AMD Optimal BIOS settings + Overclocking Guide

JMke writes "Here's a step by step guide on how to get the most out of your AMD setup. Overclocking tips and BIOS tweak settings discussed, as well as an overview of the more popular overclocking tools. Start your overclocking here!" Lots of good info here for getting the last bit of performance out of your system while also watching out for dangers that could fry your processor.

Comments

Intel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can some/all of these tips apply to overclocking Intel processors?

Re:Intel?

[SiliconBateman]

Yes.

Re:Intel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyrix....err....Via too!

Re:Intel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I agree with your sig, I think you should fix the spelling of "alcohol"

I was wondering

[Pingular]

What overclocks better - 2500+ bartons or 2600+ and why?

Re:I was wondering

[millette]

From the article:

on Prometeia / nVentiv Mk II - 2.7Ghz for average stepping. 3Ghz for super stepping. You won't get as high as TOTAL overclock out of a Barton as you would out of (for example) a Thoroughbred 1700+ DLT3C, however, a Barton at 2.4Ghz can match and beat a Thoroughbred at 2.6Ghz... usually.... 2500+ is the most popular choice. These hit 2.6/2.7Ghz with about 2.1v on a Prometeia. On water expect to top out at around 2.5Ghz or 2.6Ghz... They'll do 2.3Ghz with ease at 1.9v usually.

Re:I was wondering

[crimsonl]

I have had problems with stability with the 2600+ so I would not recommend going that route.

Re:I was wondering

[stone2020]

I would go with the 2500+ barton. They didn't overclock very well when they first came out but they have improved lately. The 1700+ and 2100+ are also very good overclockers. They don't have the extra cache like the bartons but most applications show very little performance improvement with the extra cache.

Re:I was wondering

[MoronGames]

While the 2600+ is a good overclocker, it's a thoroughbred model. You'd be better off getting a 1700+ if you want a thoroughbred. They'll both hit about the same speed, which is usally 2.5-2.7GHz on some good air cooling. The Barton 2500+, though, is the lowest end of the Barton line of processors, and generally hit about 2.4GHz with air cooling, which actually equates to about 3400+. With some exotic cooling, like phase change, you will probably get a few hundred MHz higher out of either chip.

Re:I was wondering

[Dot.Com.CEO]

2500+, no question. Bought 2 last week for both my PCs. Upped the FSB from 166 to 200, maintained all other settings (yes, voltage included). Instant 3200+ for the price of a 2500+. I'm sure I can push it about 100-200 MHz further but it's 100% stable like that, I don't really want to waste time tinkering...

Re:I was wondering

[stangbat]

I purchased a 2500+ Barton from Newegg earlier this month that is running as a 3200+ at the stock voltage on air cooling. Temps under load are around 40 to 42 C. All that was required was to set the FSB to 200 MHz (200 FSB X 11.0 multiplier). Many people are posting similar results in reviews at Newegg. Also, the multipliers are unlocked from the factory. I don't have any experience with the 2600+, but I'm pleased as punch to have the equivalent of a $315 CPU for $91.

Re:I was wondering

[RKone2]

The 2500+.

It's a Barton running at 1.83 Ghz.

The 2600+ is a T-Bred, clocked at 2.08 Ghz.

It seems the Bartons can overclock to about the same clockspeed as the T-Breds. However the Bartons have 512KB l2 cache, whereas the T-Bred is only 256, so at the same clock speed the Barton is generally much faster.

So the 2500 is cheaper and usually ends up being faster than the 2600.

Re:I was wondering

[MTgeekMAN]

Well I have talked to people and most say that the 2600+ is a better OCer than the 2500 but make sure you get the barton 2600. I havent seen the thuroghbread 2600 for a while though

newegg has them for about 110 I think(could be wrong)

Temperature

[DrEldarion]

From the article: NEVER LET IT GET ABOVE 55C IN MY OPINION ON AIRCOOLING

When I had the stock heatsink/fan on my 1800+, it would IDLE at over 55C, and peak at around 63C under a full load. I never had any problems. Are overclocked CPUs more sensitive to heat, or is this just a "to be safe" recommendation? AMD says they're good up to 85C.

Re:Temperature

[freeweed]

That's bizarre. I have an 1800+ on my desktop, with the stock heatsink/fan.

I've never seen it go above 45C, even after hours of playing something like BF1942. It idles somewhere around 33C. My video card is a heatsink-only Radeon 9000, and I've got 3 hard drives in the case - only a regular mid-tower too. No case fans at all, no hard drive fans.

What do you keep your room temperature at? Or could different motherboards have different heating effects? I always figured a setup like mine should run really hot, but it doesn't from what you're describing.

Any experts out there wanna field this one?

Re:Temperature

[gl4ss]

yes, they're more probable to crash even on modest temperature when they're overclocked.

besides than that, rarely anyone has any _REAL_ numbers when they're speaking of cpu temp(the mobos compensate the builtin sensor differently).

such guides rarely provide anything useful(beyond wire trick instructions & etc that are really useful), real information(written most of the time as mental extensions for the writers dick) and most of the time have one myth or another provided as 'fact'(and have lots of not so important stuff like spending way much too time on tweaking memory timings which has much less effect on overall performance than some people would like to believe).

besides than that, the site is getting quickly slashdotted to oblivion and if you really need this guide, you shouldn't be overclocking.

Re:Temperature

[SiliconBateman]

My XP1900+ (not overclocked) is at 65C at the moment under a low load. Under a high load it will not peak little over 70C... it has a copper heatsink inside a case with motherboard temp around 30C. No problems at all with any components (HDs are around 20C being in the coolest place).

I have no problems with a CPU up to 75C and expect 85C will be boarderline but on the OK side.

Re:Temperature

[gl4ss]

oh yeah and forgot to add that his line **DON'T FORGET TO WATCH THE CPU TEMPS ALL THE TIME.
NEVER LET IT GET ABOVE 55C IN MY OPINION ON AIRCOOLING, OR 42C USING WATERCOOLING.** is totally silly, as it indicates that your cpu would blow up at lower temps if you're watercooling. besides, amd cpu's wont break until something way over 100c(of course, they won't _operate_ at that temp but they will work afterwards), so the easiest way to accomplish that is to take the heatsink off while it's on(and indeed newer amd mobos are pretty safe, as they turn off before the temperature gets so high that it fries the chip, again provided that you don't snap the heatsink off while it's running).

_watching_ the temps doesn't really indicate anything(as long as they don't get out of hand totally, or increase over time till it crashes..), it's stability you should be watching for when your overclocking.

Re:Temperature

[IvyMike]

The chips are tested at a DIE temperature of 85C. However, the temperature sensor on you MB isn't at the die, it's at the packaging (or maybe just near the packaging), so it's not going to read as hot. A rule of thumb I've read is a 20 degrees difference, so that would mean 65C.

Unfortunately, this is all academic because motherboard temperature sensors are notoriously non-calibrated, and I've seen them be 10C off or more! It's more useful to use MB sensors to monitor relative changes than absolute temperature. (In other words, the difference between temperatures running at idle and at load is probably accurate...but the absolute values are probably fuzzy).

Additionally, the fact that the chip was tested at 85C doesn't mean that it will be harmed by temperatures over 85C; it just means it's likely to not work (a bit won't flip somewhere on the chip). Your system will eventually lock up if this is happening. They used to test some chips at 95C or more, and military use chips get tested even higher, so that shows that the silicon chip itself won't be damaged at those temps...it's just functionality that will suffer. :)

If your chip is marginal, running for long times at higher temps can cause it to die quickly (atom migration, etc, can be more pronounced at higher temps) so some people will warn of running at very high temperatures. But this is very unlikely, and if it does eventually happen, hey...now you need to upgrade. Sweet.

Re:Temperature

[stone2020]

Motherboard temp sensors can be off a lot. On my Abit NF7-S they had to fix it in a bios update because it was off by up to 10C. Your 1800+ might also have the Palomino core which ran extremely hot. A good HSF and arctic silver are very good at lowering temps. I have a 2100+ running at 3200+ speeds with full load temp being 52C.

Re:Temperature

[heli0]

There are different methods the motherboard can use to measure the die temperature. One is to place a thermal diode on the motherboard in the center of the socket beneath the CPU. Other motherboards report the temperature directly from the CPU's internal on-die thermal sensor.

Usually the report from the on-die sensor is 10-20C higher than the external sensor reports.

Here is what the in-socket thermal diodes look like: http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/r_abit_kr 7a-r/sensor_small.jpg

Re:Temperature

[Selecter]

Yeah, I'll take a shot. He probably used the wrong amount of thermal paste, and/or has the heatsink on crooked. Socket A heatsinks are a bear to get on and off. If he guessed at where to put the heatsink compound, and guessed wrong, ( by putting it on the HSF rather than the die of the cpu itself ) he may only have 1/3 of the die covered with stuff.

My Barton here runs all day long @ 2366 Mhz. Temp 46 C at hard work. PR Rating 3700+ in Sandra. :D

Re:Temperature

[Ella the Cat]

I'm underclocking! My 1400 Athlon Tbird (so 2001) segfaults unless I underclock at 1.3 GHz, but it is then rock solid stable, running at just under 75C at 100% CPU with an external temp sensor. I just wanted a =quiet= PC is all.

Re:Temperature

[DarkOx]

"Are overclocked CPUs more sensitive to heat"

Yes they are. Logic gates run slower as temperature increases. The max clock rate you can run a chip at all else being ideal would be the the amount of time it takes the circuit path with the most gates to "stablize", that is produce a constant and correct output for its input. So if you have overclocked, or even possibly if you havent, that longest path may work fine at first but as the chip heats up due to running time or load cause it to fail. The gates all get slower, being the longest path has the most gates and is impacted most takes to long to stabilize and when its output is "read" as imput to the next logic circuit it has the wrong value and well from there anything could happen really.

