Overclocking Results:

stock max. oc processor speed: 3.00 ghz 4.05 ghz if you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

PCSTATS has had good overclocking results the last couple Core 2 Duo processors to cross our test bench, so as we set about overclocking the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU today our expectations will be high. The Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 has a default clock speed of 3.0GHz, and the particular chip PCSTATS will be overclocking is the 'SLAPL' type, or 'C0' core stepping.

Going in to the overclocking challenge we're anticipating a healthy overclock of at least 1.0GHz. The previous Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 chip PCSTATS tested managed 1.14GHz over stock speed, so the Core 2 Duo E8400 ought to be capable pushing things at least that far.

The CPU will be overclocked on an ASUS P5E3 Premium motherboard (X48 Express chipset / DDR3 verison) with a 2GB set of Patriot PDC32G1866LLK low latency high speed DDR3 memory. This is different than the MSI X48 motherboard PCSTATS relied on for the benchmarks, largely because the ASUS AiTweaker BIOS simplifies things and the P5E3 Premium board has proven itself capable of slightly better OC results.

Starting from 333 MHz FSB, the ASUS P5E3 Premium's frequency will be increased in roughly 25 MHz increments. It was clear right from the get go that the 3.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 was a quick overclocker!

All voltage settings were left to 'auto' in the ASUS AiTweaker BIOS, and in no time the E8400 chip had passed 3.61GHz, then 3.84GHz. At 4.02GHz (445MHz FSB) the chip required a voltage boost to 1.5V in order to load Windows Vista successfully. That brought us to a full 1.0GHz overclock over the Core 2 Duo E8400's default speed!

The front side bus was then increased from 445MHz to 450MHz, which brought the CPU to 4.05GHz. That was about as far as this particular Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU would go with stock cooling. Thus we ended our overclocking session with a maximum overclocked speed of 4.05GHz, or 1.05GHz over default!

Not bad, not bad at all. :-)

Prelude to Benchmarks

Over the following page we'll be running Intel's Core 2 Duo E8400 processor though PCSTATS standard set of gaming, productivity, and multi-threaded processor benchmarks. There are a wide variety of gaming and synthetic benchmarks here to illustrate what kind of performance boost users can expect from the latest quad-core socket 775 Intel chip. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results on the next several pages.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system #1 reference system #2 reference system #3 processor: intel core 2 duo e8400 (45nm) amd Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition (45nm) AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (45nm) Intel Core i7 920 (45nm) Socket: Socket LGA775 Socket AM3/AM2+ Socket AM3/AM2+ Socket LGA1366 Clock Speed: 9 x 333 MHz = 3.0 GHz 16 x 200 MHz = 3.2 GHz 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz 20 x 133 MHz = 2.67 GHz Motherboard: MSI X48 Platinum (X48 Express) Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (AMD 790FX) ASUS M4A78T-E (AMD 790GX)* ASUS M3A78-T (AMD 790GX) MSI X58 Platinum (X58 Express) Videocard: MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E (Geforce 8800GTS) ASUS ENGTS250 DK (Geforce GTS250) MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E (Geforce 8800GTS) ASUS ENGTS250 DK (Geforce GTS 250) Memory: 2x1GB Patriot PDC32G1600LLK DDR3 2x2GB Corsair XMS3-1600C9 DDR3 2x1GB Patriot PDC32G1600LLK DDR3* 2x1GB Corsair Twin2X-8888C4D DDR2 3x2GB Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D DDR3 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 Optical Drive: ASUS BC-1205PT-BD Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 750W Heatsink: Intel Reference 775 Heatsink Athlon64 K8 Reference Heatsink Intel Reference 1366 Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 9.0.0.1008 nVIDIA Forceware 169.25 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate AMD Catalyst 9.4 nVIDIA Forceware 182.08 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate AMD Catalyst 9.1 nVIDIA Forceware 169.25 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 9.1.0.1012 nVIDIA Forceware 182.08 Benchmarks: System Benchmarks: SYSmark 2007 PCMark Vantage SiSoft Sandra 2009 Calculation B/M: Super Pi 1.5 wPrime 2.0 ScienceMark 2.3 WinRAR 3.8 Bibble 5 Rendering B/M: Cinebench R10 POV-Ray 3.7 SPECviewPerf 10 Gaming B/M: 3DMark06 3DMark Vantage Cyrsis FEAR