Overclocking

Is overclocking worth it? will it dramaticly shorten the life of my pc? I have an option to overclock in my Bios and was wondering if i should enable it.

Well I run my Athlon XP 2500+ @ 3400+ so there are some significant speed gains to be had. Is it worth it? Hmm.. consider these facts:

Your CPU shelf life will be affected, you are running the CPU past its rated speed, after all, but considering that the CPU is rated for 10 years or so, and that you usually have to upgrade your CPU every 2 years for the latest game (Hl2 or Doom3) that's not much of an issue.. if you have the money

Decent overclocking requires decent components. If you are using a cheap motherboard then you might end up frying something (I used to kill old Athlons regularly) - so don't go ramping up voltages and front side buses straight away (if you don't know what these are, I suggest you don't bother with overclocking )

Watch out though when overclocking using the front side bus, you can fry your CPU and corrupt your hard disk, especially if you're not using Windows NT, 2000 or XP. FAT32 file system means trouble.

Get more information from the www.overclockers.co.uk forums, or hardocp, or even tomshardware.com

Hope this helps.

Athlon XP Prozessors are very good for overclockers.

The PC Magazine CHIP tested various Prozessors.

The newer Athlon XP Prozessors are locked, they have a fixed multiplicator.

No wonder about that, an overclocked Athlon XP only get 2°C -5°C warmer than normal. Unfortunately my XP is locked.

Victor, if you are doing this for the first time (overclocking), buy a water cooler its cheaper than a brand new cpu.

like sayd up ^^, i used to rape old atlon's to, just take care!

things can get VERY VERY hot

I mod crap all the time and run my radeon 9800 pro 256 mb @ a radeon 9800 xt (not much of a gain, but I can push past that even, like, radeon 9800 PT ). Cooling is NO DOUBT the most important thing when over clocking anything. And th only things I see as worth OCing is a CPU (processor) or a GPU (video card). Everything else is for those paranoid freaks . Look around on sites like XoXide.com and you will surely like what you see. Not too expensive and not bad looking at all. I plan on running my now aging P4 2.6ghz/533mhz fsb @ ~3.0 (or so). As soon as I get my gpu cooler, I want to push it to its max limits (the highest I can go without artifacts).

Drivers also can help tweaking a system without causing any hardware "eek"ness. The ones I can best recommend from experience are the Omega Drivers. Try stuff out, experiment, be cautious, and try to learn stuff. GOOD LUCK!

How much extra Mhz do you want? You should be able to get an extra 200-400mhz using multiplier and FSB tweaks on an Athlon XP. Remember though, the faster you run the FSB, the faster you run the memory and all the components in your case!!!

If you want even more speed, then cooling is definitely important.

There's no chance of hardcore overclocking (~1ghz improvements or more) if you're using a bog-standard heatsink.

Me, I use a ThermalRight ALX800 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Thermalright_120.html) along with Arctic Silver 5 heat paste. I don't like the look of the watercooling setups, so have avoided them.

I also use good RAM and quality components that can take the extra FSB speeds. One weak link in your system, and you ain't gonna be able to overclock well, it's as simple as that.

PS: if you have a motherboard that can shut itself down when the CPU gets to a certain temperature, I recommend you take advantage of the feature, it will save you heartache...

I'm running a water cooled AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2900+(1.9Ghz) @ 2.6 Ghz.Temps are at 22C idle/36C Load.

Ram is at 240Mhz and a Multiplier of 11.Voltage is 1.850 if I recall.

Desktop AMD Athlon XP (Bartons) are multiplier locked, meaning you can only increase the Front side bus.The AMD Athlon XP(Barton) Mobiles(Which can be used in normal mobos, and uses less voltage then there Desktop brethern, thus running cooler, and you can get some sick overclocks on them babys- up to 3Ghz I've heard) have unlocked multipliers, meaning you can up the multiplier, and the front side bus.I think all of the AMD 64 bit CPUs are unlocked.

P4's are locked, so the only thing you can do is up the FSB.

All of this is done in the bios.

If you up the FSB, you'll have to up the voltage too.(Upping both the CPU voltage, and the memory voltage.)

Also, is this a computer you built?If it's a computer from a company (i.e. Dell, Gateway etc...)- forget it.But if it's a home built PC, you should be able to overclock.

I'd advise you to check this forum:

http://www.ocforums.com/

Then select "CPUs", then depending on what CPU you got, select either the AMD cpu, or the Intel cpu forums, and post your question(s) there.

Note:You'll also need to run Prime to test if your cpu overclock is stable, or else you'll see a lot of BSOD, Web browsers crashing, etc...And you'll need to monitor your temps with MBM(Motherboard monitor) and you don't want temps above 60C(load).

Proceed at your own risk.

Do an exhaustive background check on your system first. My experience is AMD + nForce2, but can be applied to P4 usage as well.

iirc, NOT all amd64's are unlocked, only the FX series. Places like www.nforcershq.com have extensive lists of locked and unlocked proc's. I haven't looked into rumors about unlocked mobile chips, but I think the variable speed stuff was multiplier related, so that would make sense.

If you're looking at the non-PCI-e mobo market, bear in mind that the AGP bus is red-lining in terms of power load. 256mb cards (without aux power) can be especially unstable. You may not immediately detect it however, as flat 2d video from your desktop draws significantly less power than running a fullscreen 3d accelerated app.

RAM can also be a problem. On some earlier nForce2 chips on certain mobo's (including a couple of mine) memory quantities of 1gb or more can require more power than the chip is capable of routing.

Components not getting power may be experienced as CTD's or CTR's (crash-to-reboots). Isolating them can be difficult, unless you had just done major upgrades or overclocking. Some times marginal systems will appear stable thermally and in activity, but will mysteriously crash well into a high-load application. In my case, OFP was crashing 5 minutes into play, SOF:II 30~45minutes, and Age of Empires after about 2~3 hours. This was due to increased power loads from gradually increased resource loads and increasing power requirements from hotter components.