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Athlon 64 In-depth Overclocking Guide
jmke writes "Everything you ever wanted to know about Athlon 64 overclocking, and then some. If you are confused about HTT, LDT, memory dividers and relationship between these settings, then read on. This in-depth overclocking guide will show you how to get the maximum from your brand new Athlon 64 system"
Is $150 for a lower end Athlon 64 really THAT EXPENSIVE?
No, of course most wouldn't try to overclock an IBM server or clustered 20 4-way xeons. Why? Most people DO NOT OWN THOSE. That's corporate equipment. People can afford to play with $150 chips at home, and will.
Hardly anyone doing professional work on a machine will overclock it. Generally it just makes your system unstable and prone to crashing and making murphey's law become a reality on your precious data. Overclocking IMHO is more for gamers that want to take out as much juice as possible from their processors, and even so, it won't make that much of a difference. Generally its just for bragging rights.
I've already overclocked my 64 to a 96. W00T!
Overclocking is not something that is generally done professionally; it is a hobby, simply to show off and make one feel important. The same is true of 'tricking out' a motor vehicle, or modding a PC case, or the entire industry of do-it-yourself interior decoration.
When rendering, and presumably other activities that might theoretically benefit from increased performance from overclocking such as data analysis and science simulations, your are often leaving the computers working overnight or over the weekend, and the last things that you want are crashes or visual errors due to unstable hardware. Sometimes I even underclock my rendering system, for it is far better for a render to take a few extra hours or days than to have the whole render wasted because somethign went wrong with your elite hacked overclocking with ten percent enhanced performance.
Overclocking also reduces the life of the components, noticeably when they are rendering at full capacity nearly 24/7 for most of the year.
There are certainly professionals that overclock, but they have either carefully weighed the cost benefit ratios and decided on the most logical course of action, or have had a series major setbacks and mistakes and are desperate to finish before the deadline next monday; the boss will not be happy when he finds out that another project is late because of your bumbling incompetency, Jones, so you had better move right in to your cubical for the next week, or you will find yourself moving right out, permanently. You can have that little wife of yours bring you meals; I certainly would not mind having her around the office. Maybe she will finally see reason and bail out on that train wreck of a career that you are conducting, and set her sights up closer to where her standards should be. And if not, she will still be something nice to look at. Tell her to wear something that will cheer you up...Man, this is going to be a Hell of a week. Now get back to work, Jones.
If it ain't broke... overclock it?
keep on because of a rumor that after the 4GHz barrier you can create a tear in the time-space continium... :)
The kind of "idiot" as you so delicately put it, that refuses to pay $249.00 - $359.00 for a $169.00 Processor.
$482 Athlon 64 4000+ 90nm Rev
$478 Athlon 64 4000
$359 Athlon 64 3800
$369 Athlon 64 3800 512K 90nm Rev E
$334 Athlon 64 3700+ 90nm Rev
$282 Athlon 64 3700
$249 Athlon 64 3500
$249 Athlon 64 3500 939pin
$250 Athlon 64 3500 90nm 939pin
$272 Athlon 64 3500 512K 90nm Rev E
$174 Athlon 64 3400
$152 Athlon 64 3200
$169 Athlon 64 3200 939pin
$169 Athlon 64 3200 90nm 939pin
(Prices from pricewatch.com)
As someone who does real-time generative audio/video processing, I have to say that oftentimes what a 2GHz machine cannot run comfortably, a 2.5GHz machine can do satisfactorily. 12FPS may not be good enough, but 15FPS may be passible. People often dismiss overclocking as something just for gamers, but in reality, it can be useful to anyone doing processor-intensive, real-time processing. I feel that some of the anti-overclocking opinions here are a bit unjustified, and more of a knee-jerk response to a loosely correlated l33t culture. The only games I play are Clan Lord and Civilization III... hardly a reason to overclock. However, for video processing, I need all the power I can get despite my modest budget.
I was just happy that I could plonk a NEC V20 in my IBM XT - going from a 4.77 MHz 8088 to a whopping 8 MHz!
I don't see why this is so fantastically irritating to you. Does it bother you when someone has a ferrari that they just drive to work or an SUV that they just drive to soccer practice? You know, it really bothers me that you have a kitchen and don't bother to cook up gourmet 5 star meals.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
The likelyhood of frying parts is not very high. Before that happens you will get restarts, BSODs etc, telling you that you've messed up the settings. If you do it properly, and test your systems stability with Memtest86, Prime95 and the like, then there is no harm.
I have my Athlon 64 3000+ running at 2.2 gHz up from the stock of 1.8. That's the speed of a 3500+ which at the time of purchase cost $170AU more. Do I need that extra speed? No. Is it handy? Yes. Games run smoother. Compilation is quicker. More research for folding@home is acheived.
Give it a go. It's plain old geeky fun.
Yet another blogger begging for an audience.
lifetime?? the average lifetime is well beyond the time the chip is worth anything.
*Few people get lucky because they need to mark some chips at lower speed than they are truly capable and they keep certain margins on the chip timings to ensure it works.* quite a lot of people "get lucky" as you put it. on a64's you often see 300-400mhz overclocks, that's not much unless you look into the cpu prices and how they hike up at those 300-400mhz. and those run whatever test you want for 24/7.. i got a k6-2 300 that has run at 450mhz for something like 6 years or whatever year they were introduced.
overclocking is not worth it usually when you buy the machine.. but ironically.. INCREASES THE LIFETIME as you can use the chip some time longer to play games etc, comfortably.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.