Re:Temperature

[Amorpheus_MMS]

Two different CPU cores have been sold as 1800+. He probably has the older Palomino, which was still .18 - I have one of those as well and can assure you it's still hot when set up right. Your low temperatures make me rather sure you must have a newer .13 Thoroughbred.

(Is it just me or does /. eat micron symbols?)

Re:Temperature

[MyFourthAccount]

Are overclocked CPUs more sensitive to heat, or is this just a "to be safe" recommendation? AMD says they're good up to 85C.

Overclocking is all about temperature.

So long as you don't mess with the Vcore, overclocking does not make a CPU more sensitive to heat. It just will get hotter. If you can keep the temperature of the die under control by dissapating the extra generated heat, there's no problem with overclocking, but it's instrumental that you have accurate temp readings.

I'm only familiar with Intel CPUs and they have an on-die temp sensor which generally is fairly accurate. The embedded CPUs I work with are rated up to 100C and generally work fine up to that temperature. I wouldn't want to run it continuously at that temperature for a very long time though.

Overclocking may result in a loss in stability but that generally doesn't mean you are about to damage the CPU (so long as the temp is not out of spec), it is more likely related to timing issues.

Now increasing the Vcore sounds like a very bad idea to me. I'm not an EE by education, but I would think that you could seriously shorten the lifespan of the CPU by doing this.

btw. What I don't understand in the "NEVER LET IT GET ABOVE 55C IN MY OPINION ON AIRCOOLING, OR 42C USING WATERCOOLING." statement is why the hell would it be depending on what type of cooling is used? This implies that they are not talking about die temperature, because for the die 55C is 55C, doesn't matter how it got there...

Re:Temperature

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bizarre. I have an 1800+ on my desktop, with the stock heatsink/fan.

I've never seen it go above 45C, even after hours of playing something like BF1942. It idles somewhere around 33C. My video card is a heatsink-only Radeon 9000, and I've got 3 hard drives in the case - only a regular mid-tower too. No case fans at all, no hard drive fans.

I built a couple systems recently as my new servers, and bought exactly the same parts at the same time. I got a Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard and Athlon XP 2000 for each system. Same memory, heatsink, etc, etc.. They are even in the exact same cases, except one is higher on the rack than the other (by only 1 foot). Whenever I check the temperatures on them, the CPU temp is always about 35C on one, and 40C on the other. ALL the time, no matter what I am doing. I have tested it with SETI@Home or other number-crunching type applications, and they STILL keep the same difference in temperature. I think it all comes down to what batch your chip comes from. And buying 2 of the same chips from a company doesn't always ensure that they are from the same batch. Not sure why else they would show a difference in temperature all the time.

Re:Temperature

[Anonymous Coward]

(Is it just me or does /. eat micron symbols?)

I think they've recently started using utf-8 encoding rather than iso-8859-1/windows cp1252 Western encoding, which encodes accents/funny symbols differently :p Use utf-8.

Re:Temperature

[ElliotLee]

Temperature ratings are never accurate in any case. Precise, maybe, but not accurate. It varies greatly from computer-to-computer what a "safe" temperature is.

Re:Temperature

[Anonymous Coward]

That line actually refers to avoiding crashes due to CPU overheating.

It doesn't mean your CPU will break, but a CPU that you are overclocking will perform better at lower temperatures. 55C and hihger on aircooling will cause the CPU to crash due to overheating and not due to overclocking to high.
dropped that cpu temperature to ~40C under load will give you a reasonable increase in total CPU overclock speed.. not to speak of what it will do on watercooling or phase-change :)

thanks for your comment! //JMke
webmaster @ madshrimps.be

Re:Temperature

[Hemlock Stones]

The last couple of generations of T-Birds and all XPs have a temperature sensor diode on the chip that can be read if the motherboard supports it. There is a web article at overclockers.com that shows you how to build a circuit to read this sensor if the motherboard does not support it.

Re:Temperature

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are overclocked CPUs more sensitive to heat"

Yes that is correct, when a CPU is overclocked, it is working beyond its specs, thereby stressing the internal components more, when the temperature increases over the "nominal" value, the overclocked cpu will crash a lot easier. If you keep the temperature down, you can get a lot higher CPU overclocks.

That's why some people use Phase-change cooling and LN2 to get the highest overclocks. The lower the CPU temp, the higher you can overclock. is the "main" rule

//JMke
webmaster @ madshrimps.be

Re:Temperature

[HD Webdev]

Unfortunately, this is all academic because motherboard temperature sensors are notoriously non-calibrated, and I've seen them be 10C off or more!

I second that motion. My ATV333 w/2100+ CPU tempurature monitor is more than 20C off (over). This caused the bios auto-shutdown-voice-alarm-thingy to kick in after playing Quake3 for 10 minutes or so when I first put this box together.

To compensate for the problem, I left the box unpowered for 1 evening and looked at the (alleged) cpu and motherboard tempuratures right after booting up. The CPU tempurature monitor turned out to be reading ~20C over the actual tempurature.

Re:Temperature

[ncc74656]

From the article: NEVER LET IT GET ABOVE 55C IN MY OPINION ON AIRCOOLING

When I had the stock heatsink/fan on my 1800+, it would IDLE at over 55C, and peak at around 63C under a full load.

My dual MP2100 rig (on a Tyan S2466N-4M with a pair of Vantec Aeroflow coolers) gets into the mid-50s when TMPGEnc is running. At idle, it drops into the mid-40s. If you're idling in the mid-to-upper 50s on a single-processor rig (especially at a slower clock speed), something is wrong with your cooling. Did you leave out the thermal grease or something like that?

Are overclocked CPUs more sensitive to heat, or is this just a "to be safe" recommendation? AMD says they're good up to 85C.

What AMD specifies is an "absolute maximum." It's similar to the red line on your car's tachometer...if you go past it, you'll probably break something. Getting near it (without going over) won't necessarily break things, but it'll wear out (yes, processors can wear out) more rapidly. At the very least, you'll most likely end up with a glitchy system that bluescreens/panics frequently, especially under heavy load.

While the recommendation to keep your processor's temperature under the double nickel might be a bit conservative for some people, keeping things as cool as possible is generally a Good Thing.

Re:Temperature

[Anonymous Coward]

Over what actual temerature? The ambient (room) temperature ? A CPU's temperature can easily increase by 20C over the ambient temperature in just the time it takes to boot up.

Re:Temperature

[DirkGently]

Sweet Baby Jeebus!

I've got an XP1800+. Heatsink is a Volcano 9+, with the fan throttled down so it doesn't whine like the devil. Slight O/C to 1644mhz (I don't want to push the PCI faster and risk loosing 100gb of mp3s). For all intents and purposes it's an XP1900-and-a-half. Case temps are around 35C. After an hour or more of BF1942, my CPU will *peg* at 47C. I'd check out my heatsink, were I you.

Re:Temperature

[sleepycow]

Okay guys, quick education about why AthlonXP processors idle at the tempature they do:

Some (most) motherboard BIOS's with ACPI do a kind of 'soft cooling' where the proc is told to do very little when it is NOP-ing, ie when windows is idle.

Some mainboards, however, do not, or can have this feature turned off.

For example, the ABIT KT7A-133, in it's earlier revision, was not made with AthlonXP's in mind, as it predated them. Now, AthlonXP's will work on these mainboards, but users would have random, inexplicable lockups on the board, even though their CPU's were running nice and cool. For example, I have an AthlonXP 2100+ that used to idle at about 35c, and peak at about 45c, on a KT7A-133. After ABIT released a BIOS update to correct the random lock-ups, the CPU idles at about 57c and peaks at about 66c. And the system is rock solid. This has nothing to do with voltages or the like, but how the motherboard/BIOS handles the CPU when it is idle and executing NOP's.

There is actually a patch file that can be used with WPCREDIT, whcih allows you to change PCI registers and the like, which is pretty freaking cool, that makes the CPU run nice and cool at around 35c even with the new bios; I've tried it and it works, but the system is not 100% stable with it enabled.

An AthlonXP, at least when it is not overclocked, should run rock solid when it is at 35c or 75c. As long as you are within thermal spec. the proc should work great. Not everyone has massive heatsinks, and some people like quiet fans - those people have system with Athlons that are happily running at 65 degrees and will likley continue to do so for many moons.

Re:Temperature

[kruane]

Good GOD, man....those temps are EXTRORDINARILY high..I'm surprised that the BIOS itself doesnt shut you down, as most of the newer BIOS's and motherboards for AMD processors are required to have heat protection circuits. Get a BETTER cooling solution ! You WILL burn out your processor !

Re:Temperature

[kruane]

Well, thats because your cooling solution is not enough for the AMD 1.4 Thunderbird...This is the HOTTEST running proccesor that AMD puts out, so you need to get a better cooling solution. A good one is the thermotake volcano 9.... I run a AMD 2600XP all the way up to 3.0 gig, and under no-load conditions, I get about 33C, and for loaded conditions, about 37 C...You REALLY need something better than what you have to cool that sucker with....75 C is WAY to high a temp for a processor !

Re:Temperature

[HD Webdev]

A 40F change in the tempurature AT the probe in 30 seconds isn't likely.

Not to mention, the monitor says that my normal CPU tempurature is 105C (hence, the auto-bios shutdown after 10 minutes of FPS gameplay).

I removed the bios tempurature alarms and the box doesn't crash. The monitor says 100-105C. The cpu CAN'T actually be hotter than ~200 degrees. I'm pretty sure I'd be experiencing some technical difficulties now and then or frying eggs on my cpu.

Re:Temperature

[MyFourthAccount]

A 40F change in the tempurature AT the probe in 30 seconds isn't likely.

No offense, but actually you'd be surprised about how much the die temperature rises in only a few seconds. 40F in 30 seconds is NOT strange at all.

I know because we develop boards and we do lots of measurements like this. I'm not saying that your readings are ok, but you can't calibrate the temperature sensor by booting the machine and assuming it should still be close to ambient.

