Best overclocking abilities will be found on boards based on the 'extreme' chipsets - X38/X48. P35/P45-based boards should also be good.

Back in the days I had the Maximus Formula (X38) and the P5Q-E (P45) and the last one gave me much better results.

Just pick some fancy looking ASUS or Gigabyte board based on X38/X48 or P45 chipset. Those are readily available.

ninkeo wrote:

Hey guys, for my next project of late XP / Vista era gaming I've decided to go with socket 775 instead of 478 / 939 mainly because of cost reasons with graphics cards. Now I'm not overly that familiar with the whats what on the 775 platform, all I know is that there was the earlier intel chipsets that couldn't run a C2D at all. For this build, I'm aiming to push the CPU to its limits. What would be the best chipset / board that can run a Q6600 / 8400 to its limit?

That's the ''problem'' I have with such setups: Because of the availability/price of an older setup you can simply jump a few generations and still run the same software (and even better/faster).
Basically you can just run the same stuff on a current i7 desktop. Feels to me like doing retro rally's in a brand new Ford Focus RS....

For me there is not much ''retro'' or even ''old hardware'' in a 2008 setup, heck, my Seat Leon is from 2008 and far from being a classic car 🤣

I'm getting old...don't mind me and enjoy your setup! 😎

BTW: If you want cheap get a nice modded Xeon core2quad from china for your s775 setup. Just avoid the x38/x48 then and get a p35/p45 board as the first ones can have problems running the modded Xeon's (been there).

One of the best is the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P and the other Gigabyte boards of the same series.

X38 and X48 will not run near as high of an FSB reliably.

I had my Q6600 running at 3.84Ghz on my Gigabyte board.

C2D platforms gets pretty sweet with bus speed at 450 or higher.

You will want some DDR2-1066 RAM to go with it.

What about the ABIT IP35 Pro? Looks like it has some good OC features.

What about the ABIT IP35 Pro

Late ABIT boards are nothing spectacular and very buggy. You'll be very lucky to achieve 500mhz FSB with Core 2 Duo.
DFI and Biostar P45 boards are quite interesting for overclocking too, but good luck finding them. Also they very quirky to tune.

Biostar Tpower I45 was notorious to achieve 700+ mhz FSB.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Late ABIT boards are nothing spectacular and very buggy. You'll be very lucky to achieve 500mhz FSB with Core 2 Duo. DFI and Bio […]
Show full quote

What about the ABIT IP35 Pro

Late ABIT boards are nothing spectacular and very buggy. You'll be very lucky to achieve 500mhz FSB with Core 2 Duo.
DFI and Biostar P45 boards are quite interesting for overclocking too, but good luck finding them. Also they very quirky to tune.

Biostar Tpower I45 was notorious to achieve 700+ mhz FSB.

Now that you said it, I wonder how much can I achieve with a DFI Lanparty DK P45. I do have one with a massive Spire Thermax II (kinda looks like a CM 212 EVO) cooler and I could see what it can manage. The chip's already clocked at 3GHz.

Edited

I don't know how it performs in practice, but my Asus P5Q has A TON of useful options for overclocking in the BIOS. It can also run Xeons and there are some good modded BIOSes floating around for more flexibility. I'm running a Xeon E5440 at the stock 2.83GHz and it is one of the most solid systems I've ever used.

PcBytes wrote:

What about the ABIT IP35 Pro? Looks like it has some good OC features.

P35 can't hold a candle to P45 in terms of how high the FSB can be taken, especially on a quad core CPU.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Late ABIT boards are nothing spectacular and very buggy. You'll be very lucky to achieve 500mhz FSB with Core 2 Duo. DFI and Bio […]
Show full quote

What about the ABIT IP35 Pro

Late ABIT boards are nothing spectacular and very buggy. You'll be very lucky to achieve 500mhz FSB with Core 2 Duo.
DFI and Biostar P45 boards are quite interesting for overclocking too, but good luck finding them. Also they very quirky to tune.

Biostar Tpower I45 was notorious to achieve 700+ mhz FSB.

On LN2. How high can it go on air?

It is good to see that people are sticking with Intel chipsets for overclocking as Nvidia chipsets are power hogs that said some of the 780/790i boards can clock high provided one manages to deal with the cooling, DDR2-1066 is pretty much the standard for this.

In theory, if I managed to snag that Asus 780i board, how would it compare to the P35/45 boards, after getting the chipset cooling up to scratch? I imagine there wouldn't be too much difference in OC performance between them but again experience really counts when OC'ing them.

How high can it go on air?

480-520 with Core 2 Quad and 550+ with Core 2 Duo. I've achieved 540mhz with Core 2 Duo E8400 back when it was still hot stuff.

In theory, if I managed to snag that Asus 780i board, how would it compare to the P35/45 boards

Around 450-500mhz.

I wonder how much can I achieve with a DFI Lanparty DK P45

Same as Biostar - 480+ mhz. But that's FSB alone, without taking into consideration CPU overclock.

Ended up snagging that Asus Striker board for a reasonable price, looks like I've gone with nforce here. I've never played with any nforce based board before, so it'll be a bit of a learning experience and an adventure at the same time. Thanks for the suggestions guys, it was greatly appreciated learning about what's the best and whats not in the 775 era 😀

^^ little tip for dealing with nForce: if you get unexplained failures to boot or freezes halfway through POST, try removing ALL USB devices from every possible port FIRST. Especially non-bootable memory sticks. Every nForce thing I've ever owned, from Mac Minis to high-end ASUS SLI boards, has randomly refused to boot with some USB device or other connected.

I'd even recommend going with a PS/2 keyboard & mouse for this reason, especially if you're doing hardcore tweaking and a lot of reboots. Might save you some aggravation.

Edited.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

How high can it go on air?

480-520 with Core 2 Quad and 550+ with Core 2 Duo. I've achieved 540mhz with Core 2 Duo E8400 back when it was still hot stuff.

Ok.. so around what my Gigabyte board can do on air.

I was running my Gigabyte EP45-UD3P at 480fsb (960Mhz DDR2) with my Q6600 G0 .

And that was only because I was hitting the max that CPU would do. I actually still have that board since it has been returned to me after a family member upgraded.

Now I have some newer CPUs (QX9650 being the best) and will try for higher.