E4300, low power CPU for desktop

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:52 pm

Overclocking the E4300 is criminally easy, with a motherboard that is friendly to that.

I have a DS3, and I kept cranking up the FSB, while adjusting the memory multiplier to keep my RAM around it's rated DDR2-800 speeds. I went to 266, then 300, then 350 MHz which puts the CPU at 3.15 GHz, without even trying. AquaMark3 score over 100,000. Some heat and Watts penalty, but not so much as I would have thought, according to Intel TAT CPU is at 66C right now. Added maybe 20 Watts power consumption. I haven't diddled with any voltages or anything, left that set to AUTO so I assume the DS3 might be tweaking them a bit.

I'm confident the reviews are right and 400 FSB is easily done, but have other tasks so I'll stop at 350 tonight. This is the new version of the Celeron 300A (for those who remember back that far), a really easy overclocker.

I'm putting all my values back to stock though, as my daily use just doesn't need it OC'd.

perplex · Post by **perplex** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:54 am

Or you could wait for E4400 in a few months. Multiplier 10x

.

MC FLMJIG · Post by **MC FLMJIG** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 3:16 am

And even cheape than the current 4300.

@ Vincent. You could probably get lower V if you did all yourself. You also don't need to lower multiplier. That is what a divider (memory) is for.

wdekler · Post by **wdekler** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:46 am

If only there was a good board with a low power chipset which could be used to overclock the 4300.

The 965 chipset is expensive and has a fairly high TDP, the Nforce chipsets are even worse in this regard and the current 945 motherboards are bad at overclocking the 4300. Finally, the VIA chipsets don't have dual channel memory support and the SIS chipset only (officially) supports an 800mhz FSB.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:38 am

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... erthread=y
lists the GIGABYTE GA-945P-S3 (rev. 1.0) as overclockable to ~350 MHz.

Here some Google links:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware ... 21055.html
http://forum.insanelymac.com/lofiversio ... 30396.html
http://forum.zebulon.fr/index.php?showt ... 3640&st=30
http://www.sharkyforums.com/showpost.ph ... ostcount=7
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... GA-945P-S3
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... GA-945P-S3

So there seems to be a good chance to hit over 300 MHz which would be 2.7 GHz given the CPU is well overclockable. Sounds quite nice for a budget E4300 system.

wdekler · Post by **wdekler** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:50 am

Those links certainly indicate that the Gigabyte board overclocks well with a 6000 series CPU. However, there are reports than when you start from the 4300s 200mhz FSB you'll run into problems around 220.

And I haven't found a site/forum yet that reports a 4300 running above 220mhz (say 300) with a 945 chipset.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:53 am

wdekler wrote: And I haven't found a site/forum yet that reports a 4300 running above 220mhz (say 300) with a 945 chipset.

Please report if you find more information about this.

wdekler · Post by **wdekler** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:57 am

These problems were reported in this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=37636

And here's a link from this thread:

http://forums.ocworkbench.com/bbs/asroc ... 58373.html

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:55 am

MC FLMJIG wrote: @ Vincent. You could probably get lower V if you did all yourself. You also don't need to lower multiplier. That is what a divider (memory) is for.

I believe some use multipliers, other use divisors when referring to a setting that will affect what speed your RAM runs at. I didn't touch the CPU multiplier which remaing at 9. I wanted to affect my RAM so it ran at it's DDR2-800 rated speed. In my DS3 BIOS, which I am not in front of right now, the RAM-related setting I twiddled looked like it was for multiples of the FSB. So if I am running at 200 MHz FSB, I use a 4.0 RAM multiple to get the speed I want on my DDR2-800. But I may not be up on all the lingo and technology. I was really into overclocking from the early Pentium's up through the Pentium-III era, and then dropped out due to unemployment and other life issues.

keithabbott · Post by **keithabbott** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:13 am

I've seen some of the benchmark tests that have been linked to and they look quite impressive when the E4300 is overclocked.

The thing is, I have never been one to overclock although I've heard of people doing it. So that said, I have no idea how unsafe the practice may be when done to the letter.

As many of you here, I just want a system that's reliable and as silent as possible. I have no experience overclocking, though, all this is new to me. I've already purchased the following:

Thermaltake 700watt Toughpower PSU
Antec P180 case
2 Nexus silent case fans

But now I need to decide whether to buy AMD or Intel. I'm currently using an AMD 1900XP+ with an Asus board. It's obviously not overclocked, but I've been very happy with it's performance at it's current unclocked state. However, I'm looking to do a lot of video/audio work so a good processor for encoding and a low-noise mobo/case that can control the fan speeds also are highly desired.

So, if I purchase the E4300 is there a safe bet as far as mobo/heatsink/heatsink fan that I can get that's easily overclockable to the E6600 level? And is there a guide out there with step by step instructions on how to do it with this chip?

I'm a sorry for sounding like such a newb, but I'm a computer builder without a lot of technical knowledge. I just know enough to build one on my own and get by. So any assistance or additional links you guys can provide would be appreciated. It's easy to get lost in all of the info.

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:26 pm

A lot of that recommendation depends on your unspecified audio/video encoding software.

I do a lot of DivX encoding. For that, a Core2 Duo does an excellent job. When it hits the video encoding leg it pegs out 100% on both cores and finishes faster. I think Tom or Anand had articles comparing encoding performance with different software for both AMD and Intel.

kogi · Post by **kogi** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:50 pm

keithabbott wrote: So, if I purchase the E4300 is there a safe bet as far as mobo/heatsink/heatsink fan that I can get that's easily overclockable to the E6600 level? And is there a guide out there with step by step instructions on how to do it with this chip?

