DMark06 and PCMark05 would periodically crash. Apparently, the limit of the RAM and/or CPU is somewhere between 9x350 and 9x366. We would say the RAM is the more likely culprit, given some voltage and stability issues encountered (see the Reliability, Warranty and Support page for details).
One final comment is that the system we have for testing uses a Core 2 Duo E6600 stepping 4 revision B0 CPU, which is generally not considered one of the best overclocking revisions. This is also an engineering sample (ES) CPU. Final retail systems will not come with anything other than full retail chips, but the lead times required to get system reviews done in a timely fashion account for the processor used. All of the other hardware is stock and retail units should perform at least as well as our test configuration.
We mentioned earlier that since a standard Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard is used, end-user overclocking is entirely possible. (The same should hold true for versions shipping with the MSI P965 boards.) There is risk involved with overclocking, and individual results will vary. After updating to the latest F4 BIOS and finishing the initial benchmarks, we gave overclocking a shot. The installed memory is pretty generic and we didn't want to push things too far, so we set the memory to a 1:1 ratio and decided to see if the CPU and the rest of the system could handle running at 334 MHz front side bus. We did have to increase CPU voltage slightly: we used 1.3875V, and though the system did POST at lower voltages it was not fully stable during stress testing. Other than that the 25% overclock was extremely easy to achieve.
What more is there to say about a $370 CPU that can easily overclock to the performance level of a stock $1150 CPU? This is using the retail processor heatsink and fan, and even under extreme stress testing the system remained stable and the HSF stayed under 45°C. We could have certainly gone farther with the overclock (see below), but most people will be more than happy with a 3 GHz Core 2 Duo processor running inside their computer system.
We will include results from the overclocked system in our benchmarking results for reference. In some instances, the increased clock speed will have a dramatic impact on performance. In other areas, the system bottleneck is elsewhere and the added CPU performance does little to help. Depending on how you plan to use the system, it may not even be worthwhile to overclock it. Perhaps down the road once the warranty has already expired and after adding a faster graphics card, overclocking will become more beneficial.
After fully testing the 25% overclock, we decided to push things a bit further. With a bit more voltage to the CPU, memory, chipset, and FSB (+0.1V), we also managed to run our full set of benchmark tests at 9x350, and then we tried 9x366. The CPU fan was definitely working harder to keep the processor cool, and we don't actually recommend these higher settings unless you're okay with potentially frying a $300 processor. A better CPU heatsink would alleviate our concerns, and we will be sticking with the 9x333 results as a setting that we consider truly stable and attainable by most users. The 9x366 result was "mostly" stable - our gaming benchmarks completed without problems, but 3DMark06 and PCMark05 would periodically crash. Apparently, the limit of the RAM and/or CPU is somewhere between 9x350 and 9x366. We would say the RAM is the more likely culprit, given some voltage and stability issues encountered (see the Reliability, Warranty and Support page for details).
One final comment is that the system we have for testing uses a Core 2 Duo E6600 stepping 4 revision B0 CPU, which is generally not considered one of the best overclocking revisions. This is also an engineering sample (ES) CPU. Final retail systems will not come with anything other than full retail chips, but the lead times required to get system reviews done in a timely fashion account for the processor used. All of the other hardware is stock and retail units should perform at least as well as our test configuration.
