Which one is better, the Core 2 Duo E7400-7600 or the E8600 for overclocking?
Which one is better, the Core 2 Duo E7400-7600 or the E8600 for overclocking?
High FSB really helps you get more speed with your socket 775 stuff. Since you already have DDR2-800 chips, I think just leaving the FSB at 400 and only tweaking the multiplier instead of pushing it too high is a better move. That way, the memory won't slow things down because there isn't enough FSB speed to use them fully. With those Pentium Dual-Cores, I'd suggest setting Vcore to about 1.5 volts and trying multipliers like 9, 9.5, or even 10. After all, you already own the chips from that time and they aren't worth upgrading anyway, so why not let them show their true potential? A Core 2 Quad would have been great for running Windows smoothly in everyday tasks, but even if someone pushed it hard to over 200 watts of power, it probably wouldn't feel much better than today's 15-watt Pentium Gold dual-core. Those things were the same back then, and they've barely changed since. PCSX2 used to run on those old computers, but maybe it likes speed more than saving energy, and even a modern Pentium Gold only clocks at 2.3GHz right now.
I think you are getting a bad chip. I have two processors, a Pentium E5700 and a Core 2 Duo E7400. With the first one, it reached 3.9Ghz once, but that speed is gone now. But at 3.75Ghz, it stays stable and scores over 180 in Cinebench R15. That means I am running a Core 2 Duo with a 3.5Ghz speed without touching the voltage settings. It cannot go faster than this, but it gets the same score as before mostly because of that extra 1Mb of cache.