Getting started with overclocking

I finally decided to take that step and overclock my custiom built rig, but I have little experience :[
Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ currently running at ~1.9 GHz
1 x 74 GB Raptor HDD SATA 10,000 RPM
1 x eVGA Geforce 6800GT 256MB (Want to overclock as well)
1 GB Corsair ValueSelect
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 Motherboard
500W Power Supply

So far my comp has been locking up whenever I go higher than 1.9 GHz. I have been using the tool "Ai Booster" that came with the Asus board but gives me minimal boost in performance. I'm not looking for a big jump, but enough to keep a steady 125 fps in my games at a resolution of 1024x768 and that includes oc'ing my graphics card if possible. I may have more questions later on, but if someone could guide me through this bit I would be more than happy :]

www.overclockers.com

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Originally Posted by Ferrit

www.overclockers.com

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Well hell, yeah, but they won't tell you the first rule of overclocking as they don't know it, or more correctly they choose to ignore it, & that's don't if you don't know what you are doing completely ! ..'cos they all think they do, of course ..

AI booster by Asus, isn't actually half bad & you should be able to get decent gains with that, up to the order of 15-20%, which is about all you can expect, without extra cooling anyway, & doing what no 3rd party tool should be doing & that's changing voltages, as that can dramatically cut any components life, which isn't really suceedingin o/c terms, more a bit of slow cooking ! :eek2:

btw if you want to overclock sucessfully, you need to be sure of all your components, '500w psu' doesn't sound so promising (more juice needed & get a good brand like morex or enermax), - this is probably the most important component you can buy, as everything is dependent on it ;) ...

As of right now I've been able to raise processor speed from 1.8 to 2.5 GHz just using th Ai Booster. But thsi also required me to up the CPU voltage to 1.6 to reach this :o. Is this going to cook my processor over time??

Also PSU came with the case and so I'm guessing it was made from Aspire. Will it need to be replaced?

You may be overheating your box if it's freezing up.

-Ed hit the nail on the head, to do justice to overclocking you really have to think about cooling. That and a solid power supply is a great start.

Here are some articles to get you started:
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardw...utorials/23/1/

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardw...ral/tutorials/

Masada, your board may not be stable at the higher clock speed. I'll agree with -ed and go a bit further. WHAT'S THE POINT? A few megaHertz, even several hundred, just won't translate into performance you can see. Once upon a time, when processors ran at something like 400 MHz, a gain of 10% meant a significant (and noticeable) improvement in system performance.

Today, that doesn't mean jack! The time and effort, as well as expenses for upgraded fans, etc. is pointless. A computer system needs balanced hard drive, memory, video, and CPU performance to deliver the goods. Overclocking the CPU won't deliver a significant performance improvement. It will just void your warranty.

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Originally Posted by masada

As of right now I've been able to raise processor speed from 1.8 to 2.5 GHz just using th Ai Booster. But thsi also required me to up the CPU voltage to 1.6 to reach this :o. Is this going to cook my processor over time??

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Ai booster lets you up voltage too ? Errr well, I guess I didn't know it did that then (when I look at newer versions you can set voltage yourself, or allow it to 'automanage' based somehow I guess on feedback from the motherboard), & explains your rather spectactular gains, but in answer - yes -any increase in voltage may well be 'slow cooking' your components, & cooling becomes all the more important still ..

As for your psu - well cheap doesn't necessarily mean 'bad', but it usually does ;) - 'iffy voltages' here will cloud your judgements concerning any 'successful' overclocks - generally you'll find you get better results with a better powersupply that's able to maintain voltage even when the requiremments we put on the other end are beyond normal tolerance, e.g. exactly what happens in overclocking a lot ;)

OC'ing is not what it was. there is not one single application that sould need all your CPU thses days (aside from mprime, preformnce testing apps, folding, or SETI). The bottel necks are the Bus, the memory, and the hard drives.



any gains from over clocking are a result of the changes to the memory and bus speeds, taking hte pressure of this bottle neck. Disk access is way better than it was, computers come RAID ready now, and SATA2 is cruzing at 3Gb/s.

Its not so important to get faster CPU clock (which $$ will buy anyway), tighten the memory timmings, and tinker with getting more bus speed but thats all anyone needs to do anymore. Don't get sucked into the high performance memory, at that cost you can afford to get a better CPU, only consider it for tighter timmings at the same speed (changing from T2 to T1 will be notice able as Mem bandwidth will effectivly double. for full banks this will require single sided memory in 939 systems.)

Can't stress good PSU enough, if hte PSU came with your case and the case was less than $60, its not going to be up to the task. Consider that a good steel case without a power supplie can sell for $60 and a Good PSU for $100, how did it get cheaper to get both together?
Only crazy overclockers get all of this stuff to the point that they make the CPU a bottle neck again, but again why, nothing is going to need it for long duration. Also these peopel with supper high clock and stats are using things like liqid, nitorgen, or submersion cooling, and are rewireing hte motherboards and memory chips, and may be shorting pins of the CPU to get these numbers.