Re:Temperature

[Corbin Dallas]

Heh, this reminds me of a Cyrix 166 I once bought ( Hey! Quit laughing at me! ) over the phone from Treasure Chest computers. Besides the fact that it was delayed because of the UPS strike, it wouldn't run at all! I was furious, and was about to send it back, until I tried re-clocking it. Turns out that it only worked if it was over-clocked at 200.

Re:Temperature

[Ella the Cat]

The maximum allowable die temperature is 95C, so I've got 20C margin. I use lm_sensors which is a fine program but suffers from the classic garbage-in garbage-out problem, I've no idea if 75C is the real temperature! (It's just too hot to touch, pain for my fingers is 60C). The box often sits at 100% CPU for hours. The box is almost two years old, and if it was going to expire surely it would have done so already? I'm told electromigration will kill it one day, but will I have upgraded by then? If it lives for at least three and with luck five years, I'll be well happy. Hey, thanks for the reply, it's useful to know what can be done, I'm only pointing out my experience as an example of how tweaking a box need not always be aimed at speed. I value the stability and the quiet (it "whooshes" gently and I can hear the drives seeking)

Re:Temperature

[gl4ss]

** That line actually refers to avoiding crashes due to CPU overheating.**

well that's not that smart either, as the cpu can crash at ANY temperature when you're trying out it's limits by oc(and especially having different temp limits for water and aircooling is weird, they're both just methods to cool the cpu and one doesn't magically alter the limits of the cpu, and yeah, i've been wc'ing for a few years). so being prepared for it to crash is wiser than just avoiding some magic temperature at which it will crash(which you can't know beforehand).

what would have been wiser would have been introduction to something like knoppix(or some other cd bootable os), to use that while trying out the limits of the cpu(and other parts) to not screw up the filesystem of the main os used.

-

Re:Temperature

[mmmbeer]

Strangely enough, I have an Athlon TBird 1.4GHz (pre PR rating!) that did the same thing. Changed 3 power supplies, the motherboard, the network card, both memory sticks, about 5 heatsinks and it would still die within 2 days. Underclocked to 1.3GHz and never had a problem since.

It also idled around 55c and topped out 65c. For reference, a 1500+ and this 1700+ run 35-55c, and that (pointing) 2000+ runs 40-55c. The guy who wrote the article just has never dealt with old school tbird CPUs.

Re:Temperature

[Anonymous Coward]

Ambient (room) temperature has a very big impact on CPU temp. And also it depends on how you are measuring the temp and what kind of sensor you are using. Motherboard sensors vary wildly in their ability to accurately read temps (they are generally not accurate at all, but ok for relative measurements and overheating warning).

Then there are factors that directly effect how effective your cooling setup is. This includes what heatsink, fan (how many CFM?), thermal paste, case fans, what kind of case, what kind of airflow through the case (any obstructions), etc.

My ambient temps are pretty high, so I spend a little cash on quality heatsinks, fans, and a good case. With a good copper heatsink that uses a 80mm or 92mm fan, you can have a quiet yet well-cooled system.

If your CPU runs hot, you will probably be ok. You might notice stability problems, though. Try running Prime95 torture test for a few days to see how stable your system is (if calculation errors occur you are not stable). Overclocking a CPU will definitely shorten the life of a CPU. Whether this is 20 years shortened to 10 years, or is 10 years shortened to 3 months, depends on how much voltage you are putting into it, how well you are cooling it, and the luck of the draw. Running it hot will also shorten its life with similar results.

Re:Temperature

[HD Webdev]

Gotchya, my mistake was assuming.

If you or anyone else has some links to QUALITY discussions on the subject of improving tempurature detection, I'd appreciate it. Google is nice, but OTOH, I've found that only a small portion of the pages I find in technical matters actually show references backing up their assertions.

I will be soon setting up web/mail/ftp/etc hosting boxes on a t3 for a new job. Knowing how to calibrate (improve) tempurature monitoring will save me a lot of headaches later.

Thank you very much for your input.

Re:Temperature

[kruane]

Try using the MBM 5.0 program...That is a very accurate program for detecting CPU temp, and is confimed precisely using SIS Sandra...I am pretty confident using this program. In addition, be very careful...I have had overheated CPU's that seemed to be stable, but yet they messed up the hard drive's file system...Make sure you have backups of Data you really need to keep. Thing is, for $16 INCLUDING delivery for the Thermotake Volcano 9, you have peace of mind for a very small price. For that miniscule cost, I would much rather be safe than sorry....

Re:Temperature

[pagebt]

I have an AMD 1900+ system which ran @ 47C with the stock fan, when the bering started to go and RPMs started to fall off, the temp went up... @ 57C the machine would shut down, reliably, I have a decent ASUS MB so it might be that AUUS C.O.P. stuff kicking in, but it seems that 55C would be a happy upper end as far as my MB is concerned,

Overclocking

[Ianoo]

The biggest thing I've always found with overclocking (both Intel & AMD) is that 'YMMV' (your mileage may vary). I've talked to people who say they run their systems at 20% more speed than they should be doing, yet one of my systems constantly locks up even if midly overclocked. Increasingly I wonder, given the current prices for this kind of technology, whether overclocking is a bit pointless. Do I spend $100 extra or do I spend 12 hours mucking with my BIOS? You decide!

Overclocking also seems so 1990s now, most people I speak to who rate themselves equal to my own geekdom are in to case modding and quiet PCs... concepts which I find much more interesting than getting 5% extra FPS in Quake.

Re:Overclocking

[Bullseye_blam]

... yet one of my systems constantly locks up even if midly overclocked... Do I spend $100 extra or do I spend 12 hours mucking with my BIOS?

Well, here's the thing: first, you have to have good parts. Unless you have good quality RAM, a properly cooled processor, and a decent power supply, you probably won't be able to overclock very much. To your second point, you can get a 10-20% increase in speed by overclocking, and once you know most of the tricks to overclock, you can probably fix your machine up in about an hour.

Re:Overclocking

[Jameth]

"case modding and quiet PCs"

That's the real key.

How about a guide on underclocking something far enough that it can be passively cooled? Most chips are so much too fast that it hardly matters. (As always, results may vary)

Or, what about the power-on-demand-or-whatever-they-call-it that mobile chips have? How about a guide on setting up a heat-sensitive fan so your system is silent when idle?

Re:Overclocking

[Ianoo]

The point is though, that if I spend $500 on a (ficticious) 2GHz processor and $100 on cooling so I can run it at 2.1GHz, does it really make sense to do this when the 2.1GHz processor is available with a crappy (but adequate) fan for $550?

Re:Overclocking

[obsidianpreacher]

But ... but ... but ... it's QUAKE! I simply HAFTA play at 400 frames per second! Have you tried playing it at any less? It's practically a slideshow!

Re:Overclocking

[Mrstupid7]

Not to be an ass or anything but putting YMMV and then explaining it causes you to type more than spelling it out in the first place.

Re:Overclocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't know what all the frames/s crap is about. When I was in college, I'd get 8 frames/s and ping times of over 500ms, and that's the way it was and we liked it!

In all seriousness, it was more fun than you might think. Throwing down in a sweet John Woo shotgun battle with brutal lag wasn't bad, it was like a completely sweet comic book without the story. Ang Lee directs two guys playing Quake.

Re:Overclocking

[gl4ss]

the current pricing of cpus however would indicate that your hypothetic 2.1ghz would cost 800$.

AMD Duron 1600 MHz, 64 KB 50.7 e
AMD Athlon XP B 2800+ 2.08G/333 MHz, 512 KB 156.0 e

(some of the disabled cache is re-enableabe on those durons, afaik, and seemingly most do run 2.2ghz+ or even 2.4ghz)

Intel P4 HT 2600 MHz s478 Northwood, 512 KB, 800
boxed 198.2 e

Intel P4 HT 3200 MHz s478 Northwood, 512 KB, 800
boxed 472.5 e

for most though the point is that they can't afford that high end cpu, and for the rest is that they don't want to pay such prices you end up buying for high end cpu(that can't be overclocked in the same ratio as cheapos can). the cooling costs anyways, regardless of if you're going to use it for oc or not(unless you're willing to go with a cheapo, or one that comes with boxed cpus).

hell.. i don't make my buying decisions based on overclockability, i make them on other factors. i just oc them as far as they're willing to go after i've bought them(well, i got one underclocked machine too, as nat-box).

Re:Overclocking

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Overclocking is definitely NOT for production systems or machines that one does for paying work.

If it is for paying work, it is worth spending the extra $100-$200 for a chip that the manufacturer will guarantee the stability with and will honor the warranty. Plus, the performance should pay for the cost and if there is anything weird with the system, the overclock settings is one less thing to check.

When one says you have to have "good" ram and other parts, I don't think that necessarily means that RAM that doesn't overclock much is bad. One pays more for higher clocking ram anyways...

Re:Overclocking

[KReilly]

Yes, it does make sense. One, is that when you upgrade your cpu again, you don't have to put out the money for the water cooling system. And Two, what happens when you want a 2.2GHz computer, and none is out.

You guys are missing the point that overclocking is about being a nerd, and fooling arround for optimization. Its not going to save you money, like any other hobby, it will make you spend more. You spend it because you enjoy the hobby, not because its economical.

Re:Overclocking

[TwistedSquare]

Yep I agree, for my main PC (for games) I'd like a lot of speed, but for a linux/bsd server I don't need any speed at all, and would prefer to have it quieter and more economical. Though I'd need a quiet PSU then as well...

Can anyone provide any info on this end of things?

Re:Overclocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I totally agree with your interpretation. Furthermore, I would like to point out that both Intel and AMD seem to be moving towards selling only retail packages to the DIY which already contain a cooling solution.

I built a new computer just last week and I noticed that I couldn't find OEM cpu's as readily as just a few months ago. I wonder if they are trying to squeeze out the HFS manufacturers.

Re:Overclocking

[bhtooefr]

My rule of thumb used to be 10FPS was good. Now it's 30 (I use crappy hw - what do you expect from i810s?)... and I have to put up with below 10 on a complex map in BZFlag...

