Overclocking

[Chris H]

Hi, I decided to overcock my AMD athlon xp 1800+ at 1.5ghz to 1.9ghz, i changed the speeds in bios and restarted but the screen didnt display anything and it just beeped. After a few restarts i got back into bios and chaged it back and it all went back to normal.
The same thing happened when i decided to overclock a amd duron 800mhz to 1ghz and i changed the bios and restarted and the screen went blank and after a few restarts the screen started displying again and i could get back into bios and change it back and that machine worked fine afterward saswell.
how come when i up the speeds it doesnt work
Thanks,
Chris

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by Chris H

how come when i up the speeds it doesnt work
Thanks,
Chris

Because its not designed to run at those speeds, don’t over clock your system unless you know what you are doing. Changing from 1.5 to 1.9 is a HUGE jump. Does your board allow for smaller incremental changes to the FSB, or just the big ones? Second unless you can lock your PCI bus while changing your FSB, forget it; you will most likely just damage the components on your PCI bus.

seriously overclocking is over rated, buy a new system.

[connyosis]

Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

seriously overclocking is over rated, buy a new system.

So very true. Overclocking is expensive (That is if you want a stable overclock that makes a difference) and only reduces the lifetime of your components. Best thing to do is to force that idea out of your head and save up for a decent new system.

[feelgood]

Just a tip to those who wants to overclock, always work your way up, not start at the top.

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by connyosis

So very true. Overclocking is expensive (That is if you want a stable overclock that makes a difference) and only reduces the lifetime of your components. Best thing to do is to force that idea out of your head and save up for a decent new system.

i use a lot of overclocking techniques, in reverse, I use massive heat sinks so I can have slow fans, keeps the system almost silent, even when I play games. I even lowered the voltage on my CPU to reduce heat, its still stable at 1.3 volts instead of the 1.5 it should be.

Originally Posted by feelgood

Just a tip to those who wants to overclock, always work your way up, not start at the top.

I don’t think he had an option with his board, I am guessing the board supports 266 MHz, 333mhz, and maybe 400 MHz FSB, his chip is a 266 MHz, and I guess he jumped to 333 MHz he's lucky he did not burn it out.

[Jinn]

Never ever overclock in a huge jump like that man! You're so very lucky you have anything more then melted silicon. Work up in increments, not huge jumps.. like the above has said. Remember the price of all of your parts (including peripherals) before you make a move like that. Just thinking about makes me cringe!

[Chris H]

I gives me a chjoice of 1100mhz, 1500mhz(standard), and 1900mhz, ye, i got the system free
Chris

[Dilbert1234567]

dude, don’t over clock, especially because it is a cheep board (no offence)

[xepherys]

All of the above is so, SO true. In fact, overclocking nowadays is a bit silly anyhow. Back in the days of 800MHz procs, overclocking to 1.0GHz was a wonderful thing. Recently, everything is so much faster, your RAM runs faster, video cards do all the hard work for gaming, that there's just not much reason to do it other than to say you've done it. If you DO want to overclock for it's own sake, get a board that supprots it well, a chip that supports it well (sometimes down to the stepping of the particular chip), get good memory, VERY good cooling, a clean power supply and THEN look into stepping it up slowly. Any straying from that path can lead to loss of equipment and moola! Bad news!

[Chris H]

so is this a no no?
Chris

[Dilbert1234567]

yep, new rig time.

[Chris H]

I aready have another rig, just not quite as good for gaming as i need it, i think i will get a pentium D 2.66ghz, 512mb ram, 2x 80gb hdd's, nVidia geforce 6500 256mb pciE 16x. Would this be ok for most of the newer games like battlefield 2, half life 2, counter strike source etc...?
Thanks,
Chris

[tuffrr]

Overclocking is fine - as long as you know what you are doing. It is not as simple as just upping some setting in the bios and thinking everything is sweet. There are many factors which will influence your result. Read up on it some more and try again.

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by tuffrr

Overclocking is fine - as long as you know what you are doing. It is not as simple as just upping some setting in the bios and thinking everything is sweet. There are many factors which will influence your result. Read up on it some more and try again.

He defiantly needs to read up about it, but he can’t over clock with that board.

