PainIs4ThaWeak1 wrote:That's too bad you're stuck with 800Mhz RAM.
As others have said, the E8400 is perfectly capable of a 450x9 FSB-to-Multiplier - Been running mine that way for nearly two years.
I think he can actually overclock further despite only having DDR800. I have an E8400 and almost the same board (ASUS P5Q SE PLUS, the cheap version basically), and I can set my DDR1066 down to around 850mhz, even with my FSB at 440mhz. In other words, this board has a lot of dividers to work with.
Not that 600mhz of free performance is bad, but 1000mhz is better.
Coran Fixx wrote:Thats what makes the 3.6 the sweet spot. I ran my e8400 at 3.6 for Years without a voltage bump, the auto memory setting making my ram run at its rated 800mhz. I actually up to 4.2 but needed alot of voltage to be happy there. I was using 4 x 2gb of corsair value ram. I don't recall having to set the memory to 667 first, but I had an evga board and not an ASUS. I have never lost a os install to a overaggressive overclock. Just had to clear the cmos a few times (either a jumper setting or remove the mb button battery).
I've had pretty much the same experience with my E8400, although I settled on around 4ghz as a reasonable overclock. I got it up to 4.3ghz stable in IBT/P95, but that required a LOT more voltage (and produced much more heat) than 4ghz. I've never lost an OS install to anything other than a HDD crash, and have overclocked almost every computer I've owned. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think the risk is pretty small.