Re:Overclocking

[rtaylor]

How about a guide on underclocking something far enough that it can be passively cooled? Most chips are so much too fast that it hardly matters. (As always, results may vary)

I've got an old BP6 motherboard. I'm wondering if I could shove a pair of 1.4Ghz Celeries into it (clocked for 1Ghz, drop the voltage a bit too) and cool it with a pair of Zallman flowers but without the fan.

Re:Overclocking

[sahonen]

I made a journal entry about that, see my sig.

Re:Overclocking

[imnoteddy]

'YMMV' (your mileage may vary)

This is true. The way to understand the YMMV factor has to start by understanding how integrated circuits (chips) are made. They are produced on wafers - flat, round thin slabs of (usually) silcon - typically 200 millimeters (mm) or in some cases 300 mm in diameter. The wires and transistors are created during dozens of steps that involve exposure to light, vapor deposition, chemical etching, and other processes. Many steps involve heating and cooling the wafer.

So why is there variation among chips? Because the process cannot be controlled perfectly, though the manufacturers try really hard. For example, chips on the edge of the wafer will cool off faster than chips in the middle. There are so many variables to control that some will be off. Twenty percent variation is very common, and designers often do simulations based on that amount of variation.

People design chips to a given clock rate, then test to see what they get. A simple example is the Power PC (PPC) that IBM makes and Apple markets as the G5. Apple sells systems that run at 1.6, 1.8, amd 2.0 GHz, but all PPCs come from the same design. The chip in a 1.6 GHz G5 may run at 1.79999999 GHz if given the chance, but it also might fail at 1.61 GHz. Some chips might test out at 2.2 GHz, but probably not enough to sell.

Re:Overclocking

[snooo53]

The problem with that though, is you don't want to have a cheap noisy fan. Personally, I'd rather have the slower processor and a quieter (and probably more expensive) fan. Right now in my system, the loudest noise is by far the 7200rpm drives (and the cd-roms when they're spinning).

Although anymore, it's not really a compromise... on newegg there's a lot of heatsink/fan combos in the $10 range that run at a nice quiet 2500rpm. I should know, I've got one.

Re:Overclocking

[Feztaa]

How about a guide on setting up a heat-sensitive fan so your system is silent when idle?

Well, that's not hard. There are a number of fans that come with temperature sensors in them (I personally use the volcano9), just put the temp sensor under the cpu, wire it into the speed control (the volcano9 has a connector for 3 different speed controllers; one is a jumper for 100% speed all the time, one is a knob for manual speed control, and another is the temp sensor, which I use).

Then it speeds up as it heats up, it works fairly well. It's not totally silent when idle, but it's quiet enough for me.

Re:Overclocking

[Jameth]

As far as the PSU, I know that it is possible to get a solid-state PSU. I do not know where. I saw a system with a fanless PSU at a LAN party. I really wish I knew where to get one.

As for the CPU, I'd recommend the VIA. Sure, it sucks ass on floating-point, but 12 watts for 1ghz is fine. I can cope, as long as I have my integer.

On the video-card end, if you want to be able to occasionally play games, I'd still recommend the Voodoo3. Yes, I know, it's older than dirt by now, but it really is pretty good, and it runs damn cool. Otherwise, just get a board with onboard video.

The only thing there is no way around is the hard-drive. Solid-state memory truly cannot compete. However, my current theory is this: Have a server in another room with your hard-drives on it for mass storage, then stick 4 gigs of RAM in your actual computer and run from a RAM-disk. It'll boot a bit slower, but it'll fly when you get everything going. And, how often do you actually need to do massive disk writes? (Just make damn sure you buy good net-work card on both ends, and don't use cheap-crap cable)

Re:Overclocking

[ameoba]

Doubtful, unless you get yorself a socket-adaptor. The 1.4GHz chips (based on the Tualatin core) use a slightly different pin-out (FC/PGA2) than the older chips.

Re:Overclocking

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like a lot of speed, but for a linux/bsd server I don't need any speed at all

Of course not, BSD is dead!

Re:Overclocking

[ameoba]

It doesn't take much, really...

I'm running an AthlonXP 1500+ at stock speeds and it's almost silent. To start with, I picked up an oversized heatsink with a 80mm fan (nothign fancy, just a $10ish low-noise model). Then I got myself a -good- PSU (350W Vantec with dual temp-controlled fans) and one of those oh-so-sexy Zalman fan speed controllers.

I'm sure, if I wanted, I could've gone even more extreme, but as it is (coupled with my fanless graphics card) I can barely hear it. I'm sure with something like an Antec Sonata and one of those oversized Zalman heatsinks.

Re:Overclocking

[Jameth]

There is a world of difference between quiet enough for you and quiet enough for me.

I want to be able to run my computer 24/7 in the room I sleep in. I once had an analog alarm clock, but the ticking kept me up at night. I sleep with the window closed and the fan off during the summer because I'd rather be drenched in sweat than irritated by the surrounding noise.

Specifically, there is an enormous difference between 'fairly quiet' and 'silent.' I want a system that creates NO noise (I will accept the electrical hum of the fact that it has power, that is all). And, yes, I don't expect to get it.

Re:Overclocking

[rezza]

About the video cards: I'd have to disagree with the Voodoo3 idea. Mine runs so hot its almost unbelievable, and has done since the day I bought it. I was getting artifacts on my screen from day one, but I was too young and naive then to realize that this was unacceptable, so I just got some case fans to try to cool the thing down a little. Nowadays, one of my boxen has a Geforce2 gts in it, and the fan on that started to squeal no end a few months ago. In a fit of rage i just unplugged the fan, and now its not only completely silent, but also completely stable under load, even when overclocked. The point is, YMMV as much for graphics cards as it will for CPUs. Don't assume that one particular type of card will always run cool/stable in a certain situation. PS: damn good idea about the hard drives. I'm gonna have to give that a try.

Re:Overclocking

[Jameth]

I have a Voodoo3-3000. It has the big silver heat-sink on it, and it runs damn cool. As an example, I can run it in a case with only one case fan and the PSU fan, leaving the fans off on the Athlon 750. I've never had a problem.

On the other hand, my roommate had a GeForce (that would be 1, not 2/3/4/etc). When the fan on that died, the card itself went inside of four months. At first, it just lost a lot of brightness, then the contrast started slipping, then it started showing glitches all over the place, then he replaced it. It never completely died, but it had a tendency to freeze up (not a fatal error, as he runs triple-head, but bad none-the-less).

Obviously, all my opinions are from personal experiece, and I've had very good luck with the Voodoo3. I still have one (not my primary machine anymore) and it can handle most new games if I drop the resolution/textures/etc a little bit.

Now, I use a GeForce4MX (GeForce2 with some enhancements) and it runs way hotter than the Voodoo3. I can physically touch the heatsink on the Voodoo3 without fear of burning myself. I cannot do so with the GeForce4MX.

And, yes, I know the MXs are crap, but they're really the best in a reasonable price-range if you need a PCI video card.

Re:Overclocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the fans you get with the OEM processors are noisy as hell.

Re:Overclocking

[rtaylor]

Oh.. doh!

Nobody local is selling slower chips.

Thanks for the note.

Re:Overclocking

[Mitchell Mebane]

I know two people who have bought Barton AXP 2500+s and overclocked them to 3200+s easy. So you buy a $100 CPU + $50 in cooling, and get a $350 CPU out of it. Sweet deal if you ask me.

Re:Overclocking

[bluGill]

There is one other issue: the high rated chips sell for a lot more than the lower rated chips because a few people are willing to pay for them. From time to time it happens that a chip that can run at say 2.2Ghz will be marked as 1.6Ghz just because all the orders for 2.2Ghz chips are filled already, and they have some orders for 1.6Ghz chips. So you can get lucky bying cheap, and get a chip that can run at a much faster speed.

Unfortunatly you do not have access to all the tests the manufacture has. Your chip might seem perfectly stable overclocked, but in reality something goes wrong once in a while that you either don't notice, or don't blame on the overclocked chip.

Re:Overclocking

[jtcm]

The point is though, that if I spend $500 on a (ficticious) 2GHz processor and $100 on cooling so I can run it at 2.1GHz, does it really make sense to do this when the 2.1GHz processor is available with a crappy (but adequate) fan for $550?

I think the point is not so much the increase in CPU clock speed, but rather the increase in Front Side Bus speed that's desirable. I rarely find an application that can max out my cpu, due to memory bandwidth limitations. In fact, it's not even my RAM speed that drives me nuts, it's hard-drive-intensive programs that waste the most time.

For the record, I run an athlon 2000+ on a gigabyte GA7V-RXP mobo, with 512Mb DRAM running on an FSB @ 133mhz (266DDR) with a couple of dem nice 120Gb WD 7200rpm 8Mb cache "special edition" HDs. Oh, and my box's stability has increased greatly since i got the temp down from ~63C to ~55C. I run win2k for weeks without rebooting or any strange behavior.

Re:Overclocking

[Ella the Cat]

I don't expect to get it.

Most any Via based system can be made silent. A good PSU, a Seagate Barracuda between two lumps of metal with some foam around it (build from scrap or buy off-the-shelf), a northbridge heat sink on the CPU and the CPU fan at 5V to move some air (saves 15C at 100% CPU). I did this only last week "to see if I could". It's =spooky= it's so quiet. If you need more CPU throughput, use the Via box as your (X) terminal and network to your big iron located in the loft or garage.

Re:Overclocking

[sheddd]

IMO it's still a good bang for buck with certain processors (usually the slowest on a given process)... i.e.

- Slowest P4
- Slowest Athlon XP (1700)
- Slowest Barton (2500)

Got a Barton 2500 for $90 the other day. Changed one bios setting and it's run stable for ~1 month @ 3200. AMD heatsink.

On the other hand I have another Barton 2500 that doesn't like high fsb speeds... it's running about the same cpu clock as the one above at a lower FSB.

If you've got more time than $, overclocking still can make sense.

I'm a happy overclocker.

