im new to the overclocking scene but so far hav had a fiddle with my pc:
P4 1.6ghz - 1.7ghz
pci clock 33mhz - 35mhz
ram 133mhz - 140mhz
fsb 100mhz - 106mhz
bus speed 400mhz - 424mhz
(pentium 4 willamette, 0.18um, 256kb L2, voltage and multiplier i didnt change)
is there some sort of rough formula or guide to give a general idea of how far a system can be overlocked? as im using stock cooler and dont want to spend money on buying new ramsinks or cpu cooler i dno how far i can push it
| technology.sponge wrote: |
im new to the overclocking scene but so far hav had a fiddle with my pc:
P4 1.6ghz - 1.7ghz
pci clock 33mhz - 35mhz
ram 133mhz - 140mhz
fsb 100mhz - 106mhz
bus speed 400mhz - 424mhz
(pentium 4 willamette, 0.18um, 256kb L2, voltage and multiplier i didnt change)
is there some sort of rough formula or guide to give a general idea of how far a system can be overlocked? as im using stock cooler and dont want to spend money on buying new ramsinks or cpu cooler i dno how far i can push it |
I have used to always mess around with my machines. I used to always make it a point to overclock my machines.
Used to. Thats the key phrase in my post.
You see. Overclocking was real fun during the old days when processor power is at a premium. But today, with the advent of fast processors and bus technologies, overclocking is not really a neccessity anymore.
You see, with a good procesor/Motherboard/RAM/Video Card/Hard disk combination you can have the optimum performance out of any PC without having to mess with the clocks.
But enough about that.
To answer your question, the general rule of the thumb is to overclock incrementally, using the smallest unit increment as possible.
Meaning you just can't tell the limit. Its a long process of trial and error.
What I seggest is that you add by the ones. For example; first test if your system will be stable at 1.8GHZ then at 1.9GHZ and so on.
If your system freezes or refuses to boot at a certain setting, then its safe to assume that that is your limit.
Be carefull, we dont want to fry those chips, do we?
Hope this helps.thnx for the tip ezekiel_rage
abt the USED to overclock, i'd agree with you but with my comp, being nearly 4 yrs old, trying to run newer softwar is a drag! (forgot to mention i only hav 256mb ram, it is running win 2000 so its not as bad as xp)
normally, id upgrade the parts (more ram, better vid card, faster cpu) but seeing as im about to buy a new pc in about 2 months, i cant justify the extra bucks. Spose im just trying to squeeze the last few drops of juice out of an old pc
when ezekiel said increase by ones, don't go from 1.8 to 1.9Ghz... lol... that's a 100Mhz jump, instead increase the FSB by 1s ie 100Mhz to 101Mhz.
If you can, remember, to lock the PCI/AGP bus so you don't damage your hard drives or AGP card. Otherwise make sure that you don't go above 35Mhz on the PCI bus.
If your computer can change the front side bus without changing the memory bus, then you might get a real boost. Otherwise, its the processor and RAM both that may limit you. Who knows, though. Some processors are stamped with the lower speed because they couldn't quite make the higher one, so it may overclock a lot. Others might be close to their rated speeds already.
Good luck
As long as you can boot up properly, your system doesnt hang while playing high end games and your rig is not on fire (check the temp., its cruicial), you should be fine.
