Overclocking a budget Core 2 Duo System (E6300)
 

The long-awaited Intel Conroe processors have finally been announced. We will start our Conroe family performance investigation with the youngest model in the family. This review will reveal the most extensive performance analysis, overclocking experiments and a detailed review of one of the first mainboards supporting the promising newcomer.

Although this review was already listed on our previous Core 2 reviews list, it deserves to be set apart as it focuses on a very interesting aspect of the new Core 2 processors: the low end, you'll see that it's not the CPU holding you back from a "crazy" overclocking, but the motherboard, the low multiplier makes it hard to get high clockspeeds because you'll run into motherboard FSB limitations. Worth a read!

Hopefully when the new ATi and NVidia chipset motherboards come out they'll alleviate this problem somewhat, because it has to really suck being motherboard limited on such a killer CPU. I have especially high hopes for the ATi motherboards due to how great the Crossfire Xpress 3200 boards for 939 were at overclocking.

Is there any hope for multiplier-unlocked conroes in the future?

there are already multiplier unlocked Conroes, but they'll cost you a bit;)

X6800 is one of them

the price of the used motherboard makes me cry tough, still +50% FSB is ok for an early board

when P965 hits the market bigtime, the price for Conroe mobo's will be more than acceptable

Only the X series will be inlocked from factory out.