Thread: Over Clocking

Hi,
Thanks for the info, while I have your ear could you tell me by how much I could safely over clock my CPU and how would I go about it, also what would I need (ie extra cooling etc)

Thanks

Dave

Hi,

Ok i know from your previous post that your running the AMD Athlon XP 2400+ on a PC Chips Socket A M848A , PC2100 RAM.

To overclock go into you motherboard Bios and can change some settings for your CPU, these can be FSB, Multi, Voltages and Timings, some of these may not be available depending on your motherboard.

A general rule is to start your changes low for example set your multiplier (such as 9 or 10) first to find your maximum FSB.
Then your FSB in 3-5mhz increments , booting and testing your overclock stability. Once you have hit a wall (computer freezes becomes unstable) go back and raise the vcore to your CPU.
Once you have found the absolute maximum FSB you can go back and start upping the multiplier in .5 increments.
The maximum voltage if you have aircooling is 1.95V (in Windows)

If your going to overclock is probably worth you getting PC2700 or PC3200 ram, otherwise you PC2100 + your overclocked CPU may cause a slight bottle neck in performance.

Another thing to consider is your Cooling, although some people use the standard fan ok, others have had to get a better one, so you may need to add a better CPU Fan/Heatsink, cooler master do a nice range.

As you can see its a bit or a trial and error overclocking your CPU, it seems to vary from system to system, too much can cause you system to hang, freeze, overheat and worst case damage your cpu.

I also forgot to mention that the chip you have may be locked, which means you will not be able change the multiplier, which means those options will be greyout in your bios
You should still be able increase the FSB though.

Thanks for the reply, here is another "what if".

Would I see any marked performance improvment if I installed PC2700 or PC3200 RAM and kept my AMD XP 2400+ processor.

Thanks in advance

Dave

Hi

The simple answer is no, unfortunatley you will probably not see any performance increase at all, your best bet would be adding more PC2100 so your total is 1 or 2 Gb, it depends what you use your PC for really.

The only way your get a better performance with PC2700 or PC3200 is if your going to upgrade your CPU or overclock your current one.