Re:Overclocking

[dnoyeb]

Overclocking for most is an achievement, not a result. Their are lots of issues and obstacles. That is part of the appeal. Solving those problems showing your skill.

Its not so much about extra FPS anymore.

I agree that tinkering has turned into case mods and quiet PCs as well. I do not overclock because the boost is now negligible for the effort, as you suggest. And in 6 months a processor will be cheap enough to buy a faster one and sell my old on on ebay anyway...

Fry?

[Davak]

I always hear rumors of "frying the processor." Has anybody actually seen this happen? I locked up my CPU hundreds of time with overheating due to overclocking or dead fans... and I have never actually burned out my processor.

My buddy works at a local computer shop and he has never seen it either. He's seen burned out CPUs for other stuff (mice, etc) but never from just overclocking...

Anybody?

Davak

Re:Fry?

[Master Bait]

They fry their CPUs by using too much voltage.

Re:Fry?

[Scottaroo]

Tom's Harware loves doing stunts like this. They've run processors without coolers just to see what happens, and they investigated problems with the early AMD thermal diodes. Check it out

Re:Fry?

[olethrosdc]

I.ve burnt my motherboard (K7) because the fan had stopped. The CPU (Athlon 900Mhz) survived unscathed.

Re:Fry?

[SiliconBateman]

Fry the processor??? How about fry the egg on the processor!

Re:Fry?

[gl4ss]

remove the heatsink from a running (socket, slot based have heatspreader and so are more probable to survive) athlon once you've disable every caution system from the mobo. or alternatively mount the heatsink wrong on those(so that it doesn't touch the core at all).

so yeah.. frying the chip purely because of overclocking doesn't happen too often(i'm pretty sure you could fry cpus with enough voltage though pretty easily but that's beyond the point).
-

Re:Fry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen heat sink clips melt through the retaining brackets on the socket, and this on a Duron. The chip was damaged beyond any hope of recovery and the tech who removed the heatsink/fan from the board got the most amazing fan edged blisters on the ends of his fingers...

Fry? An egg, absolutely, steak probably.

Re:Fry?

[ShadeARG]

Believe it or not, one of the most common problems with frying a processor is applying way too much thermal grease to the core. Some people get crazy with this when attempting to overclock. It only takes a couple of drops, not a layer of grease to do the job. In fact, too much grease does the exact opposite and acts as an insultor which causes the processor to fry even faster.

Re:Fry?

[maharito]

The only time that I've personally seen this is on an ASUS A7A266 motherboard with an AMD TBird 1400... However, the system was clocked at 1400MHz, so no overclocking was being done. It turns out that it's really not the silicon or whatever else that makes the processor work... It's really the magic smoke. Once you let the magic smoke out, the processor probably won't work. This tends to happen in circumstances where your motherboard (in this unfortunate person's case, the A7A266) reports a 1.75V Vcore and a multimeter reports 3.8V. Needless to say, the vendor in question replaced the board and the processor. All's well that ends well, I guess.

Re:Fry?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do not 'fry' from increasing clock speed but from the increased voltage it requires.

The 'Barton' AthlonXP's use 1.65V. Crank that up to 2.5V with air cooling and watch the fireworks.

Re:Fry?

[futuresheep]

Pan fried is an excellent way to cook your processor. After 24 hours in buttermilk, lightly coat it with some chili powder, granualted garlic and onion, a nice coating of flour, then into a cast iron skillet with a quarter inch of crisco at 325 degrees. About 10 minutes on each side, depending on the size of the CPU die should make for a tender and tasty meal. I like some mashed potatoes and gravy, and coleslaw on the side, with a pilsner to wash it all down.

Re:Fry?

[Fortyseven]

Way back when I got my first 1ghz processor, I was coming from a 266mhz machine that didn't have or need any kind of cooling. Naturally, since I was on my own, I just plopped that baby onto the mobo to make sure it worked before putting on the big tower cooler thing it was suggested I buy.

It POSTed. Once.

Then on the subsequent boot, the screen was blank. Then it began to smell...bad. Then there was the smoke. And then my tears began to flow.

I simply had no idea that you never use modern CPU's AT ALL without some kind of suitable cooling. Not even for a quick check to see if it's installed right.

Took me a few months, but evetually a friend helped me get a Duron 850 processor, and you better believe I installed that one correctly. ;)

Tough way to learn a lesson, but from then on I took everything far more seriously and read everything I can before I make a purchase. Sounds like common sense, but hey, I was cocky back then. :P

Re:Fry?

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

It happened a while ago, but it happened to me.

AMD K6-2/450.

Came home after a week in the woods...unit had been off the whole time.

I go to boot it up and walk off. I come back about 5 minutes later and the magic smoke is loose in the room...and there's a bad smell coming from the CPU. I never did boot it up again, so I don't know exactly what failed.

Re:Fry?

[swankypimp]

The only way I've seen (I also work in a computer shop) has nothing to do with overclocking; it's putting your heatsink on backwards. When the step on the heatsink is reversed with the step on the socket, you power on and less than two seconds later get a puff of smoke. It's hard to do, but we were gettings several processors per month RMA'd after Bob Newbie jammed the heatsink on upside down with a screwdriver. Finally we started including a slip of paper telling people not to do this, and warning them that it would void their warranty.

As for overclocking, I have no idea. (I run my processor at its intended setting, and am therefore not l33t.)

Re:Fry?

[herrvinny]

I have a few spare 486 processors lying around. Any ideas on how to cook them?

Re:Fry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that slow cooking older, tougher CPU's works best. A nice 486 chili cooked all day in a crock pot is a heart warming meal for these cold months. For those equipped with a pit, marinade your CPU's in your rub of choice, then smoke at 225 degrees for 12 hours or so. Finish with a nice sauce and some tasty sides for a winter BBQ treat!

Re:Fry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, forgot to login on that last one...

Re:Fry?

[VistaBoy]

...So the processor becomes so amazingly pissed from all the inflammatory insults that it refuses to continue doing work?

Re:Fry?

[pmw57]

About 10 minutes on each side, depending on the size of the CPU die should make for a tender and tasty meal.

Warning! Your mileage may vary on this one.

--
Paul Wilkins

Re:Fry?

[ShadowDrake]

If they're DX4s or 5x86, running at 5 volts is a fun trip. Find yourself an older mobo and enjoy the struggle.

Pitiful DX4/100! Your puny purple heatsink will not save you!

Re:Fry?

[Maul]

I've met people with a substantial "Athlon Keychain" collections, many of them were attempting "water cooling" and just screwed up.

Re:Fry?

[Anonymous Coward]

you made it funny...

Re:Anyone Not Know This?

[SiliconBateman]

I do not understand your grammar. Do you mean their instead of there? And why "'s" BIOS... that is crazy.

If you work in IT I have no doubt why bugs/errors/exploits occur. Proper command of semantics is important. If you cannot manage your native tongue what can you manage?

Not so fast...

[EmCeeHawking]

while also watching out for dangers that could fry your processor.

With all of the offshore outsourcing going on, we geeks need as much practice frying things as possible. =)

Re:Anyone Not Know This?

[spektr]

Seriously who doesn't know how to set there BIOS's settings?

My 96 year old grandmother uttered the other day that she was not perfectly confident with setting the DRAM burst timings on her nforce2 board. I pointed her to this site and now she is happy, because she could squeeze 2 fps more out of her box and can thereby delay the "necessary" upgrade for another 3 months. Silly old granny and the fps madness...

And remember guys..

[Lussarn]

No overclocking is considered rock solid before you have compiled a complete gentoo on your OC CPU.

Re:And remember guys..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because it's true. Still trying to get Gentoo up and running on my A7V on the second ATA100 controller.

Re:And remember guys..

[wampus]

I tried this! Either my optimization flags were bad, or overclocked gcc is a bad idea, but that OS gave me nothing but problems. I had to reinstall it with more modest settings, and decided that if I really wanted better compile times I would just get a new CPU/Mobo. I replaced the Duron 800 with a 2500+ Barton and considered it a stable OC.

Re:And remember guys..

[Mitchell Mebane]

Funny? More like +1, Insightful. I had to drop my OC back 100MHz before I could get it to work.

Re:And remember guys..

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't funny. Large builds are an excellent way to test system stability.

I use the FreeBSD buildworld as a test and I've actually discovered hardware probelms using it that weren't repeatable in any other way.

Ummm, Dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

His native tongue is Pashtun. He's a help desk supervisor in Pakistan, for HP.

Maybe next time you can let your head do the thinking instead of your flag. Ass.

Re:Ummm, Dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your, sir, are a major cause of flamebait. The grantparent of your post is far more likely a white middle class kid from the midwest who has yet to perfect their grammar.

ALLAH AKBAR!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am joining this jihad against the slashdot infidels. Thanks be to you, brother!

I'll vouch for the guide

[Tomster]

It's pretty much what I did when I bought my new system a few months ago (Barton 2500+, 8RDA+ mobo). Their recommendations match the experience I had. I used (and deleted, stupid stupid me) a spreadsheet to track my changes as I stepped through FSB, multiplier, voltage and memory settings until I found my maximum performance.

Then I backed off by about 10%. I'm more interested in overall reliability and longevity than maximum performance, since I want this system to last for at least three years as my primary.

-Thomas

Re:I'll vouch for the guide

[Zebbers]

I'm more interested in overall reliability and longevity than maximum performance, since I want this system to last for at least three years as my primary.

then why are you overclocking?
underclock if that was true

Re:I'll vouch for the guide

[Anonymous Coward]

I also have a Barton 2500+ with the Epox 8RDA+ and have had incredible results overclocking. I'm only running 333mhz RAM a little over stock and I can boot and run stable as a 3200+. Thats with air cooling, the stock heatsink, and idle temps of 39-42C with tops of 52C playing games. Like you I toned it down a little and now I'm booting at 3000+. As for everybody saying, what's the point, at newegg.com a 2500+ is going for 91$ retail. A 3000+ with 333fsb is 197$ retail and with a 400fsb its 209$ retail. That's an easy 100$ savings, for the same amount of performance, maybe more since my FSB is higher than 333. Admitedly the 400fsb would perform better, but I'd rather put that 100$ towards a nice shiny video card than a processor that runs at basically the same speed as the one costing less.