YES, see my post, I've being running a quiet 2.4ghz for almost a week now. stock is 1.8ghz

As to a guide. It would depend on your motherboard. And if you get a gigabyte 965p-D??? board I can prob provide pictures.

k

keithabbott · Post by **keithabbott** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 4:51 pm

I'm actually using Vegas Video for my encoding. At least most of it anyway. For audio, Sound Forge.

keithabbott · Post by **keithabbott** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:00 pm

Can you provide a link to the board on Newegg? I'm seeing these two boards so I'm not sure which it is:

1. GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard
2. GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard

I'm assuming it's the latter?

Also, how were you able to get this specific version of the processor? E4300 SL9TB 01/02/2007. Any particular store?

WH=hy in particular did you get A-data 667? Why not Crucial? or Kingston for example? Just for cost sake? If so, how's it running?

kogi wrote:
keithabbott wrote: So, if I purchase the E4300 is there a safe bet as far as mobo/heatsink/heatsink fan that I can get that's easily overclockable to the E6600 level? And is there a guide out there with step by step instructions on how to do it with this chip?
YES, see my post, I've being running a quiet 2.4ghz for almost a week now. stock is 1.8ghz

As to a guide. It would depend on your motherboard. And if you get a gigabyte 965p-D??? board I can prob provide pictures.

k

keithabbott · Post by **keithabbott** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:01 pm

Any chance you know where I might find the arcticles?

vincentfox wrote:A lot of that recommendation depends on your unspecified audio/video encoding software.

I do a lot of DivX encoding. For that, a Core2 Duo does an excellent job. When it hits the video encoding leg it pegs out 100% on both cores and finishes faster. I think Tom or Anand had articles comparing encoding performance with different software for both AMD and Intel.

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:10 pm

You've not heard of AnandTech? A google search earlier took me here:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... =2795&p=12

There are probably other better articles if you search. Of course everything is relative to factors like money, heat output, noise, etc. not just speed. Your jobs might be smallish and then an AMD Sempron taking a few seconds more than some dual-core monster is no big deal. Up until last month I was still encoding on an old Celeron 1.1A overclocked to 1.4 GHz that would take 12+ hours to do a large DivX encode that my new system can finish in 2 hours. For quite a long time that was fast enough for me as my habit was just start an encode before going to bed and see the results when I got home from work the next day.

However that's not the whole story of course, in my opinion. Some users here found that if you break it down into encoding "power efficiency" as in how much bang/Watt you can get, a simple Celeron M or Core Solo does very well indeed.

All things being equal though, I wanted to stick with a "traditional" desktop CPU and motherboard which led me evetually to the E4300 paired with a DS3. Fairly good bang/Watt with mainstream parts.

Regarding S3 versus DS3:

I've been through enough motherboards that got flaky due to cheap electrolytic capacitors, that I was delighted to see the DS3 uses all solid-state caps. We had a bunch of cheap Abit BX boards at work one time, opened every one of them and found leaky/bulging caps. The time and hassle of replacing a board just isn't worth the few dollars saved on the cheaper version IMO.

I don't know about the other guy but I got DDR2-800 and I'm pretty happy with it. RAM choice is a thing with so many variables of timings and etc that are thrown at you these days, it is very confusing. I studied on it for a while. FInally I got to an article that said diddling the RAM around on these platforms makes 2-3% diff in most uses, which isn't worth obsessing over so I just ordered something that looked decent.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:31 pm

There is a working BSEL-mods available now.
Have a look hat
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... TARTPAGE=2 (first post of highwire)
Also a nice picture here: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=498167&page=2

It's currently unclear to me wether you have to insulate the side towards the chip as highwire describes or not.

i945P/G boards are becoming more interesting again

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:34 am

I set my FSB to 366 x 9 giving 3.29 GHz, and the RAM multiple to 2.0 (RAM at 732). Ran it a couple of days like this, not a problem except a little more heat and power consumption. Tonight I ran HL2: Lost Coast video stress test a dozen times, handled that easily. Then I played BF2 for 3 hours.

I'm backing it down to 200 FSB again now for my daily use, but I just wanted to mention my further OC testing for those that are interested in that. I tried bumping to 400 wouldn't boot, I didn't really mess with the voltages etc. I may try that tomorrow.

Oh yeah, I should mention I added an X-Fi Gamer Extreme card. This low-profile sound-card is surprising greedy, idle power consumption jumped from 75 Watts to 85 Watts.

Ken5d · Post by **Ken5d** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:44 pm

This seems to be as good a place as any to post my own OC results.

My chip is maxed at 310 FSB (2.79GHz) on stock settings. In order to go higher, I had to raise vcore. Other people have had better luck, some achieving 3GHz and above at stock vcore. But 2.8 is also a common barrier.

Raising vcore up to 1.425v seemed to be enough to give me a stable 334 FSB (3.0 GHz), with very little increase in measured temps at idle or load. But the difference in speed between 2.8 & 3 isn't enough to warrant the extra voltage, so I'm going to use 2.8 GHz as my overclock.

Based on what I've read, I probably could get to about 3.3 GHz raising vcore to 1.5v, but I have no desire to even try.

If anyone cares about the temps I achieved, you can read about it in this post.

E4300, low power CPU for desktop

OC to 3.29 GHz