I think your all right to some degree. But he's using an asus board ant dont they come with C.O.P and if the mobo over heats or any instablety it would shut down the mother boad and restart at defalt. i have an old AMD 2100 stock fans its clock speed defalt is 1.7gig i have it running at 2.26gig kingstin 2700 and 2100 (512 DDR) ram oh copper heat spreaders running at 166 x2 fsb rvolts up .2volts and vcore 1.72 all running stable for last 6 mounths.also 9700 allinwounder vcard over clocked to the hill lol.GPU 405 ram 368 but zalman copper heatsink and fan.This reg can run with the best of them 3dmark 2003 6500 score down load 400kb a sec. so have fun oh ya a 550w power called safe power it dos the job never a hang like i said have fun try differant set ups read up on over clocking your type of cunponants and go for it (sorry about the spelling) :thumbs: :thumbs:

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Originally Posted by masada

I finally decided to take that step and overclock my custiom built rig, but I have little experience :[
Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ currently running at ~1.9 GHz
1 x 74 GB Raptor HDD SATA 10,000 RPM
1 x eVGA Geforce 6800GT 256MB (Want to overclock as well)
1 GB Corsair ValueSelect
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 Motherboard
500W Power Supply

So far my comp has been locking up whenever I go higher than 1.9 GHz. I have been using the tool "Ai Booster" that came with the Asus board but gives me minimal boost in performance. I'm not looking for a big jump, but enough to keep a steady 125 fps in my games at a resolution of 1024x768 and that includes oc'ing my graphics card if possible. I may have more questions later on, but if someone could guide me through this bit I would be more than happy :]

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Make sure that u are going into ur bios and setting your jumperfree configuration to AI Overclock or u will freeze up constantly

Sorry to jump in on your post, I am just starting to get into clocking now. I wish I had started this a while ago though. Anyway I have a A8N-SLI Delux MOBO, Socket 939 CPU is 3500+ 1BG DD400 MHz Kingston memory (2-1GB Sticks), 500 WATT Ultra PSU, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT PCI Express Video Card, Water Cooling the CPU with a ThermalTake setup-the copper and glass block.
I guess I could go ahead and get to the point here, the CPU runs idol @ 32 deg C. Under a full load it rises to 33 mayne hits 34 avery once in a while. I have tried to clock the CPU in the bios but when I take the FSB Freq over 218 it will lower the speed of the processor. But when I take it up to 224 useing Ai Booster it locks up. Do I need to change the multiplier? It is currently set to 11x.

Ok try setting your ht frequency to 4 its under ur cpu configuration in ur bios or even 3 and play with ur fsb in small steps running Prime 95 in between also i would recomend doing this straight through your bios that ai booster is tempermental most the time locks up over small things you could set ur cpu multi to 10 if you wanted then once u figure things out a little more raise it back up again there is a good guide to overclocking online i will look for the link then post it also i haven't been over clocking latley but i just got a A64x2 3800+ so i will be playing and will post again......I'm a little rusty.

A64x2 3800+
Asus A8N SLI
Dual Nvidia 6800's
SB live 24 Bit
1.5 GB DDR400
Thermaletake Soprano

As you sugested try setting the HT to 3 or 4, I did indeed try your sugestion with no avail. I still drop CPU speeds once over 218MHz. I seriously think it has to do with the MOBO i have. To be quite honest I had a Syntax socket A with a 2000+ Barton that clocked better than this. I guess I am disapointed in the whole situation. I play Battlefield 2 online with this desktop and was hopeing to overclock it cool so I could gain performance.

Well as you can tell I am new to overclocking I have built PC's for years for people but never realy cared too much about overclocking till now. With the new CPU's running 2000 MHz seems only logical to buy the bargain CPU and clock up to where you need to be. My main concern is that I will not be able to beat P4- 3.0 GHz with this AMD processor when it comes to the benches. I am useing a piece of software I like called "Fresh Diagnose" for all my benches. I did try running Prime 95 It did indeed seem to do what it is suposed to do it ran 4 hours. Right now I am clocked the max I can go @ 218 MHz FSB 2.4 GHz actual speed, it raised my CPU temp from 32 deg to 33 and 34 deg C.

I guess the issue with the software that comes with the MOBO is plainly that it just don't work, or at least let me speak for myself here "It don't work for my situation". I am reading all the GREAT posts on the net as to how well this board performs under stress, but the issue here is how the hell do you possibly stress a board that automaticly prevents it from happening. My goal is to take this 3500+ up as far as I can and it still be stable, hince the reason I bought this MOBO. The whole time I figured I would be able to turn this AMD into something to be proud of but instead I guess it has let me down. If it is not the board the only other explination is my own ignorance in the overclocking section of knowledge. I am willing to learn how to overclock and this is the last post I will ramble on about my expectations as to what I expect, but I feel it is important to know. This is my goal and is it possible to achieve my goals?


THANKS,
guys for the help!!

Also let me add to the last post that the northbridge chip fan seems too small to me. It is running a little warm, anyone else seeing this issue? I have seen MOBO temps as high as 36 and 38 deg. C . So out of suspision of maybe a false reading I installed thermometers and diodes to the chip and the case. What I found is that the case adverage is between 30 and 33 deg. and the chip readings on the northbridge stay around 36 and 38. Now call me crazy but if the cpu is running 30 the case temp is running 30 but the MOBO temp is 36 what does that tell you. OK I guess I am looking for falts here now with this board. I honestly think the cooler for this northbridge chip is too small. Any one else seeing this too?