Originally Posted by Chris H

I aready have another rig, just not quite as good for gaming as i need it, i think i will get a pentium D 2.66ghz, 512mb ram, 2x 80gb hdd's, nVidia geforce 6500 256mb pciE 16x. Would this be ok for most of the newer games like battlefield 2, half life 2, counter strike source etc...?
Thanks,
Chris

Well on low settings you can play the latest games, you certainly need more RAM, get to a gig at least, that will be a huge performance gain, and a new video card, if your on a budget, I’d go for a 7600 GT, otherwise a 7800gt would get you a great gamming rig.

[3Z3VH]

An overclock like that may even be possible, but just upping the bus speed won't do it. It is rare that you can overclock a machine without increasing the voltage (V-Core) to the processor. This is why overclocking causes it to run hot. The fact that it is processing faster doesn't make it any hotter, it's the increased voltage required to run at that speed. If you want to overclock, the first thing you do is raise your v-core, then step up your overclock till it is no longer stable, then give it more voltage again, and keep stepping up till you see the chip getting WAY too hot, at which point you are done overclocking unless you can find a new cooling solution.

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by 3Z3VH

An overclock like that may even be possible, but just upping the bus speed won't do it. It is rare that you can overclock a machine without increasing the voltage (V-Core) to the processor. This is why overclocking causes it to run hot. The fact that it is processing faster doesn't make it any hotter, it's the increased voltage required to run at that speed. If you want to overclock, the first thing you do is raise your v-core, then step up your overclock till it is no longer stable, then give it more voltage again, and keep stepping up till you see the chip getting WAY too hot, at which point you are done overclocking unless you can find a new cooling solution.

An overclock like that is not possible with the current hardware.

There is more then the CPU to take into account, you also need to watch the other bus speeds, and since this is not a highly featured mother board, I doubt the PCI bus can be locked, if it can't he will risk damaging his PCI cards, and his AGP cards, (and any other device that uses the PCI bus). Further more heat is caused by both voltage and clock speed, voltage causes a quadratic increase, where as clock speed produces a linear increase. Lastly, heat of the CPU is not the only enemy, all the components are stressed when overclocking.

If you are going to give advice, please tell the dangers of it, increasing the voltage is Dangerous; it can destroy components if you push it to high.

[3Z3VH]

Thank you Dilbert, I did neglect to include the dangers of overclocking a system, and simply stated more of the method only.

I have never been one to give disclaimers and warnings and such to someone asking how to do something. A flaw of mine is that I assume if they want to do that thing, they at least have heard a horror story or two to deter them and would only continue if their hardware could be sacrificed.

I tend to help with How to do it, and mistakenly disregard the fact that people learn from their own mistakes, not mine

[NotAnAlias]

Wow, some serious overreaction here. You'd have caused no damage to anything by going too high, there are measures to stop that happening.

That said, you did try to go up too high too fast. Start by trying to get your fsb up higher - that gives you the most gains, rather than upping the multiplier.

When you reach the limit of the fsb at one multiplier, one technique is to drop the multiplier DOWN and keep going on the fsb. That and messing around with the VCore (core voltage - more power going through = more stability - this is where you do need to be careful, unlike with just a plain overclock of the fsb/multiplier).

Overclocking is a lot of fun, but can be expensive if you want to get some massive gains. Takes a lot of research too. You'll learn a shitload about processors, ram, motherboards, silicone, pretty much everything. Just take it slow.

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by NotAnAlias

Wow, some serious overreaction here. You'd have caused no damage to anything by going too high, there are measures to stop that happening.

That said, you did try to go up too high too fast. Start by trying to get your fsb up higher - that gives you the most gains, rather than upping the multiplier.

When you reach the limit of the fsb at one multiplier, one technique is to drop the multiplier DOWN and keep going on the fsb. That and messing around with the VCore (core voltage - more power going through = more stability - this is where you do need to be careful, unlike with just a plain overclock of the fsb/multiplier).

Overclocking is a lot of fun, but can be expensive if you want to get some massive gains. Takes a lot of research too. You'll learn a shitload about processors, ram, motherboards, silicone, pretty much everything. Just take it slow.

