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Overclocking & Conclusion

Only one more overclocked chart left :)

RightMark Bandwidth

I was VERY surprised to see the Intel E4300 win here; frankly I've never been comfortable with the RightMark memory bandwidth numbers, somehow it does not make sense to me that chips that don't do well in the individual benchmarks - read, write, latency - can end up doing well in the bandwidth benchmark.

What settings did I use to reach 3.6Ghz with the E4300?

• non-standard chilled water cooler with water at 4'C
• Corsair TWIN2X2048 PC8888 memory
• 400MHz FSB
• 9x multiplier
• 1000MHz memory
• 1.65V core voltage
• 2.4V memory voltage
• 1.55V northbridge voltage
• 1.5V southbridge voltage
• 1.215V ich voltage
• 4-4-4-12 memory timing

But what is truly impressive is that the chip was stable at stock voltages at 3.2GHz (400x8) with the stock cooler!

It was also stable at 3.42GHz with a Noctua at 1.575Vcore.

Conclusion

We'd like to thank NCIX.com for helping us get a E4300 for this review. 

If you go by "stock" speed vs. maximum stable overclock, the Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 is THE BEST overclock I've ever achieved.

A true 100% overclock.

Running a 1.8GHz chip at 3.6GHz pleases me to no end.  And remember, this is a 100% stable result with the system running over 20-30hrs as we continuosly run benchmark after benchmark on it.

But wait...

We normally only report stable results - but I just had to include the below CPUZ screen capture of the highest unstable result where I was able to boot into Windows and run CPUZ :)

This was at 1.7Vcore; and kids, don't try this at home without at least some very good water cooling.

The E4300 is the best bang for the buck for an overclocking chip I've had the pleasure to work with to date. I'm getting one personally.

Intel has a sure fire winner on its hands, and it is an even better chip for enthusiasts than the 805 D that we first found to be an awesome overclocker. Personally, I prefer the E4300 to an E6400 even though I've managed to overclock the E6400 somewhat higher as you can achieve huge overclocks with more reasonably priced memory and motherboards. Spend the difference on superior cooling :)

I mean, seriously... here is a chip selling for $180 or so, nominally rated for 1.8GHz, that will out of the box run at up to 3.2GHz with stock cooling and stock Vcore. Add a nice Noctua 12, and a decent motherboard, and 3.4GHz should be attainable for most people. That is an incredible amount of bang for your buck.