Overclocking Cpu's?
<div class="IPBDescription">How to and what is needed?</div> Ok i want to pull a bit more preformance out of my rig by clocking my new cpu. It's a AMD Athlon 2400, Right now it's running at 2 ghtz, im trying to get it to be atleast 2.5? Is this possible and how do i do it? Cooling isn't a problem because i have 2 very good fans. My mobo is a Shuttle, Agp 4x 512 mb sd ram.
Comments
And a 500mhz overclock is quite extreme btw...
I learned how to overclock on my own. I tried using some internet site and it was pretty much worthless because of the hugely varied number of mobos and processors out there.
So because I like giving toddlers guns, and I need a cheap laugh, I'll tell you how <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
First of all, check if your mobo has breakers on it. If it doesn't have any (Them banks of tiny switches), then you'll need to do it over your BIOS. Which is a lot easier. If it DOES have breakers, find the one with a corresponding table of multiplier settings (x25, x26, etc) and slowly change it higher, and check the running speed each time you boot. Let it cook after changing more then 2 multiplier levels.
If it's through your BIOS, it's a lot easier. My BIOS is so magical and happy, it was MADE for overclocking and has corresponding estimates of temperature gain and how many MHz you'll get out of the new setting. Simply adjust the number that says 'CPU multiplier'. You can also increase the voltage for a performance increase, but it's quite easy to blow all the crap to hell playing with THAT. You can overclock your GFx card, your RAM (Which you won't need to unless it's dying), hard drive, etc.
They're 7000 RPM fans, and my computer sounds like a jet, trust me they do not suck <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I took one out and the entire thing didn't work right until I put it back in. (Course, my processor is more powerful then yours is).
BTW: It takes a lot to burn or crack the chip. People that show 'OMG OVERCLOCKING MAADNESSS' and a shattered AMD chip are either retards, rich people having a laugh, or retarded rich people, because if you're running it hot enough to burn the core... you're a retard.
With 2 fans you might be able to manage +300Mhz or so. Maybe more, maybe less. You could always buy another fan, but then you have a leafblower, and a dust magnet. And dust build up can be just as bad as condensation.
overclocking is the process of making your chip run faster than intended, and like an athlete he gets darn hot and could get a heatstroke if not properly cooled.
youve got temperature, frontsidebus, multiplier and voltage.
if temps get too much the chip dies. thats why we talk about dozens of fans, good thermal paste and great heatsinks (75$ USD = great heatsinks)
the mhz is the fsb times the multiplier, and if the mhz gets too much for the chip it wont work, but that isnt irreversible damage, you can jsut turn it back down again. the fsb is how fast the board runs, so your memory has to be stable at that speed and your other components ahve to be acclimated to speed changes as well. the multiplier only effects the chip, sometimes you can crank it up a few knotches and gain speed without affecting the board, or you can turn it down if you want the board to go faster and the chip to stay the same speed.
if the fsb gets too high then other parts of the motherboard get hot too, hence northbridge coolers and mofset sinks.
and lastly voltage, if the mhz goes up, temps goes up and stability goes down, and as voltage rises temperature rises twofold and stability rise as well.
for instance
chip stock speed 99% reliability 50C, increased voltage by 0.1v, then stability will be 99.8% and temp will be around 60C.
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personally i use a liquid cooling system so temperature is not an issue, ive got my voltage maxed so that my chip can sustain high speeds while stable and cool, however, the chip is still limited by the motherboards capacity and its own core design, the memory inside my chip (l1 and l2 cache) was designed to run at 12 multiplier and 100 fsb, and it refuses to run at more than 8.5 multiplier and 166 fsb. no matter my temperature and the voltage is maxed in the bios it wont go faster.
now persumably i could get it to go faster with more voltage, because my cooling system can handle the load without heating up the chip. but my motherboard only supports a small range of voltage choices without crazy modifications like soldering, so here i am stuck. ive put a LOT of research and work into getting my 1.2ghz to go 1.416ghz, and i could probably get a 2.5ghz to go 3.0ghz, once i can afford one.
Example, thermaltake had a great sale on a water cooling set a month ago (Is it 'thermal-take' or 'thermal-taa-kee'?). I would've bought it but the system is designed to only fit in one type of case: Theirs.
Finally they're expensive as hell for what amounts to nothing more then an extravagent aquarium pump. Man it costs so much money to manufacture a plastic tank and tubing...
real men do it themselves! silent aquarium pump of decent power 35$, a heatercore of appropriate dimensions, 25$, tubing that you know will fit perfectly cuz you were able to play with it at the hardware store personally? 35 cents/foot. mid-level waterblock 40$.
all of your assumptions about liquid cooling are wrong uranium, these things just take an amazing amount of research and quite a bit of effort, but its not difficult or too expensive. when youre done youve got cooling surface area the size of five zalman flowers in that new heatercore. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
sure its possible to mess stuff up, but where in life doesnt that hold true!
surprising no company has solution that economical yet. if it's really the wave of the future, why aren't fans being phased out yet?
what would you change first if you had an athlon 64, asus k8v mobo, fsb 200 and multiplier 10? Uranium suggested upping the multiplier, and I haven't looked at that option yet, but bumping it up 1 to 11, and going from 2000 mhz straight to 2200, would seem risky...
my BIOS has a nice old-fashioned 'turbo' feature which ups my mhz from 2000 to 2063, which is decent I suppose... I did a benchmark before and after and there was actually an apparent DECREASE in performance though... no stability problems yet, and temp stays under 50 C...
perhaps I should do as some suggest and just leave it alone. makes me jealous to run 3DMark03 and compare my results online and see people with the same hardware getting like a 20% better score...