Although overclocking is generally safe, improperly overclocking can damage components, if you think there is no risk, you’re just kidding your self. if you take it nice and slow, with a good motherboard, RAM, cooling, etc, the risk is really low, however, in Chris H's case, his motherboard does not have the proper safety features, such as locking the PCI bus, or small increments for raising the FSB, Furthermore, he has an AMD xp 1800, with out physically altering the CPU itself, it can not have its multiplier changed from the standard 11.5. Going further to show the risk, by not having a method to lock the PCI bus to 33 MHz, by increasing the FSB to 166 MHz from 133 MHz (the smallest jump he can make) that increases the PCI bus to 41 MHz instead of the standard 33 MHz, in effect overclocking all device that resides on it, which is nearly all of them, so you are stressing everything beyond what they are designed for don’t forget that the AGP bus is on the PCI bus, and should be running at 66 MHz, but will be running at 82 MHz, if it is a 2x or 4x AGP slot, although the clock rate does not increase, the signals per clock do making a 4x AGP slot (my guess on what he has) would run effectively at 333 MHz instead of the standard effective rate of 266 MHz which can damage the card, theoretically, the system should halt before damage is caused, but safeties do fail. Further more, you are flat wrong about why overvolting increases stability, its not due to more power going through, it has to do with the speed it can change between the high and low voltage that the transistors are expecting.
Here is a wonderful thread about overvolting to expand your knowledge:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=384756

I’m not telling Chris H to never overclock, it’s a lot of fun, and as you said, and you learn a lot about the internals of a computer, however the system he wants to overclock is not overclockable.

[NotAnAlias]

Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

Although overclocking is generally safe, improperly overclocking can damage components, if you think there is no risk, you’re just kidding your self. if you take it nice and slow, with a good motherboard, RAM, cooling, etc, the risk is really low, however, in Chris H's case, his motherboard does not have the proper safety features, such as locking the PCI bus, or small increments for raising the FSB, Furthermore, he has an AMD xp 1800, with out physically altering the CPU itself, it can not have its multiplier changed from the standard 11.5.

Which i have done with a pencil and a magnifying glass and got the core voltage up to around 2200mhz - roughly the same as a 2400+. It was fine, no components failed, the motherboard had been used to overclock another chip previously too.

Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

Going further to show the risk, by not having a method to lock the PCI bus to 33 MHz, by increasing the FSB to 166 MHz from 133 MHz (the smallest jump he can make) that increases the PCI bus to 41 MHz instead of the standard 33 MHz, in effect overclocking all device that resides on it, which is nearly all of them, so you are stressing everything beyond what they are designed for don’t forget that the AGP bus is on the PCI bus, and should be running at 66 MHz, but will be running at 82 MHz, if it is a 2x or 4x AGP slot, although the clock rate does not increase, the signals per clock do making a 4x AGP slot (my guess on what he has) would run effectively at 333 MHz instead of the standard effective rate of 266 MHz which can damage the card, theoretically, the system should halt before damage is caused, but safeties do fail.

We aren't working with a lot of info here, rather than using the predefined settings, are you able to manually set them? I find it hard to believe that his motherboard would be setting everything higher across the board rather than just the cpu - ram interactions.

Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

Further more, you are flat wrong about why overvolting increases stability, its not due to more power going through, it has to do with the speed it can change between the high and low voltage that the transistors are expecting.
Here is a wonderful thread about overvolting to expand your knowledge:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=384756

I've had a fair bit of experience with vcores, i was putting it in easier terms to understand, since that's essentially what is happening - more voltage for the cpu and more stability.

Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

I’m not telling Chris H to never overclock, it’s a lot of fun, and as you said, and you learn a lot about the internals of a computer, however the system he wants to overclock is not overclockable.

I think it might be a better idea to find out the type of mobo, the stepping on his chip and so on before making that judgment - my old asus mobo had the preset options as well as the user defined options.


Also, it's a free computer, what's wrong with thrashing the absolute shit out of it? I'd do it.

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by NotAnAlias

Which i have done with a pencil and a magnifying glass and got the core voltage up to around 2200mhz - roughly the same as a 2400+. It was fine, no components failed, the motherboard had been used to overclock another chip previously too.

Yeah it is possible to modify it, but the board may not even be able to set the multiplier anyways.

