Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU Overclocking and Performance Tests

We are going to check out the performance and overclocking potential of Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard using the following testbed:

• Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (rev. 1.0), BIOS F6;
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz, FSB 266MHz, 2MB, Conroe-2M, rev. B2);
• Memory: 2x1024MB Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D;
• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB;
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, ST3320620AS, 7200RPM, 16MB, SATA 320GB;
• CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS9700 LED;
• PSU: SunbeamTech Nuuo SUNNU550-EUAP (550W).

During the first system boot-up we experienced a small situation: we assumed that the processor fan connector was defective. The fan wasn’t spinning, but worked just fine when plugged into another connector. However, soon I remembered that Gigabyte mainboards have pretty aggressive processor fan rotation speed management activated by default. The fan starts spinning very slowly at about 40ºC CPU temperature. We often get caught unawares on this one :) We think it would make more sense to replace another sticker announcing extreme durability of the platform due to solid-state capacitors with the one warning that CPU Smart Fan Control is activated by default.

We weren’t at all discouraged by this incident. On the contrary, we were very pleased to see that the processor fan rotation speed management option works despite the 3-pin fan connector instead of four-pin one. However, the suspiciously high North Bridge heatsink temperature posed an immediate cause for concern. We hadn’t overclocked anything yet, hadn’t increased any voltages, but the temperature was high already. Although even a slight directed airflow was enough to cool things down to normal, so we installed an additional quiet 80-mm fan specifically for the chipset North Bridge.

As for the processor overclocking, it turned out so simple and quick to perform on Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard, that even a child can do it. We know what Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor is capable of: at 1.45V Vcore it can overclock and work stably at 490MHz FSB. These parameters were set in the mainboard BIOS, the system booted just fine and passed all tests. We only had to slightly correct the memory timings that were set automatically. The informational BIOS column stated that the memory was still working with 5-5-5-18 timings, while Windows utilities registered considerably higher 5-7-7-23 settings. So we had to adjust the timings manually.

There is a parameter called Performance Enhance in the MB Intelligent Tweaker section. By default it is set to Turbo that turned out to be very important for the overall system performance, because it can help affect Performance Level setting. The lower is Performance Level, the higher is the actual mainboard performance, but we couldn’t determine the actual value for it. If Performance Enhance is set to Turbo or Extreme, Performance Level equals 8 at 490MHz FSB – it is a good setting. If you set Performance Enhance to Standard, Performance Level increases to 12. The screenshots below allow you to estimate the actual performance difference in these two cases provided all other settings are identical. The first one stands for Performance Enhance set to Standard and Performance Level of 12, while the second one – for Performance Enhance set to Turbo and Performance Level of 8 respectively.

Well, the system is overclocked to 490MHz FSB, the memory timings are adjusted accordingly, but what is the final performance we are getting? As we know, Gigabyte mainboards used to drop their performance even before any overclocking kicked in, as soon as we switched CPU Host Clock Control from Disabled to Enabled. Moreover, the performance dropped too soon because of the FSB Strap. And although in nominal mode Gigabyte mainboards used to perform quite comparably, they were falling tangibly behind their competitors during overclocking.

To find out what the current situation is during overclocking, we performed a number of performance tests on Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mainboard with Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor clocked to 490MHz FSB. These were the tests that depend on the processor frequency, memory frequency and timing settings. The same set of tests was run in exact same conditions on abit IP35 Pro mainboard. The screenshots below show timing settings for Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (left) and abit IP35 Pro (right):