Can a core 2 duo E7400 be overclocked to give performance like i3 processors

My system is having core 2 duo E7400 @2.80 ghz and I wanted to know if I can achieve performance as that of i3 processors by overclocking it? I am not sure if that will be possible or not but if that’s possible then how much overclocking will I have to do? Any ideas? Will it be safe to overclock it for achieving i3 processors performance?

As far as I am aware i3 processors can perform around 4ghz easily, so the same will be benchmark for you to get performance closer to i3 processors by overclocking your core 2 duo E7400. I haven’t tried out the same by myself but I have come across benchmarks where some people had overclocked their core 2 duo E7400 up to 4ghz. This gain will surely vary as per the component of your system, so I will say that it is possible to achieve performance as that of i3 processors but I can’t give you any kind of assurance in your case. As far as safety is concerned, I can’t comment on that, a safe overclocking is where your system stays stable but if you try to stress it above that limit to achieve desired overclocking then you might face serious issue with your system. If you are well aware of overclocking method then I will just say, try it out but make sure that you are not stressing your cpu and maintaining stability and temperature of your system.

Yes I am aware of overclocking and I don’t have any issue in trying it out but I just wanted to know if it is possible to overclock my 2 duo E7400 for getting performance like i3 processors. Actually I haven’t come across any benchmark results regarding it because of which I was a bit confused. Since the stock speed of core 2 duo E7400 is 2.80 ghz in my case I don’t think I will be able to achieve 4 ghz but I think I will get closed to 3.8 or 9. Will surely give it a try and will post back my bench marks result after that. I just hope that my system touches 4ghz.

I will suggest you to post your system specification so that I can go through it and will find out the possible limit of overclocking. Just like Edi has mentioned in his very first post saying “Gain will surely vary as per the component of your system”, I mean to say if you are having old motherboard,ram or psu then you won’t be able to achieve 3.8 or 3.9 ghz as well. Just for an example one of my friends was having an old system with 2gb DDR2 ram, intergrated graphics, 180w psu. He simply upgraded his cpu to core 2 duo E7400 and was asking me if overclocking the same is possible or not. I just said no, I mean if you are having such a system then what’s the point of overclocking it, even if he overclock his system the gain will not be of any use because of other outdated components, in fact the system will might run in to graphics and overheating issues. So if you are having a system like that then better upgrade it to a decent one, atleast gpu and psu to see the actual gain in performance rather than running in to issues.

I agree upon that point but I am not actually having that old machine, in my case Intel core 2 duo E7400 @2.80 ghz processor, 4GB DDR3 ram , 320 GB HDD, radeon hd 6770 1gb ddr5 graphics card, 300 watt psu running on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit. I really don’t think that I won’t be able to see the actual gain in performance. Anyways as I have mentioned I have hope for getting my system stable up to 3.8 or 3.9 ghz, so just wish me luck and wait for my system benchmark result.