Overclocking

**Vakas** · June 12th, 2005, 01:31 PM

Hi! I have an old AMD Athlon XP 1800+ running on a Gigabyte GA-7ZXE Motherboard.

If I were to overclock the CPU how far could I clock it to and how would I do it and is it really worth it.

Thanks

**Platypus** · June 12th, 2005, 08:35 PM

I generally haven't found overclocking worthwhile, you can often get a modest speed boost, but unless you are really needing a frame rate increase in a game, a small speed increase, eg 10%, isn't really noticeable in general computing.

If you still have the utility disk that came with the motherboard, see if there is an overclocking utility, some Gigabyte boards were supplied with one, but they're not known as a great board for OC'ing.

Otherwise, if the FrontSide Bus speed setting in the BIOS allows you to increase it in small increments, you can experiment raising that, which is basically how a multiplier-locked CPU has to be overclocked. You may be restricted if the system memory is only rated for the existing speed - the greatest improvement will be achieved if the memory can be overclocked too. In fact if the memory has to be left at the same speed and just the CPU overclocked, you will lose most of the advantage since they will then be out of synchronisation, and your data transfer rate will fall.

The downside of overclocking is increased heat, which is not good for components, especially the CPU which may not have a cooler rated for higher load, and possible reduced stability ie more Windows crashes.

So basically my thinking is overclocking can be fun to play with, but often doesn't give results that justify it.

**Ferrit** · June 13th, 2005, 08:56 AM

Neither that motherboard or the 1800 CPU were known for any overclocking
I would say very very little if any

**Vakas** · June 13th, 2005, 07:37 PM

Well I did get a disc with the motherboard anf it had 'Easy Tune' software on it.

I have installed the software but the CPU muliplier does not let me make any spped adjustments. So I guess it's locked as you said.

Although I can increase the system buss speed i'm not sure if this will make any difference.

I just wanted to experiment with board and CPU and thought I should ask you guys.

Thanks

**Ferrit** · June 14th, 2005, 09:22 AM

No problem The multiplier on those is likely locked.
Increasing the FSB might yeild very marginal gains but not worth the instability it will bring. For overclocking you need specific chips that made overclocking easy such as the M-Athlon or mobile.
There were also some other ones that came unlocked

**Vakas** · June 14th, 2005, 11:50 AM

Yeah I have tried some of the unlocked chips in the past.

Thanks for the info.

**10of40** · June 14th, 2005, 03:52 PM

IIRC, it is possible to unlock the multiplier on that chip.

Although... the XP1800 I had I was able to mess with the FSB (got it off Newegg, retail), although that might have been the ASUS A7V8X board it was in.

**Vakas** · June 15th, 2005, 01:01 PM

I can change the FSB but not the CPU speed on mine.

**FireAm94** · June 17th, 2005, 04:42 PM

If it's .13 Micron then I wouldn't even bother with it...unless you have a REALLY KILLER cooling system. If you don't already then you may as well just upgrade...a good cooler would cost almost as much as a faster chip.

**Platypus** · June 17th, 2005, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by FireAm94

a good cooler would cost almost as much as a faster chip.

That was often the killer with overclocking. Unless you could hit a sweet spot like the Celeron 450A that if you were lucky could go to 700MHz, the extra measures to get a worthwhile amount of stable overclocking could buy you the faster CPU to begin with.