Overclocking Northbridge

[ashammay]

My specs are as follows
Specs:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.6GHz
MOBO: ASUS M4A78T-E
GPU: PNY GTX 260 core 216
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master V8 (with an Excalibur fan)
Case: Cooler Master Sniper
Memory: (4GB DDR3) A-DATA Gaming Series

I have finished over clocking my Black Edition CPU and I want to overclock my Northbridge now. I realize I'm going to have to change some voltages somewhere in the process so my question is this...Which voltage setting should I touch? There are two different voltage settings in my BIOS. One is named "CPU/NB voltage" and the other is just named "NB voltage". I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. I just want to know what each one does and what I should do to overclock my Northbridge.

 

[henydiah]

I think the overclock NB not necessary because the main goal is to overclock the CPU, RAM and GPU.

in the third overclock (CPU, RAM, GPU) NB will participate Permits automatic setting is raised slightly or decreased slightly as needed,
OC sometimes successful and NB systems is still in its original state as the default.

 

[photonboy]

I do not recommend you overclock the NB.

It will absolutely not affect gaming performance. Also, these chips tend to have significantly less cooling than your CPU and thus you may damage your chip.

The Northbridge chip is for communicating between your CPU and other parts of your computer (bus, memory etc). Architectures vary, but I know of no scenario which is likely to improve performance with an overclocked Northbridge unless your CPU and other components are also overclocked even more than they currently are.

For gaming, your bottlenecks are in the hard drive for loading the game and levels but mainly in the graphics card(s) with that CPU.

If your purpose in overclocking is for gaming, I actually recommend to throttle back your CPU overclock. Run the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) during a game and observe how much of your CPU is being used (observe all cores). I've never seen a game use 100% of any core. Most modern games use on average 20% of the raw processing potential of my CPU (i7-860) when paired with an HD5870. It's probably closer to 50% of what the game engine could actually use as games can't use 100% of all the cores in a system.

Summary:
1) overclocking your NB is not recommended. Probably completely useless. Potentially it can destroy your motherboard.

2) overclocking your CPU will not benefit any games with your setup (you'd need two high-end graphics cards to stress the CPU)

3) I recommend throttling your CPU back to normal speeds. Games will run exactly the same but the heat and noise will be less.

 

[photonboy]

I should add that the only area in which an overclocked CPU is likely to make a difference is situations like VIDEO CONVERSION or COMPRESSION programs capable of using all the cores in your system. In such cases, a 20% overclock results directly in a 20% improvement in the time it takes.

All other program are bottlenecked elsewhere such as your hard drive, graphics card or the Internet.

I personally do occasionally recode video for portability. I either don't bother to increase CPU speed because time is no big issue or else I use Gigabyte's software to overclock my system rather than doing it manually. I then recode my video after which I reset to stock CPU speeds.

 

[christop]

Agree I wouldn't oc your nb.

 

[Nakkiel]

For gaming, your bottlenecks are in the hard drive for loading the game and levels

2) overclocking your CPU will not benefit any games with your setup (you'd need two high-end graphics cards to stress the CPU)

Neither of those is right.. most games load data from the HD to memory before you need it, so the hard drive is not a constraint, it's speed ends up just being a convenience in most games.

Simply because you aren't fully loading your CPU doesn't mean you won't benefit from increasing it's response time. There are also games that are actually more CPU intensive than GPU, such as Starcraft 2.

 

[lowjack989]

I had an increase in fps on all games with a moderate OC of the NB and HT..2600MHz on both increased my fps globally by 10-15fps.....Games:

Fallout:NV
Crysis
MS Flight Sim. X
Just Cause 2