E6300 + Asus P5B Deluxe

[smitcopleyhill]

I've just bought an E6300 CPU and i'm planning on buying an Asus P5B Deluxe board. I've heard overclocking is easy with some software supplied by Asus. Is that true? And also how much ram would give me optimal performance? Does the speed have a big influence?

Thanks

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
I've just bought an E6300 CPU and i'm planning on buying an Asus P5B Deluxe board. I've heard overclocking is easy with some software supplied by Asus. Is that true? And also how much ram would give me optimal performance? Does the speed have a big influence?

Thanks

don't use software to overclock. use the BIOS.

I'd get the best memory you can afford to get. Faster memory speed does provide benefits. You could go cheap with memory but then you're limited to a certain FSb even though your CPU will go higher.

 

[smitcopleyhill]

Well my budget for the ram is about £200 (roughly $400) so i'm hoping i could get some good quality ram for that price. I've heard corsair ram works well with the asus board?

 

[Hajpoj]

Maybe you should get an E6600 cpu instead, that way you really only need $200-$300 ram. You can decide to spend your money on the better ram, or the better cpu.

The higher the multiplier, the ram becomes less crucial.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Hajpoj
Maybe you should get an E6600 cpu instead, that way you really only need $200-$300 ram. You can decide to spend your money on the better ram, or the better cpu.

The higher the multiplier, the ram becomes less crucial.

Um...no I'd get better memory before a CPU that won't clock ANY higher. The E6600 caps out where the E6400 does.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
Well my budget for the ram is about £200 (roughly $400) so i'm hoping i could get some good quality ram for that price. I've heard corsair ram works well with the asus board?

I'd budget a bit more and get This it will go to DDR2-1000+ at cas4.

 

[smitcopleyhill]

I was going to buy an E6600 but i got the E6300 off a friend for cheap so i think i'll stick with that for now. I'm thinking of buying 2 x 1GB sticks of Corsair ram. Is there any reason to not do this?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
I was going to buy an E6600 but i got the E6300 off a friend for cheap so i think i'll stick with that for now. I'm thinking of buying 2 x 1GB sticks of Corsair ram. Is there any reason to not do this?

Corsair doesn't overclock well unless you buy the HIGH end (i.e. overpriced) sets.

Look at G.Skill HZ Series, Team Xtreme, CellShock, Geil Ultra, or Crucial.

They will overclock better, Your E6300 would be limited to 7x multiplyer meaning you are limited to whatever speed your memory can do with a P5B. You would need memory that can do over DDR2-800 if you go past 400Mhz FSB. Your E6300 should run fine at 457Mhz FSB (for about 3.2Ghz) but your memory needs to be able to do DDR2-914.

 

[smitcopleyhill]

Ok thanks for all your replies I will take your advice and check out that memory. I haven't bought the board yet so if you recommend any other boards for a similar price (£130/$260) then that would be great!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
Ok thanks for all your replies I will take your advice and check out that memory. I haven't bought the board yet so if you recommend any other boards for a similar price (£130/$260) then that would be great!

It's a great mobo, but personally if I were you I'd get an EVGA Nforce 680i board and some less expensive DDR2-800 memory. That mobo has the benefit of running your memory at a lower frequency than your FSB speed. So you can run DDR2-800 and your FSB can be 450Mhz. With a P5B you would need to run your memory at the same speed as your FSB when you overclock high.

I recommend the EVGA over the Asus because it's cheaper, much cheaper.

 

[smitcopleyhill]

I'm intrigued as to why you're advising me to go for the EVGA board when you yourself are using the Asus one. you said it's cheaper but i did some searching and i only found it £50 cheaper which isn't an absolute fortune!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
I'm intrigued as to why you're advising me to go for the EVGA board when you yourself are using the Asus one. you said it's cheaper but i did some searching and i only found it £50 cheaper which isn't an absolute fortune!

680i > P965

so it's a better board for less money...why question it?

 

[smitcopleyhill]

Sorry, i don't mean to sound ungrateful for all the advice. I just wondered why you're using the more expensive board if the EVGA one is better?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
Sorry, i don't mean to sound ungrateful for all the advice. I just wondered why you're using the more expensive board if the EVGA one is better?

The 680i just came out.

 

[smitcopleyhill]

Ok i apologise man. Just checked and i must have been looking at the wrong board because the P5B is £130 and the 680i is £180. So am i best off spending the extra and getting the better board? Thanks!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: smitcopleyhill
Ok i apologise man. Just checked and i must have been looking at the wrong board because the P5B is £130 and the 680i is £180. So am i best off spending the extra and getting the better board? Thanks!

If I had the choice yes. Not only is it a better overclocking board (more options for memory speeds), but it has SLI compatability which is nice if you want it.

 

[Thor86]

Wait a minute, you cannot run memory dividers/ratios with Asus P5B Deluxe?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Thor86
Wait a minute, you cannot run memory dividers/ratios with Asus P5B Deluxe?

you can run 1:1 and anything above 1:1 like 4:5 etc. But you cannot run anything lower than your FSB.

For example if I wanted to boot my system at 480Mhz FSB, I'd need memory that could do 1:1 ratio or DDR2-960. With a 680i I can boot at 480Mhz FSB on an E6300 for 3.36Ghz (most E6300 will do that), but keep my memory at DDR2-800 running low timings and 1T command rate. The 1T command rate helps tremendously. Basically to equal the performance of a 680i running DDR2-800 at 4-4-4-12-1T you need a P5B running at DDR2-1200 or higher and that can only be done with really expensive high end memory and only at 5-5-5-15.

And I guarantee it won't be stable 24/7 at DDR2-1200.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
The 1T command rate helps tremendously. Basically to equal the performance of a 680i running DDR2-800 at 4-4-4-12-1T you need a P5B running at DDR2-1200 or higher and that can only be done with really expensive high end memory and only at 5-5-5-15.

And I guarantee it won't be stable 24/7 at DDR2-1200.

Which review has shown this? The Anandtech, Techreport and Xbitlabs reviews suggest that even with 2T timings, the P965 is a match for the 680i in performance.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
The 1T command rate helps tremendously. Basically to equal the performance of a 680i running DDR2-800 at 4-4-4-12-1T you need a P5B running at DDR2-1200 or higher and that can only be done with really expensive high end memory and only at 5-5-5-15.

And I guarantee it won't be stable 24/7 at DDR2-1200.

Which review has shown this? The Anandtech, Techreport and Xbitlabs reviews suggest that even with 2T timings, the P965 is a match for the 680i in performance.

Over at XS there's people posting about the 680i they achieve higher clocks with their memory on 680i boards and one person on AT forums posted some numbers with 1T command rate vs 2T and the difference is pretty large. Lets me see if I can find it.

Here's one thread http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1971132&enterthread=y

Look at Lopri and Yoxxy's score. They show that 800Mhz 1T is faster than 1100Mhz 2T