Re:I'll vouch for the guide

[Anonymous Coward]

When you look at the three year timeframe, overclocking can't compensate for Gates' Law. You'll be lusting after the latest 9 Ghz chip and your existing system will be just as obsolete as if you didn't overclock it.

Best site for motherboard/cpu speed support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an Asus A7V133 motherboard. It has a 900 Mhz Athlon cpu. I have a couple of cpus I can pull from other boxes that are Duron 900, Duron 1.2, and Duron 1.3 units. But when I look at pricewatch, I see Durons going up to 1.6 at least. And Athlons at 1.3, and 1.33 (and 1.4) with 200 and 266 buses.

I'm assuming that I can't use the newer amd chips, the XP, and when I bought the board, it said it supported up to 1.3 Ghz (faster chips weren't out yet). Without flashing the bios, how do I figure out what is the fastest cpu I can install? I tried googling motherboard sites (manufacturer and enthusiast sites) a while back for a whole day, and came up empty.

I have PC150 memory, so I know I can use the cpu with the faster bus speed. But anyone know what's the top cpu speed? Or a site where I can find this out?

I have a similar situation with Shuttle AK31 or Ak31A boards (don't remember which they are). How to find out what is the fastest cpu they support, without flashing bios, when I bought them, and when faster cpus come out after the documentation is written.

What's the current hot chipset/board to get now with amd's latest cpus? Opterons and FX51-opterons are out of my league, as well as any dual board, so don't mention those.

Thanks.

Re:Best site for motherboard/cpu speed support?

[waferhead]

A new NFORCE2 board is the hot setup, FIC AU13 last I remember,(I have an AU11, DDR333, chipset 1 rev previous) DDR400, dual channel ram access, great audio, and a NIC that won't work under Linux last I checked. ~$90 US.

Add a 2400+, and a good copper cooler with a 70mm fan (~$30) and a couple of sticks of DDR400 ram, looking at about $400, using your existing case, PS,drives etc.

Very fast and stable under Linux.(Or probably Win for that matter, cant say personally)

There are some cheaper VIA based boards out there, I have one that has about a week on it, a SOYO Dragon Lite, same CPU and mem as in the Nforce, but I HAD to underclock it and slow the memory to 133 to have a stable system.

Running same CPU and mem at 2168MHz, 166, 5222 mem timings, stable as a rock on the Nforce.

I've got

[metalhed77]

I've got a 2600+ barton running right now at 3200+ (2.21 GHz) with a 400 Mhz FSB on a a7n8x with PC3200 and it's solid as a rock. Temperature doesn't seem to be an issue at all, but then i'm using a massive Thermalright SLK-947U

Fry?-Bake-off

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not "fry" a processor, but you can compromise it's operation. I have a video card that over-heated (fan failure), but it still works. However it's more sensitive to system settings than before (underclocked the processor), and occasionaly I have to unplug the monitor cable during boot, to get a display. I may also get lockups that I otherwise wouldn't have. So why do it, for so little benifit?

BTW "./" submission is still broke with Mozilla 1.4, but works with Konq and IE.

Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[MarcQuadra]

I for one don't need the horsepower of a top-end CPU. I have a KT266a-based board (max FSB=133/266) and I put an Athlon-xp 2500/333 into it.

My CPU is underclocked from 1.83G to 1.46G, it dissipates about 45W, which is about the same as a G4, and HALF what a modern P4 drops. It's stable as all hell and I'm very happy with the speed.

I do the same thing to my G3/450, I use it as a fileserver so the 450MHz is totally wasted. I turned it down to 300MHz with less than 2% 'real world' performance difference from the client machines. It also generates less heat and uses less power now.

Any of you living on your own and paying electric bills would be well-served by underclocking, as the VAST majority of our CPU cycles go to waste anyway.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[heli0]

The new AMD Athlon64's do this automatically.

http://www.msi.com.tw/html/e_service/techexpress/t ech_column/6702/page11.htm

Take Athlon(TM)64 3200+ for example, the standard clock is 2000MHz. After adjusting it to the Minimal Power Management, as long as you PC stays under the low loading circumstance, the CPU clock will be located in 800MHz. As soon as there is a program starts running, the CPU clock will begin to add 200MHz each time according to the loading of data.

AMD Cool'n'Quiet! Technology allows the system to dynamically and automatically select the CPU speed, Voltage and Power combination that match the instantaneous user perfomance need. These changes can happen as often as 30 times per second.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[thelondonforces]

please visit http://folding.stanford.edu if you think you are wasting CPU cycles

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[bloosqr]

Are you positive that the wattage is the same when under no load? I forget the actual numbers but the amp readings jump sky high when we actually use our dual xeon machines (correspondingly the temperature of the chips jump from 22C to 60C). I got the impression that
the current draw is highly dependent on what you are doing w/ the processor on most modern processors..

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably a stupid question but.. seeing as you clocked your CPU down to the same kind of speed as the Athlon XP1800+, why did you not just buy an Athlon XP1800+ and save yourself some money?

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[skajake]

> Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

Yes ;)

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[MarcQuadra]

Several reasons:

1. Twice the L2 cache.

2. Lower heat dissipation/energy use when underclocked.

3. upgrade path. (my next motherboard will most likely be a KT600, my CPU and RAM are already up to the task.

4. Price difference was only $10 where I got it.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[msaavedra]

I also underclock my Athlon XP. Modern CPU's just run too hot. Properly cooled, that thing made my system sound like a jet engine, and increased the temperature in the room about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It is only tolerable when it's underclocked, and, to be honest, I don't notice any speed difference.

My next system is going to be low-power with minor cooling needs. I already have a Via C3 based system that I use for file serving. The whole machine has only one low-speed fan and is very quiet. I hope I can do something like that for a real desktop PC. Perhaps something with the Pentium-M CPU. I understand they're making mini-ITX and micro-ATX boards for these now.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not the only one. Other people do it to reduce heat and improve stability (perhaps they don't have a better cpu cooler available.)

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[MisterP]

No, I do the same. I clock my Athlon 1800XP down to 1150MHz (100MHz bus) from 1533MHz. I then 7 volt my fans and I basically don't hear the machine.

The unit now runs at 48 degrees at idle instead of 58 at the stock speed which is an added bonus.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I agree. I wish computers had more sophisticated frequency selection. I know the Intel mobile chips cut the clock in half when not plugged into the wall.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Animats]

The industrial computing world underclocks routinely. Much of the stuff sold for "it has to work" applications is underclocked, as it should be.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[titzandkunt]

No you're not.

During the unaccustomedly (is that a word? It is now!) UK summer this year, I underclocked my XP1800+ to about 1.2GHz (native speed IIRC is 1.46).

My temps were nudging 55+ on the hottest days, where temps in some places hit 100F+ - bear in mind that in this country home air conditioning is still the preserve of the rich and shameless...

I barely notice the difference, still get a good game of Max Payne out of the damn thing while the CPU ticks over at 40-42C, and the internet still runs as fast as ever. Or not.

T&K.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I work I'm the guy who puts together the computers we use. It was quite a while ago that I thought to myself, "you know, this is more than fast enough". The place I work has a huge problem with lint that gets caught in the fans and strangles machines pretty fast. Old pentiums and PIIs are running fine despite the fact that their fans died a long time ago. Now as everything gets hotter and faster I find myself under clocking new computers in hope that they will be a bit more resilient to burning out.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[WoTG]

Well, it depends on the definition of "modern". It wasn't too long ago (less than a year) that AMD chips did not reduce power usage by much when in an idle loop. There was some weird issue that prevented proper power savings from occuring. I think this finally changed on the Tbred A's or B's... motherboard support came a little while after that.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The TI-83+ calculators come under clocked by default. The z80's are supposed to be 8MHz but TI underclocks them too 6.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS?

[Skuld-Chan]

I had a P120 that was mistakeningly overclocked for years - one day it quit working. I noticed that the jumpers were running it at like 90 or 100 mhz - I set the multipliers properly and it booted right up.

Re:Anyone Not Know This?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

You mean you were born with knowledge of computers? In that case I've got to disappoint you. Most of us are born with just enough knowledge to find a nipple and suck on it. All the other things we've got to learn some way or another.

Yes, but

[metalhed77]

What if you get a $100 processor (barton 2600+) spend $50 on cooling (Slk 947 U plus fan) and overclock it to the performance of a $250 (barton 3200+) processor with no problems? The same can be said of video cards. It seems that cooling has a higher ROI than just buying the better chip.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey loser the 3200+ is different. It has more of the faster memory built in that is called "cache". Cache memory is helpful to speed up your performance because its faster than a hard drive. So in order to get the same performance you would have to add some more cache memory, and so would cost about the same as the 3200+.

Try to learn a little before you open your mouth so you don't look so dumb.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a retard on the grounds that the 2600+ BARTON core proc has the same cache as the 3200+.

Now who's stupid, you fuckwit.

What apps for checking cpu temp/linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the applications that I can use to check cpu temperature/fan speed under linux?

preferably something that is common on most distros, as I'm using knoppix right now and running off the cd, so apt-getting it won't work with my current setup.

If I had windows I could check temps during daily bootups in the bios, or with the windows software that came with the motherboard, but since I'm running knoppix, it's been almost three months since I last rebooted, and I don't know which app to use for hardware monitoring.

Suggestions?

Re:What apps for checking cpu temp/linux?

[SharpFang]

look for lm sensors. I'm afraid you'll have trouble setting it up on Knoppix if you have some not-very-standard sensor hardware - in that case it often requires patching and recompiling kernel.

Re:What apps for checking cpu temp/linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

And as a frontend, if you're running KDE, there is KSensors.

Lourens

Re:What apps for checking cpu temp/linux?