<hangover>U-235's ongoing ability to not only flame but make lovely generalised statements continues to amaze me.
It is <b>not</b> hard to trash your CPU, because all you need to do to do so is push your luck. Most CPU's do have a safe overhead of how far they can be overclocked, and you can still go a little further than that, it's like crush depth for submarines. But you've got absolutely NIL comeback if you end up with a molten puddle of silicon glue stuck to your mobo, wrecking both in the process.
Just trying to give you fair warning before you go there.
Oh....
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->surprising no company has solution that economical yet. if it's really the wave of the future, why aren't fans being phased out yet?
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Legal implications. You get one faulty unit, you've forking out in compensation for new PC & 'loss of vital data' as the courts say.
- Shockwave </hangover>
<hangover>U-235's ongoing ability to not only flame but make lovely generalised statements continues to amaze me.
It is <b>not</b> hard to trash your CPU, because all you need to do to do so is push your luck. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And just like any OTHER form of gambling, you learn to quit while you're ahead, instead of being spending all your cash thinking you'll keep winning, so my point still stands. If you have brains it's hard to melt your chip. If you don't, it's easy. From your reply, I assume you're one who managed to do it.
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I stand proved correct.
Incidentally, no, I didn't.
I have a AMD 2500 XP+, barton core. This lovely chip runs at around 30'c at MAX load with the standard cruddy heatsink that would go with it. People have overclocked it with the same heatsink to a 2800+ XP, and it has still run stable and fine.
So I've got a lovely all copper thermaltake volcano and I am going to overclock to a 2800 slowly. If the temp is still ok at max load, I shall OC it to a 2900, 3000 and so on.
The best part? The 3200 costs ?300, the 2500 ?60. I have heard they are the same chip, just one runs at a higher speed... soo um, whatever <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I get the power of a ?200 chiop for ?60, I think I did something right there <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
...all I have to worry about is getting fur in the fans or on the motherboard..... hehehhee
The problem with p4's in terms of overclocking is that the CPU multiplier is locked(in the case of athlon64's I think it is only locked upwards, meaning you can go ahead and underclock it <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->).
This is a problem because you will very quickly need to run the FSB and memory out of sync(EG running with FSB:MEM divider of 5:4 at 3 GHz if you wish your memory to run at 400 MHz as it normally would for a p4 C processor), this causes extra memory latency and can even hurt performance more than it helps in rare circumstances.
Don't just check temps, run memtest86 and something stressfull like prime95 for a few hours.
Don't just check temps, run memtest86 and something stressfull like prime95 for a few hours. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for the advice ^^
Until we get more information (mobo, heatsink, thermal paste, current load temps) we really shouldn't be telling him how much (much less how) he can overclock. Do some research, overclockers.com is a very good resource and their forums are even better.
Beast, you have a good chip there and should have no problem putting it to a 3200+ or farther. I have the same chip and 560 grams of pure copper directly over the top of it, and I plan on putting it much faster than a 3200+.
www.amdforums.com
both are a great resource.
and DiscoZombie, as to why it has settings for mhz, those are presets with the multiplier and fsb, probably 10x133, 10x166 and 10x200, which is why you dont see it go past 2,000 mhz, but by changing settings manually it can do just about any combination.
the new amd chips are "locked" that means you cant change the multiplier, because SO many people were buying amd 2500+ and making them go 3200+ that they were losing money <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
www.amdforums.com
both are a great resource.
and DiscoZombie, as to why it has settings for mhz, those are presets with the multiplier and fsb, probably 10x133, 10x166 and 10x200, which is why you dont see it go past 2,000 mhz, but by changing settings manually it can do just about any combination.
the new amd chips are "locked" that means you cant change the multiplier, because SO many people were buying amd 2500+ and making them go 3200+ that they were losing money <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are ways around the lock, but its INCREDIBLY dangerous to your mobo and processor as it involves sticking a wire into two of the pin holes which the processor sits in.
A 2400+ should be a Tbred-B and there are a lot of steep overclocks with those. try getting a nice heatsink and toying with it. I have an Alpha Pal8045 and it works great. <a href='http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=35%2D112%2D002&searchdepa=0' target='_blank'>Link to Newegg.com's listing of Alpha pal 8045</a>
also check www.highspeedpc.com and www.frozencpu.com for more supplies. To be honest I don't think your cpu is holding you back for the average game. It really is a blast to over clock so go for it and remember to go in small steps, checking for stabliltiy after each jump.
If you want to overclock an A64 system I would recommend pushing the hyper transport bus, so that you can increase the cpu speed in small steps.
Multipliers are usually in half steps. The highest my A7n8x has is 12.5 for example, the lowest being 8.5.
Another great resource is the hardocp forums, which can be found from the main page, www.hardocp.com
Yes it does. You're quite wrong. <a href='http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?catalog=343&DEPA=1&submit=property&mfrcode=0&propertycode=&propertycodevalue=4159,3928' target='_blank'>see?</a>
How does it feel being wrong? I only ask because I've seen you go from thread to thread around here and either flame people or just be extremely rude while you act superior.
Have a nice day
BTW: Reported for flamebaiting.