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nah - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Good work, as always. How about an update on the CPU?GPU guides ?modo - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Just went over to ibuypower.com and configured a Core 2 duo E6600 with the MSI 965 mobo, 500W PSU, 1 gig ram, 250 gig HD, 7900Gt 256mb, dvd burner, with a mini-liquid cooler for the cpu for $1245 (without monitor). Enter 'ibuypower' code when you order and you get 5% off, taking the total down to less than $1200.Better system for $200 less?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Add in the OS and monitor, and the total comes to $1522 with the discount. ($1361 without $229 LCD = $1293 with discount.) You need a 16MB cache HDD and a DVDRW with LightScribe if you want to make things "equal" on components. You can also add some extras that may or may not be available elsewhere. Anyway, it's still slightly cheaper; is it worth considering? Sure - it comes with a 3 year warranty. How's the support? I don't know. As stated in the conclusion, PC Club has some reasonable offers people might want to look at - especially if you live near a local store and would like that sort of support. There are a ton of competing system vendors out there.yyrkoon - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
MSI . . . I can not speak for everyone else, but I've had less than good results using MSI products. They may work fine for a period of time, but can not really be comparred to someone like ABIT, or Gigabyte. Who makes the PSU ? Why do you need a 'mini-liquid cooler' ?I've personally configured (but not bought) a simular C2D budget system, but using a E6400, and a 7600GT, and overall cost was around $800usd. Of course, I had planned on migrating a PSU (Antec), and HDDs from an older system. This is why I almost always suggest quality parts, as quality parts often last for years, and can be reused (in the case of a PSU, and HDDs here). You can go even cheaper if you use something along the lines of the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard, and migrate memory, and video from current system. *shrug* My personal experience with Asrock however, is that usually they are very solid boards (for the price), but are often less than top tier stable, and more often then not, are fairly quirky, and missing Features such as offering a SATAII controller, but disabling (or not including) command queuing(which is part of the SATAII spec, unless I'm mistaken).
QueBert - Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - link
funny, while I don't really care for MSI, never had a problem with them. Now Gigabyte UGH, on my 3rd board right now for this 939. And my last Gigabyte board (Athlon XP) gave me problems from day one. It's crazy how one person can never have a problem with a brand, and the guy next to him has nothing but problems. I think MSI has gotten a lot better then they were in the past. I live 2 blocks from a PC Club, and i can tell you this, whatever prebuilt systems they sell, they've done A LOT of component testing. As I've never heard somebody complain about an Enpower system, besides those who screw things up themselves with viruses and such. I only shop at PC Club, unless it's something they don't carry. They cost a bit more then Newegg, but the service is great. I walk in, they know me by name. They sold me a MB + Memory, I was dumb and didn't check, the MB was DDR2 and the memory was DDR1, I wanted DDR1, so they took the open MB back, no hassle.bob4432 - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Nice article and seems like a decent system for the $$$$. One question - where can we get the bf2 1.3 benchmark you are using?thanks,
bob :)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Sure, http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/benchmarks/bf2...">have at it. Standard "this is beta" disclaimers apply. If you don't know how to tweak a batch file, you're on your own. :)--Jarred Walton
bob4432 - Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - link
thanks, i had the 1.22 but lost it, then 1.3 came out.regnez - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
why is that in the feature list the graphics card is a 7900gt and in the benchmark setup it is a 7900gtx? is this a typo or was the graphics card switched out for the benchmark setup?also, it does not seem as if a 350 watt psu is enough to power that graphics card...
and one more thing: this system is called a mid-range system in the review, and I quite disagree. a mid range system would be something in the price range of $700-$900. this is a high end system, and it would not take much ($400 ish more) to bring it up to enthusiast level.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
It was a typo; the system (as configured and tested) uses the 7900 GT. In terms of power, look at the power tests on page 9. Even with a 25% overclock and maximum load, the system draws 213W of power. That's not even accounting for PSU efficiency; remember that the PSU rating is what can be output, not the total wall power draw. Say it's 75% efficient; that means the system is using about 160W of power at maximum load. I've got a few generic 350W PSUs running similar configurations, and none of them have ever had issues.Finally, there is always debate about where market segments overlap price ranges. We consider budget to be $750 or less (maybe a bit more for budget gaming). Midrange is a huge segment that goes from around $1000 to $1500. At ~$1600, this is close enough, though it's definitely at the top of the midrange ladder. High-end starts at $2000 and can go way up from there. It's just a term anyway, and if you think $1500 is too high you're welcome to that opinion. The base configuration of the EN-SE5 comes with an E6300, 7300GS TurboCache, 160GB HDD, and costs $800 (including the OS). It's not longer really gaming worthy, but it will do everything else very well.