[DeathPenguin]

As someone else already mentioned, get lm_sensors. Also, you'll need to add i2c support to your kernel.

Re:What apps for checking cpu temp/linux?

[ajs318]

Linux users also have a handy way to check for stability: compile and attempt to install a kernel. One bit in one byte will send it spiralling off into oblivion. Don't actually change your configuration, though. Just keep recompiling the same source as you are already using, so if the installation part messes up, you can slow down, boot from CD and try again.

If you're running a stock kernel, you should customise that first before you try overclocking. You wouldn't want to waste that improvement!

Re:Jihad looms

[Anonymous Coward]

To whom it may concern:

You have several highly rated comments of mine in your database. You are violating my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and I insist you remove my comments or I will be forced to take legal action. Slashdot clearly states that comments are owned by their posters, and as such, I maintain a copyright on mine. Clearly, you are also acting in bad faith, namely using them to assist in the destruction of another site. Also, you are not reposting them in part, but in whole, so you have no grounds by which to claim fair use. You have five business days to comply with my demand or I will commence legal action.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Slashbot

Anyone Not Know This?-This sux.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most of us are born with just enough knowledge to find a nipple and suck on it."

I hear, that there are some who can't even do that. I believe they go on to become managment.

Overclocking, Watercooling, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the year 2003... why not buy a faster CPU instead?

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I need to overclock a CPU that is fast enough? Is it just part of a geeks life or has it still a meaning?

Reoccuring theme - "Don't need computer that fast"

[zymano]

And alot of people that don't do heavy gaming or graphics processing are right. Think about this . A majority of us use 56k dial up to get on the net but what would happen if the dream of 'Fiber to the home' came true ? We would get 100 megabits of data a second ,enough for HDTV on demand and an alternative to the other monopoly that is cableTV(great evil) . That would be THE day that would signal most of our computers as extinct. Alot of our present computers couldn't even come close to handling that kind of data. That would be a HUGE reason to upgrade to 64 bit and faster computers and a reason to overclock. The computer makers should be organizing to roll out 'fiber to the home' along with municipal governments in the best interests for themselves so they can sell new generation MEDIA pc's and for the public.

The biggest performance difference you can make?

[Moderation abuser]

The disc is the slowest point, add plenty of RAM as buffer, but nothing makes up for having a fast disc.

15,000 rpm, 3.6ms access time, 8Mb onboard buffer. And an HBA to match.

I find it ironic that people buy cheap systems with slow discs, slow network and insufficient RAM and then try to make it faster by overclocking the CPU.

Re:Reoccuring theme - "Don't need computer that fa

[SharpFang]

Alot of our present computers couldn't even come close to handling that kind of data.

What about 10mbit ethernet for 8bit Atari?
You forget that in many cases we don't USE our hardware at its maximum settings. I have a 10mbit LAN but my 486 firewall simply won't process stuff that fast. I have motherboard with two ATA100 controllers, yet I use one of them at 66, just because that's how much my HDD supports. I use SB16/ISA instead of far superior FM801 because I value compatibility and stability over performance.

If I used 56K modem, with hardware that could handle some 50Mbit transfers, switching to 100Mbit LAN isn't entirely pointless. I just won't use ALL of it, but far more than I have nowadays anyway. So your point is plainly wrong, "better network" doesn't have to mean all the rest has to be discarded.

Re:Anyone Not Know This?

[Tony Hoyle]

Ironic that most geeks never get within 60 feet of a nipple once they've got their knowledge of computers :)

Re:Jihad looms

[Anonymous Coward]

Man this is the lamest thing I have ever read.

You sad fucking losers.

Yes.. lets post a link which is nearly TWO YEARS OLD to try and discredit the Slashdot staff. Mr fucking current affairs.

Laughable.. oh, and kuro5hin sucks. Royally.

How about just being able to clock it right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an XP 1800+. I've been running it at the right speed for over a year, and just recently it started spontaneously rebooting several times a day (with a temperature in the high 60's).

I lowered the FSB from 133 to 120 and then it stopped rebooting but apps kept crashing, so I lowered it again to 100.

Now it's very stable and runs cooler than it ever did, but suddenly my 1533MHz is a 1200.

Re:How about just being able to clock it right?

[DirkGently]

I'm thinking that the 120 gave your PCI fits. Either it was underclocked to the 27mhz region, or overclocked to about 38mhz. If the former, I could see some possible timing issues with the AGP. If the latter, well, I'm surprised your hard drive didn't start going "YAAGGGDITYBFLORRORGRAPF! I SHALL SKULL FUCK THE CONTENTS OF THIS PARTITION! MAAGGIDDYWRACKNACK!"

I've had that happen before. That's also why the newer Bartons are so nice. As the clock is unlocked, there's no need for the odd front side buss speeds.

slashdotted

[da_anarchist]

Apparently, their webserver could use a good overclocking as well

Re:Reoccuring theme - "Don't need computer that fa

[Selecter]

Yep. All true. The sillest thing I see with other folk is that they have a blazing fast gaming system and then use a 56K modem connection to play FPS's with. These are also the ones screaming about lag and such. Think 15 year olds with fixed allowances. :) They have hi speed available, but they cant spend the 50 bucks a month if the parents dont want it.

FTTH is a pipe dream for now. As long as you have the phone companys protecting their copper last mile and the cable TV guys protecting their TV lines, you'll never see it. It would take government action on a massive scale. Since currently our guv'ment values giving Iraqi's infrastructure a boost more than our's, I think that say will be far away indeed. :(

Steven Lynch sings a song about you....

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a major cause of the decline of western civilization. The grandparent of your post is far more sanctimonious than a spelling lamer who hates midwesterners has any right to be.

PS -- Give your mom my love, but not like last Mother's Day. This time, all over her face; it's almost Christmas, it should be special.

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[iamhassi]

I find it ironic that people buy cheap systems with slow discs, slow network and insufficient RAM and then try to make it faster by overclocking the CPU.

Because once the application is loaded from hd to ram it's the cpu & ram speed that matters, not the hd speed.

Let's not forget that very few apps even need fast load speeds, even games don't need it. A modern IDE hard drive offers 50+ mB/sec speeds, that's fast enough to load even the largest games quickly, only when video editing would faster speeds be desireable. And hard drives are not like CPUs, their are no hard drives that offer double or triple the transfer rate of the inexpensive drives, your fastest 15k rpm drive might offer 20mB/sec more, which isn't worth the extra $200 and 80+ gig sacrifice to many people, especially when that money could be better spent on faster cpus, video cards or memory.

A fast cpu plus lots of ram paired with a slow hd is like a speed reader who took a few minutes to find the book vs a "metally challenged" person who found the book immediately. Which would you rather be?

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[timeOday]

Maybe they're gamers. Those people tend to care a lot more about frame rate than loading time.

Re:Jihad looms

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I would like to help with the project. Please email me, crackwithdrawal AT yahoo.com

As long as it takes to actually do all this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I could get a job working at MINIMUM WAGE, and buy the higher priced parts that would enable the speed natively.

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[Knife_Edge]

15,000 rpm, eh? Bet it sounds like a jet taking off. Honestly, yes, the disk is the slowest thing in your system. In most of my usage, however, I don't use the disk very much. What do you need it for? Well, there's launching programs, loading the binary into memory. I do that about once and then leave the programs running all day. I'm satisfied with the launch times, especially given how easily and quickly I can switch between processes that are already in memory.

What else is there? Every now and then you need to load or save a data file. If you are doing multimedia where you have a lot of raw data to read and write off the disk, having a super fast one would doubtless make a huge difference in performance (provided the system bus could handle it, but that's another matter). But not for me, my files aren't very big and I don't perform these operations nearly enough to care.

Now, what would make my system appear much slower would be if I had less RAM, causing virtual memory (swapping fast RAM to much slower disk) to be necessary. That would really make things grind to a halt. Yes, I'm trying to make a point here. Maybe for you that 15,000rpm disk is important enough to be able to justify the cost, but the first performance upgrade most users are going to need and will be able to see immediate results from is adding another stick or two of RAM. It's cheaper too!

I think for most people a disk that fast is overkill, just trying to shave a second or two (maybe a lot less) off an infrequently performed operation. Sure, it feels faster using it, and maybe that improves your mood or something, but perceptions aside, it really isn't that much faster. It would be nice if you had a computer that could do everything you could ever require of it all at once, instantly, but back in reality you have to ask yourself how much of a premium you are willing to pay for a tiny pinch of time.

Useless

[RKone2]

The only people who would find this article noteworthy are people with AMD processors on Abit motherboards (only company with the softmenu bios option to my knowledge) that have the via KT266a or KT333 chipsets.

Many of these bios settings are based on these boards in particular, most of the time other motherboards don't have these settings, or they're called something else. It's a shame the article is written for Abit boards, because generally if you've gone out of your way to buy one, you already know a bit about overclocking.

There is some info here if you've got an Nforce2 board, but some of it is wrong. The article says to run memory at 166mhz, but these boards can run at 200 (or higher).

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[Jeff DeMaagd]

15k drives aren't loud, at least mine aren't. I have two 18GB Seagate drives that were included with the system, the entire system is quieter than a lot of gaming computers I've seen.

For frame rates, a faster drive doesn't do jack.

A faster drive does speed up boot time it does make apps start quicker and the system feels more responsive. I suppose booting is a foreign concept to some people, I shut down just to save power.

For anyone going this route, using one faster drive as the system drive and one slower but much larger drive for data is a good compromise.

who would have thought...

[timerider]

... that a 'this box was not l337. am making it l337 now' article would make it on the /. frontpage.

Re:Anyone Not Know This?

[xSauronx]

yeah
i still have the knowledge to find a nipple and suck on it...

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly faggot. You expect anybody to believe you're actually a diaper-head?

Tuning for 15-minute MTBF

[Animats]

If you follow the directions in that article, you are tuning a system for a mean time before failure of about 15 minutes. Look at the directions. If it crashes within a few minutes, back off the settings; if it doesn't, crank them up. That's going to yield a system with an MTBF of slightly longer than the test period.

