Just bought a Core 2 is it worth Overclocking it?

ocelot20

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Hello,

So a few months back I built my self a budget PC I mean really cheap. 4gb DDR3 ram, HD 5450, Pentium 4 650 I think only paid about £5 for it. Anyhow It played some games on low to medium settings just fine. But after playing the Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 demo. It worked but a bit of lag was noticable I thought I would upgrade the CPU. So I bought a Core 2 Duo e6400 for dirt cheap.

When I was looking for some information about this CPU. Some sites and youtube video's where going on about Overclocking it. I have never ever overclocked a CPU before. I have read up about over clocking and it says they it can help games run better. Is this right? Is it worth over clocking it? I won't be playing much on there as I all ready have a gaming PC. Maybe the odd play of the new Age Of Empires Online and SWAT 4 and Fallout 3 and maybe Pro Evo 12 when it is out.

Also how do I overclock a CPU lol.
 
It would help if you posted your hardware details.

Overclocking can make a difference if you are gaming at low monitor resolutions but at the end of the day it may not be possible if your motherboard, processor heatsink (stock heatsink won't keep it cool enough), memory and even power supply aren't up to the job. The HD5450 is a decent graphics card but by todays standards it's a great HTPC card but it's not powerful enough for the latest games.
 
Overclocking the CPU would help but then you are probably going to have to go out and buy a cooler. The money would be much better spent on a graphics card, even £30 ish quid second hand can get you a much better card than you currently have and let you play games without issue
 
My PC specs at the moment are:

Coolermaster Elite CM-RS500-PSAPJ3-IT 500W
Gigabyte GA-EG41MFT-US2H G41
2x Crucial 2GB DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 (4g in total)
Casecom Black/Silver Mid Tower Case
200GB Toshiba HDD
ATI HD5450.
24" HDTV

As I said this is really only going to be used for old games like SWAT 4 and games that don't require much like Counter Strike and Hitman Blood Money ect.
 
If you're playing games at the native resolution of your screen (1080p) it will be your graphics card that's slowing down the show rather than your processor.

There can be some modest gains with overclocking an E6400 even with a standard heatsink and fan. (I used mine at 2.6GHz with a standard fan and 2.92GHz with a larger cooler with load temperatures under 65C at 1.45V).

Check your CPU usage when gaming with task manager in the background and see if it nears 100% much of the time / when you feel the game is slowing down. If it does then yes, overclocking will help a little. Read a good guide first, anandtech is a good place to start.
 
New graphics card and a arctic cooler 7 heatsink. Overclock and you should get about 3ghz or higher if your lucky
 
There is simple overclocking and advanced overclocking

Will outline simple

Firstly enter bios and ensure the cpu clocking is set to manual

First drop the speed of the ram because overclocking the cpu will overclock the ram we do not want this at first

find the vcore using a program liek everest if it is not showing in bios make a note but leave it as is same applies to vdimm for ram

Slowing increase the FSB of the cpu just go up in 5's and run a benchmark such as prime 95. Always monitor temps of cpu using coretemp

If the system gets to hot before it crashes the first time you need a better cooler.

Eventually the cpu will crash hopefully while running prime95 so its got past boot but at this point you can now start to tweak the vcore. Be careful of temps and only tweak the vcore the tiniest amount at a time. Then benchmark. You should be able at this point to get the vcore up high enough to allow the cpu to pass the benchmark. If you are happy with the results leave it here. You can also now try to tweak the ram


Remember little steps slowly and always monitor temp
 

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