Just learning to overclock!!

[groth2757]

I just started to fiddle around with OC'ing. I have been a long time builder of PC's and now want to get more out of the money I put into this hobby. My old CPU is an Intel PIII 1GHz. I recently increased the FSB to 145 giving me a very samll increase to 1093.99 MHz. I tried a setting of 150 first and eveerything ran fine but when I would play a heavy duty 3D game like Jedi Outcast the game would eventually crash. Any reason for this? Also, what is the cut-off point where one would move from a premier HSF to a water cooled or peltier system? Any help would be great!!!!

<font color=red>When overclocking always be sure to wear clean underwear!</font color=red>

 

[girish]

10% oc at stock specs is quite okay, to go further you will need to provide better cooling and/or tweak the core voltage. Peltiers are way to far away for this case, you should quite easily get to at least 1300 MHz with just better cooling and tweaking the core voltage by a quarter or two.

What board do you have? Since Intel CPUs can be overclocked just by the FSB, the board plays an important role in the project, if the board cannot handle higher FSBs you are stuck. Also check if the memory is running to fast, if you have some good memory you wont have any problem but cheap memories tend to crash at relatively smaller FSB overclocks.

Remember, with every MHz you increase on the FSB the processor's core speed will increase by 7.5 MHz so if you are making big jumps on the FSB you might miss the best stable speed and jump straight past it to unstability!

Right now, just get a better cooler like the OCz gladiator or MC-462.

girish

<font color=red>Nothing is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[simactive]

If i wanted to oc a Dell, would that be advisable??!??!? I want to try out it on some computers....Thx. What do i need to change in the BIOS because it seems i can't change anything.

\\\//3// 7//3 31337 (0///3 |=0|2 J0/\ 83 |234|)j!!!1

 

[groth2757]

I'm using an Abit BX133-RAID board and read reviews that this board is very overclocker friendly. I did drop down the FSB to 147 with a multiplier of 7.5 and it seems very stable at this OC. I gues to go any higher I will need a better HSF or watercooling. I picked up a new Gigabyte GA-7VRXP the other day at a PC show and can't wait to get started with this board. It got great reviews but the only thing I'm worried about is the process to unlock the AMD XP processors. I ordered a ThermalTake Volcano 7+ for this mobo and hopefully I'll get some good overclock speeds out of the board with that HSF. How far would you suggest I overclock the AMD XP before I move from the ThermalTake to something else? Thanks again for the help!!!

<font color=red>When overclocking always be sure to wear clean underwear!</font color=red>

 

[girish]

usually branded computers do not have OC-friendly boards, so i guess it would be difficult doing so. Even their BIOS doesnt have any options to overclock!

But you can use a FSB changer program like softFSB or CPUFSB to change the FSB from Windows. Open the case and look for a crystal marked as 14.318, this 14.318 MHz crystal provides the reference frequency which te clock generator chip uses to generate the FSB, PCI and AGP frequencies. This clock generator chip will be the one right next to that 14.318 crystal. Note down the chip manufacturer and the part number.

You might have that chip supported in CPUFSB or softFSB so that you can change the values on the fly. If it isnt, you are stuck! If you know who made the board (large OEMs outsource boards from big names like Gigabyte, Asus, ECS etc and put their own BIOS and labels) and try its original BIOS. A bit risky but could work.

girish

<font color=red>Nothing is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[girish]

The BX133 is a very good OC-friendly board, but it needs good memory and a good video card to support higher FSBs. You PCI/AGP busses are already running at 37 and 98 MHz. BX boards did not support 133 MHz FSB so the AGP divider of 1/2 may not be implemented, check out if it is else the AGP speed will be 2/3 of the FSB which is already pretty high at 98 MHz. This one might as well be the impediment!

You can upgrade the HSF to see whether it can be OCed further.

As for the Athlon unlocking process, its pretty simlpe and you wont have worry about it. If you arent unlocking it, even then its fine since you can oc to a fair extent with just the FSB. Almost all Athlons can be overclocked by as much as 15~25%, the XP1500 (1.33 GHz) or XP1700 (1.47 GHz) being the optimum overclockers. Even without unlockcing you can get them to run at 1.5~1.6 GHz which is close to XP2000!

With the Volcano-7 HSF and the given board, I guess you could overclock the processor by at least 200 MHz, the Volcano-7 is a pretty good HSF already. remember, each 66 MHz block will get you 100 XP points, so at 200, you are already XP300 over stock! Then you can start tweaking with the voltage and arrange for better cooling.

But in all cases, make sure its not the RAM or the PCI/AGP busses that are being overclocked too much. Continuously monitor the temperatures and dont let them go much beyond 50°C.

Best of luck with that!

girish

<font color=red>Nothing is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[GearJammer2513]

Just to prove a point, I'm running an XP1500+ at 1700MHz. This is a little faster than the XP2000+ which runs at 1666MHz. I'm also using a Volcano7 with the thermal sensor tucked down into the HS itself so that it will react more to the temp of the CPU than the Case Temp.
I'm also going to school at BCTI and in the Advanced Information Systems Hardware class, we are using some old Dell computers. We just found out last night that these boards are so old, they don't support CD-ROM's which sucks because we are unable to install sound cards which have their drivers on CD. Kinda makes me lose respect for the company. And another thing, these computers use an NLX case and board. This would be great if NLX's were a norm for today's computers, but we need to get some ATX cases and boards if we are going to learn to repair them.

Keep asking questions here and with everyone's help, you will get a sucessful overclock story to post!

Believe only half of what you read and none of what you hear! Unless it's in THGC forum.

 

[groth2757]

In the setup that I explained in a previous post I change the multiplier in the bios up to about 10.5 and my FSB is 148. But when I run WCPUID it says my multiplier is still 7.5. Any reason for this???

:tongue: <font color=red>When overclocking always be sure to wear clean underwear!</font color=red>' :tongue:

 

[girish]

ALL intel processors later than Pentium-II 300 MHz have factory locked multiplier. There is no known method to change it! Intel did this to ensure the processors are not remarked, a vice which was rampant back then! Even a simple tweak at a multiplier by 0.5 would fetch the vendor a couple of hundred dollars!

Most of the boards used the multiplier setting anticipating a leak from intel or some backdoor method being discovered to unlock the Pentium-III but to no avail! So these settings are just useless. Dont worry there is no problem with the board nor the processor.

girish

<font color=red>Nothing is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>