How to overclock my rig

[scothern]

Okay, I know itsnot the greatest compared to some of the monsters I bet youguys have, but its only a year old and I don't have the flow to replace it for awhile. I want to overclock the hell out of my rig. i plan on goign back to water cooling with a Kandalf case from Thermaltake, but before I drop teh bills on tat set-up, I want ot get my system OC'ed or at least figure out what it should be at. Here is my hardware can anyone help?

AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (Socket 939)
OCZ Platinum Rev 2 RAM (2x512, Dualchannel kit, 2-2-2-5 timings)
Thermaltake Toughpower 700W PSU
XFX Geforce 6800XT PCIE Video card 256MB
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 SLI Motherboard.
WD 160GB SATA2 Hard drive
Samsung SATA DVD/RW

Any help would be appreciated.

Oh yeah I forgot the kicker...I'm runnign Windows Vista Business, not the 64bit version.

 

[morg]

first, get a car battery, ... 8O :?

no, don't i'm not serious...
overclocking is setting the cpu fsb over the standard stock fsb.
with an FX, your cpu multiplier is unlocked ( which is maxed on a standard cpu. ) first, set the cpu multi at the lowest that works in the bios. then,
try ti find the max frequency of your ram. it increases cpu fsb... your ram running at 200mhz fsb 2-2-2-5 could work at 210 mhz at the same voltage ( lock your pci to 33mhz ). you can check your warranty info about the ram and check what is the max voltage staying under warranty. get a compromise between frequency and latency. i'd bet around 2.5-3-3-10/11 at 233/266mhz resulting in 466mhz-533mhz ram.

you board has a limit with the settings. personnally, i stay in multiple of 33mhz but you do as you want. get the fastest STABLE fsb. perform a test between every increase step. do not increase voltages too fast. that could be dangerous for your hardware.

cpu frequency is XXXmhz * multiplier
where X is half your ddr ram frequency
use cpu voltage carefully. increase it to improve stability.
it causes more heat and can damage the CPU.
set the cpu frequency to it's stock clock speed
stock = 200x13... 2600mhz
in case your fsb is 233 ( 466mhz )
test = 233x 11.5 = 2679.5mhz at stock voltage. if unstable, decrease fsb.
test2 = 233x12 = 2.8ghz if unstable, increase voltage
233x12.5 = 2.9ghz if unstable increase voltage.

if you increase voltages and it makes no difference, let it down. try to lower fsb to check if your cpu has a prefered setting.

prefered settings for S939

dual channel on ( improves performance )
limit of 2 ram sticks ( 1T command Rate )
Latency to lowest ( improve ram speed )
ram frequency higher ( speed up ram and cpu bandwith )
then, evaluate max achievable cpu multi ( check fx-55 oc vcore values )


then, make everything you can to test stability.
if you don't, you'll get blue screens, irq error messages, windows crashes.

 

[scothern]

Thansk for the details. Now, my motherboard has a lot of settings in the RAM section, its a overclockers motherboard suposidly. I'm not sure where to adjust the timings and which settings to change.

I appreciate all the help, I'm such a newb at this but really to make it work.