New to Oc' help plz

[th3proph3t]

so i dont really know much bout oc

heres my specs if someone can help

msi sli 500 mobo
gig of 800 ddr2 ram
amd 64x2 4200
coolmaster aqua cooling so not much worries there
2x evga 256 sli 7600gs
and i think a 500w psu not sure on exacts if needed i can try and find out

i am not really looking for a nuts oc just something to get a little more quailty out of my system and what not maybe like 2.5 and dunno much bout vid card oc so wouldnt be able to guess what i want there thnx for putting up with this nubbishness

by the way games i play CS:S, guildwars, DOD, Quake 4, UT2K4, Doom3

 

[applejuice85]

You should have at least a few tools to help you out.

CPU-Z to measure clock speed and HT values
Prime 95 to stress test
Motherboard or 3rd party motherboard diagnostic utility to measure CPU temps and so on.

With overclocking typically you do not want to ever push the HT value past 1000Mhz (2000Mhz effective).

So you first are going to want to do is set your HT link and Ram ratio to their lowest possible values. (1x for HTT and 1:something not 1 for ram ratios) You do this to test the CPU and make sure that if you run into issues that they do not come from external to the CPU hardware issues. Also disable AMD Cool'n'Queit.

Now go ahead and push your FSB up a couple of notches. I would imagine with your setup that you can easily obtain 2.6Ghz. A FSB of 237 from 200 should get you to your goal if I remember your CPU multiplier correctly. You may need to bump up your core voltage a touch here in there if you start to experiance strange lockups, blue screens, or programs crashing. But at 2.6Ghz you shouldn't need to adjust the voltage much and if it is left on AUTO your system should take care of itself. But keep this in mind if you see odd things happen.

*Remember thermal limit of Athlon 64s is said to be 65C. So you want to target 50C under load.. 55C is the higher end of OK.

So go ahead and reboot and load up your system monitors, CPU-Z to make sure everything is running where you set it and that HTT is not set about 1000 (2000 effective) and let prime 95 do its thing for 15 minutes. Watch your temps and if things are good for the 15 stress test you can allow yourself to push your FSB up a few notches or let the test go for a couple of hours if you are happy with your temps and speed.

Once you have settled in with your CPU OC via pushing your FSB feel free to set your HTT to something like 4x multiplier... the closer you get to 1000 the better. And your Ram ratio to something as close to 1:1 if not that to make things stable. With a push of an extra few mhz you might be able to squuze by with 1:1, but probably 5:3 or some such thing.

Yeah... Anyways. Hope that helps. I have no experiance with SLI or socket AM2 so I cannot give you more details. But google up some OC articles out there, lots of good ones!


Tenderly - I remain,

Applejuice85