Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
To save the most dough, I'd just go with the P5QL. It seems like a pretty solid board, and offers all of what you'd need. I'm not sure I'd expect the best overclocks out of it, but I'm sure 3.0GHz wouldn't be a problem at all. But given the price of the components to begin with, you're going to be experiencing some nice performance even with stock speeds.
 

Pepper_Roni

Obliviot
OK so My budget is 300 dollars..... maybe 400 but aim for 3. I have a dell E520 with....

Mainboard : Dell 0WG864
Chipset : Intel P965
Processor : Intel Pentium D @ 2666 MHz
Physical Memory : 2048 MB (2 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM )
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Hard Disk : WDC (250 GB)
DVD-Rom Drive : SONY DVD-ROM DDU1615S
DVD-Rom Drive : TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H553A
Monitor Type : Dell Computer DELL E207WFP - 20 inches
Monitor Type : Envision ENVISION - 16 inches
Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 Service Pack 2
DirectX : Version 9.0c (October 2008)

It's a BTX case and psu, and mobo. The mobo cant overclock so i would like a new one(the ASUS) a new case because BTX is dead and the airflow is bad. And maybe a new psu.... its 305 watts.

I am going to reuse the ram, hardrive, monitor, vidcard(might get a new one later), and diskdrives.

so whats my best bet.
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
It should work.

There should be enough room to overclock, but don't expect any massive clocks. I'd recommend just a moderate OC, something around 3Ghz. :)
 

Caz

Obliviot
Thank's, Yea i think i was planning to go up to that, my Pentium D is at 3.0ghz,
Can you link to a program i can over clock it with?
 

Merlin

The Tech Wizard
Overclocking

Thank's, Yea i think i was planning to go up to that, my Pentium D is at 3.0ghz,
Can you link to a program i can over clock it with?
The best way is to overclock using your BIOS, at startup hit the ( Delete ) key. that will take you into your bios settings. You need to know your board settings to overclock before going into your bios. And, if you get it all screwed up, you reset your bios to it's original state as it is now.
Most of the time you can unplug the power from the power supply ( with computer off ) and then press the ON button, hold for 30 to 45 seconds to reset the bios.
Happy overclocking, you'll learn a lot about your computer.
Here is a link for an E8400 overclock to 4.3 Ghz

Gives you some idea
 

Caz

Obliviot
How would i know if i have made a mistake when trying to overclock it? and do you mean you unplug the PSU and hold in the power button or hold it with it still plugged in?

Also would i need to change the voltages like the guy in the video does? or can i just change the ghz without increasing its power usage.

And just one last question, when installing the processor is it best to turn off the computer at the main plug?
 
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U

Unregistered

Guest
Underclock?

Would it not be better to set the FSB for 1333 and drop the speed in the bios from 333 to 300?
Would this give better band width?

Thanks
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Would it not be better to set the FSB for 1333 and drop the speed in the bios from 333 to 300?
Would this give better band width?

Thanks

I'm not sure what you mean here. The 1333FSB would equal 333MHz in the BIOS. My max overclock was with using a 300MHz, so that would equate to 1200FSB. 300MHz was the absolute max FSB I could hit, so that's essentially the setting that would offer me the best bandwidth. If you wound up with a slightly better chip, you might be able to go a bit further, but I'm not confident it'd be too much further.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Under clock reply

If you set the FSB to 800 you adjust it from 200 to 233 or 300 in the bios, so what I'm asking is if you set the FSB to 1333 can you then adjust it down to 300 from 333.
This would give you the same over clock but with a higher bus speed for the rest of the system.

Thanks
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
To be honest, that just doesn't make sense. You are essentially just saying to set the FSB to 1333 and then adjust it downward... rather than just set it appropriately in the first place. Are you maybe referring to the FSB strap, and not the actual FSB? If so, then I still don't know if that would work or not. I couldn't get the FSB inched past 1200 FSB, even with extreme amounts of voltage, so I don't think adjusting the strap alone would enable us to gain an additional 33 MHz to hit 1333 FSB.

Either way, I'm still quite pleased with our results, because to have 3.75GHz stable on such a cheap chip is undeniably impressive. I really don't think pushing for extra bandwidth would make any sort of difference at that point. The clock speed alone is going to boost things tremendously as is.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Under clock reply

Yes sorry I did mean the clock speed or strap as you said, I was just thinking that if it was possible to set the clock to 1333 instead of 800, this would give the rest of the system a "boost".
The processor would still be running at the same speed if the FSB could be set to 300 Mhz but the memory etc would benefit from the extra speed.
I have just order one of these processors so I will give it a go (if I can) and let you know if it works.
Again sorry for the confusion.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
As mentioned in the article, I wasn't able to go an inch above 333MHz FSB (equals 1200 FSB), so 1333 FSB is just plain impossible. As I mentioned, things could be a tad different depending on the chip, but in my experience, anything above 1200 FSB was utterly unstable. I'd also like to add though, that memory bandwidth is not that important. It's not difficult to hit a level of bandwidth that would satisfy most people. If you need more than 5,000MB/s memory bandwidth, you probably have a very specific reason for it.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Re Underclok

Well having finally put the computer together and I can see the light!
As you said in your article it is a very overclock able CPU, mine runs happily at 3.75ghz with a CPU volt of 1.285. I have booted in to windows XP with a 333MHz FSB setting and the the voltage was showing on cpu_z as 1.306.
I didn't try and run it at this speed for any length of time as I didn't think the gains worth it, what do you think?
Thanks for a great article and saving me some cash.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Good deal?

Is $100 a good deal for the E5200 & ASUS P5GC-MX/1333? And do these two products work nicely together? What RAM would you recommend?

Thanks
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
To the first unregistered poster: Grats on that superb overclock! It's up to you whether or not you want to keep it there. To see if it's truly stable, run a program like OCCT 3.0's Linpack test for a few hours. If you pass without error, you can pretty much deem it stable. You might also want to game a bit as well just to make sure it's "game stable" as well (sometimes, even if the CPU is stable, it won't be stable when the entire system is stressed).

As for the $100 setup, I don't think you could go wrong there. You can't expect excellent quality with such a low-cost motherboard, but it's going to suffice if you are trying to get the cheapest build possible. As for RAM, try to get a 4GB (2x2GB)... it doesn't matter the brand really. You are going for the cheapest possible, so that the options don't matter that much.
 
C

Carlo

Guest
Thanks for the article, the results in the benchmark are good to show the differences of the Processors, but if we talk about budget it might not be the real numbers... Why would anyone who can buy a high-end board, ram, cooler, 64-bit OS, good graphics card, use a $80 Processor? The total price using a high-end Processor in the setup compared to the total price of using an E5200 is not big, considering someone will buy that kind of parts.
 
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