Originally Posted by NotAnAlias

We aren't working with a lot of info here, rather than using the predefined settings, are you able to manually set them? I find it hard to believe that his motherboard would be setting everything higher across the board rather than just the cpu - ram interactions.

Originally Posted by Chris H

I gives me a chjoice of 1100mhz, 1500mhz(standard), and 1900mhz, ye, i got the system free
Chris

He has 3 options, 1100MHz, 1500MHz, and 1900MHz (100Mz, 133MHz and 166MHz) nothing in between.

Originally Posted by NotAnAlias

I think it might be a better idea to find out the type of mobo, the stepping on his chip and so on before making that judgment - my old asus mobo had the preset options as well as the user defined options.

ASUS makes good boards (i own 3), with plenty of features, thats why you have a lot of options, you built it your self (I assume) and know what you are doing, the board he has sounds like a beige box generic

Originally Posted by NotAnAlias

Also, it's a free computer, what's wrong with thrashing the absolute shit out of it? I'd do it.

it would make a wonderful file server, slap in an extra RAID card, plenty of storage opportunity.

I think this is a mute point now, unless Chris H comes back so we can get some more info on the components.

[Chris H]

Ye, It has a ASUS A7V-333 mobo, we were thinking about using it as a storage pc just that we don't have a OS for it, we only have the licsence sticker and product code so i have been searching the net for a windows 2000 pro image but havent been able to find one anywhere :-(
Chris

[Artsemis]

Be careful downloading windows images off the internet, even if your intentions are good. I'd recommend borrowing one from someone you know that has it.

[Dilbert1234567]

well going over the manual, it looks like yes you can set smaller jumps to the FSB manually, but I see nothing about locking the PCI bus, so no mater what, you will be overclocking all your other components besides the CPU.

as for win2k, its out there, but I cant help you find warez, even though you do have a license, not on this board, keep looking, have you ever used bit torrent, there are tons of things on bittorrent. If you haven't read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent

The system would be nice for a file server, 1 primary IDE, 1 secondary IDE, and 2 more on the promise RAID controller. You don’t need to use the RAID controller as a RAID, so you can have 8 hard drives in the system. Then if you still need more, you can stick another RAID card in a PCI slot. at that point it would be pretty tapped out, but that’s 12 drives or so. Just make sure that the PCI slot you use have the NIC in is not shared by any of the drive controllers.

[Chris H]

Storage isnt a problem as it already has a raid card, i have asked many friends about borrowing a disk and nobody had one, I tried bit torrent and most had been removed and one i did find was going to take me 18 days to download
Chris

[NotAnAlias]

If you're still keen to play with overclocking - check out the following:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/asus...3/a7v333p1.htm
http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=68443
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzM1

You may have to unlock your chip though.

[MiSo]

Originally Posted by Chris H

I aready have another rig, just not quite as good for gaming as i need it, i think i will get a pentium D 2.66ghz, 512mb ram, 2x 80gb hdd's, nVidia geforce 6500 256mb pciE 16x. Would this be ok for most of the newer games like battlefield 2, half life 2, counter strike source etc...?
Thanks,
Chris

games like bf2 and fear will need atleast 2 gigs of ram to play well.
cs source isn't that demanding and should play fine with that setup (another 512 mb of ram wouldn't hurt though)

also the video card will play bf2 but you're going to want something better.

[Dilbert1234567]

Originally Posted by MiSo

games like bf2 and fear will need atleast 2 gigs of ram to play well.
cs source isn't that demanding and should play fine with that setup (another 512 mb of ram wouldn't hurt though)

also the video card will play bf2 but you're going to want something better.

there is not much difference between 1 gig and 2 gigs for BF2, the load times were just slightly better with my 2 gigs, however 2 gigs is nice because you can get rid of your page file. if you RAID the 2 80's in a RAID 0 configuration, you should have trouble noticing between 1 gig and 2 gigs, I have 4 in a RAID 0 and I can take out a gig and not notice much of a performance loss (no real frame rate loss, and slightly longer load times). if you have one stick of 512, get a second, if you have 2 sticks of 256, get 2 more sticks of 512 (keep the dual channel) then work on the video card.