Overclocking is stupid. Especially since it started costing more than buying a faster CPU.

Re:Reoccuring theme - "Don't need computer that fa

[zymano]

tell me how your 486 could do

-Hdtv on demand

-High quality 3d graphics

-High degree of multitasking(example-watching high quality video, sound, surf the net)

-High megapixel images.

Your offbase and you don't know what your saying.

Re:Reoccuring theme - "Don't need computer that fa

[zymano]

I like to check on dslreports.com to hear about rural communities that ORGANIZE politically to roll out fiber.

Dude.. This 2000+ AMD is flying.

[Anonymous Coward]

I followed the articles pointers/tips to get a 180% performance boost out of my CPU! My university algorithm project has never run sae
AE3 qg azz

[NO CARRIER]

About these CPU temps..

[JANYAtty.]

The article starts with the note that you should keep your cpu temp below 55'C (42'C w/water cooling) when overclocking. WTF--k are they talking about? Im running an AMD 2500 that I got about a year ago and it runs HOT! like high 60's low 70's according to ASUS probe v.2.21.05 (obviously on an Asus mobo) with no overclocking... Im running the OEM cooler. When I play a top FPS game like MOHAA it hits 80'C! I wrote AMD about it and they said its within the operating range..(95'C I believe) Its nice now that winter is aproaching, I dont have to run the heat but during the summer, I really should have vented it out the window..

Re:About these CPU temps..

[DirkGently]

The OEM cooler, in an average one-fan case, will see temps in those neighborhoods. The OEM cooler leaves a little something to be desired in its ability to shuck heat. They use a little thermal sticky pad between the CPU and the sink, IIRC. Those work, but not nearly as well as a small dab of thermal paste.

You're fine as long as you don't try to O/C. If you do, you'll quickly find out that OEM sink's shortcomings.

Re:About these CPU temps..

[Maul]

Is your 2500 a Barton Core? They tend to be a bit hotter, I've noticed.

Anyhow, the AMD OEM heatsink/fan combo is garbage, but even with that, I haven't seen temps into the 80s before! AMD says the thing can take up to 95C, but that's friggin hot.

I don't know what everything else is like, but I'd definately check into finding ways to cool down your box if you haven't already. Properly placed case fans and trying to keep wires out of the way will help a bit. Also, I've found that a power supply with a fan on the bottom is helpful.

Of course, to see a huge difference I'd ditch the OEM heatsink and get a better one. You can get your Barton under 55C pretty easily with a decent heatsink.

Re:About these CPU temps..

[guiscard]

80c seems rally hot to me. check out the forums at nforcers for your asus board if you want more info.

Re:About these CPU temps..

[JANYAtty.]

Thanks for the thought- I am already running it without the pad and with thermal paste already but I will see about a new cooler- I was using an aftermarket one already but it didnt seem to do that much. Thanks :)

Yup, I've fried one, but not by overclocking.

[Coventry]

My old 1.1GHz athlon got fried.
Occasionaly the CD-rom drive would spin up for no (apparent) reason, and would vibrate like mad - the sound it made was very annoying.
I'd sometimes hit the top of my case, which would cause the sound to stop as the cd-rom drive was jolted into a slightly different position.
I apparently hit my case a lot harder then I thought when I'd do this - because one time, the last time, my screen all of a sudden went blank about 10 seconds after I'd hit the case. No signal. I looked down under my desk at the tower in confusion - looking at the power LED. It was on.
Then I smelled something... like something burning. Not a woodsy smell, like a wood fire, but the kind of fried electronics smell a power supply makes as it goes. I quickly turned off my machine - thinking the power supply had gone bad.
Nope. The CPU heatsink was sitting on top of my agp card from where it had fallen off. Apparently, I had knocked it loose over time, and the last jolt was too much.

The CPU enver worked again. No flames, no obvious burn marks or sillyness like that, it just refused to post ever again.

Pentium overclocking

[phreak03]

Anyone have a guide for pentium overclocking? I run a P4 1.8ghz 400fsb at 2.2ghz easy I raised the voltage to 1.65 from 1.5, just air cooling, with a thermaltake volcano (cheap) the 1.8 was the last of the 400mhz fsbes after that they went 533, i think mine is just a tad mislabled (i've hit 2.4 stably, and 2.6 I can boot and run a burn in, but its a little hairy)

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[MtViewGuy]

There are actually three things that could do a lot to speed up computer systems without going the route of getting a faster CPU.

First, get as much RAM as you can afford. Nowadays, you want at least 384 MB of RAM installed, which drastically reduces the need of the operating system to do virtual memory swapping to and from the hard drive. With Linux running a full Gnome or KDE environment or running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Home/Professional, you probably want at least 512 MB of RAM installed (overkill? Not with the cheap price of RAM nowadays).

Second, get yourself the fastest hard drive you can afford. You want at bare minimum a 7200 rpm drive with ATA-33 interface (ATA-100/133 drives can run in ATA-33 mode) with 2 MB of buffer RAM on the drive itself. The newer drives often sport 8 MB of buffer RAM, which speeds up drive performance a little bit more in most cases.

Finally, get yourself the fastest graphics card your system can support. This is especially true if you're running games or play back full-screen or near full-screen video files.

There are some circumstances where going to a faster CPU does make sense. This is especially true for multimedia editing work, where CPU processing power is at a premium and you want access to CPU multimedia extensions such as Intel's SSE/SSE2 and/or AMD's 3Dnow!/3DNow! Professional.

Sounds pretty dumb to me

[bogie]

"Any of you living on your own and paying electric bills would be well-served by underclocking"

What that $6-8 a month is bankrupting you? Even if you peg your cpu at full load 24/7 your probably only looking at $16-$18 a month Maximum. So the average person with 2pcs 24/7 is only about $15 a month.

Based on your needs why didn't you just get a low end duron or celeron? Your obviously not a gamer, so why did you waste all that money on a more expensive CPU? That would have saved you some of the money your concerned with right off the bat. No offense, but like I said buying a fast cpu and underclocking it is about the dumbist thing I've ever heard of.

Re:Fry? = NO risk

[wtarreau]

Unless you do things completely wrong (eg: mount the heatsink so that it doesn't touch the die), there's no risk of frying the CPU. I was so much annoyed with the noise of my dual XP1800 that one day I decided to compile a kernel with fans unplugged. I was monitoring the temperature in parallel. It hung after about one minute, and the sensors reported 97C for both processors just before it hung. The heatsinks were *very* hot ! So I could replug my fans and slow them down so that the CPUs don't reach this temperature. They usually reach 90-92 during intensive compilation, and I've yet to see them fail.

Willy

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends entirely on what you're doing.

I very much doubt that most overclockers are clueless enough to have too little RAM (although I do know that many people upgrade their entire system when they start to feel it is slow when getting more RAM would probably solve the problem), so I'll just ignore that part of your argument.

If you're running games or number crunching, you're almost certainly bound by CPU speed and the speed of the memory bus (and for games, the GPU).

If you're compiling software...it depends, but anything big seems to be cpu/memory bound (especially in languages such as C++ that compile slowly).

Interactive use is often disk-I/O bound for program launches, but once it's up and in RAM...most of the time, only if it depends on network I/O.

If you're doing video editing, then yes, you're probably disk-I/O bound.

Re:The biggest performance difference you can make

[Anonymous Coward]

They also tend to enjoy masturbating over hardware more than actually using it.

Re:Reoccuring theme - "Don't need computer that fa

[SharpFang]

Do I need it all? I don't think so. I want webpages to load faster and downloads to run faster and so far the 486 is not the bottleneck for my transfer rates. When it becomes the bottleneck and I'm still NOT satisfied with my transfers, I may consider replacing it. The problem with your thinking is typical problem of thinking like most americans: "I want more money, I want more of everything". You're never satisfied with what you already have and if you could have more, you want that. For now, I'm satisfied with most of my hardware and don't plan on changing it anytime soon - just because it can do most of what I want from it. CD 24x... Why faster?! PS/2 mouse and keyboard - Saving USB for more important. 16M Riva Vanta. Since I don't play games, it's far above what I'd ever need, to watch movies it's just enough. 700MHZ Duron. I rarely top its load, when I do, I get results in very reasonable time. Why buy faster? HDD120GB - recent purchase, 20G was just not enough... In most cases I don't need faster/better stuff because I'm happy with what I can do with what I have, and in great most cases I'm quite unimpressed with that stuff new hardware could give me. Of course my hardware can't do this all. But the fact that my neighbour can kill groups of pixels at zillion FPS and watch 5 movies simultaneously doesn't mean I WANT to do that too.

Re:Am I the only one who UNDERVOLTS?

[egghat]

This is WAY cool!!!

But if you're stuck with an old CPU a very good place to look is SilentPCReview.com. There is a thread in their forums with a list of undervoltable mainboards (can't post the direct link, cause the site is down at the moment).

Most Athlons undervolt quite nicely (mine goes from 1,5 Volts down to 1,35; wattages should be reduced by 12-15 watts). Remember that you don't sacrifice performance by undervolting. When you combine undervolting AND underclocking you can get Athlons that do consume less than 30 watts. With a really big heatsink you can cool such a modified CPU passively.

Bye egghat.

I don't think it's stupid.

[MarcQuadra]

I also buy PC3200 RAM and run it at PC2100, because it's cool to the touch, and I replaced my first-gen radeon card (the ones with a fan) with a later-model one that has a GPU that doesn't need a fan. The specs on my card are the same, no performance difference, but that's one less fan in there, and it's a lot cooler in my 'computer cabinet' since the upgrade.

I might underclock my CPU, but I want the most bang for each cycle, so I got the latest athlon-XP with a bigger L2 cache and SSE. I get MUCH better performance than I would with a similarly clocked celeron or duron, but my energy use and heat output are on-par with the low-power CPUs.

Also, I'm much more interested in trouble-free computing than in fast computing, I think an underclocked, cooler system will ultimately cause me less headache down the line.