txnetcop
December 5th, 2007, 08:52
Warning this is another one of those you too can overclock your computer and possibly save upgrading 'till next year post assuming ya don't blow it up
Catchy title though, huh? If you are like a few hundred thousand people who have purchased FSX and like most of what you see, but the frames move week by week instead of in seconds, part of the problem is your system. As we have discovered in this forum a great system produces better results than a mediocre sysem, graphically and otherwise(this also applies to wife or husband hunting). This section will deal with the option to overclock ol' Bessie instead of replacing her, not your wife silly, the computer:costumes:
First assess whether or not it is worth it or if you can. Most store bought units you cannot overclock, because the motherboards don't contain a BIOS capable of overclcocking or in DELL's case they will void your warranty. If you were one of those lucky ones who took good advice and bought from a builder(like me) or built your own, you are probably a candidate to overclock.
If your video card is not a Nvidia 7000 series/ATI X1650 series or higher it may not be worth it to overclock your GPU, in most cases you will not be able to on older cards anyway because of cooling issues. See the author about a video card upgrade
Memory if you are using anything less than DDR PC3200 memory on a desktop you probably not benefit from overclocking. See the author about upgrading your system
OK, on with the post:
12/05/2007
This advisory will be updated as new equipment becomes available
Another easy to use overclocking guide similar to the last one and is a conglomeration of the best overclocking advice on the Internet today.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Disclaimer
Before you Overclock
Recommended Parts
The Benefits and Risks of Overclocking
Getting Cozy With Your BIOS
BIOS Terminology
Let's Get Started
Finding Your Board's Maximum Stable FSB Speed
Time to Find Your Max CPU Speed
Time For RAM Adjustment
Graphics Card GPU Overclocking
Recommended Stability Programs
Conclusion
Introduction
Ghz, Mhz, Hz. For some, these three measures of frequency are just advertised speeds on a PC, but for many of us, they are goals. Sometimes the words “fast enough” have no meaning, and push us to push our hardware to the max. Even those with the latest and greatest in computing technology stress their hardware to break unthinkable speeds, in unthinkable ways. Overclocking has become a huge part of the computing community, and hopefully this guide will get you started and headed in the right direction.
Disclaimer
Please take note that the following guide is to be taken “as is.” The author of this guide is in no way responsible for any damage that may occur to your equipment. I ain't takin' the blame for any hardware malfunction that may occur while following the steps in this guide. You are assumed to be a grown-up and need to take responsibility for your own foolishness...did I say that? The reader (you) must agree to these terms prior to proceeding. If you are under the age of 21 and do this to your parents computer you deserve what's coming to ya.:costumes:
Before You Overclock
Before you start adventuring to the world of overclocking, we need to cover a few ground rules. Take a good look at your hardware, or the hardware that you plan on purchasing. To overclock, you must be sure to select the proper hardware.
CPU – This isn't really an introduction to hardware, so I’m not going to go into much detail about Intel and AMD as far as who is better and what not. However, choosing the proper CPU for your overclocking needs will be a very important part of your overclocking experience. Some CPU's do in fact overclock better than others. The best thing we can do is to decide first on which CPU we are interested in, then, do some research on which batch numbers are the best overclockers. Sometimes different batch numbers can make the difference of a 100mhz overclock to a 1ghz overclock.
RAM – RAM is usually an overlooked piece of hardware when it comes to overclocking. Later in this discussion we will talk about how the RAM and CPU will relate to eachother when it comes to overclocking. None-the-less, to do proper overclocking, we need to make sure to pick RAM capable of hitting higher speeds for the best results.
PSU – The PSU takes the cake when it comes to the most overlooked piece of hardware in a computer system. When we overclock, we stress every component in our system. Suddenly our components go from the standard manufactured specs of power consumption to far higher levels. Suddenly stability becomes very fragile, and one thing that can help the stability of a system (overclocked or not) is a nice strong, quality powersupply. So please, if you plan on overclocking, choose wisely.
Cooling – Because we are expelling more energy when overclocking, heat becomes a major factor. Stock cooling for CPU's are only designed to handle the manufacturer suggested specs. When overclocking our systems, we must ensure that we are capable of handling the heat expelled by the CPU. There are many methods of cooling including air, water, and phase change, ranging from easiest to more complex. Various cooling kits provide different cooling specifications. Proper research must be done to see how well each cooler and each type of cooler performs on the CPU that you wish to overclock. Also, ensure that your case has proper airflow, as this can only aid in cooling down motherboard components along with your CPU and RAM.
Recommended Parts
You may inquire of the author if you are unsure what kind of rig to get and where, or whether to build your own.
The Benefits and Risks of Overclocking
There are many benefits to overclocking a computer, however, as with all things, there are also some risks that are present.
The benefits of overclocking are for gaming satisfaction primarily. Some of us overclock to beat a goal or record(how stupid can you be). They overclock to get the sense of “hey I made my PC go faster”, and to feel the rush of pushing the limits and achieving goals we set for ourselves. The real benefit is the increased performance of the processor. When overclocking, we can essentially take a lower costing CPU and have it perform more like a more expensive CPU.
We do however risk quite a few things when we overclock. First off, overclocking our CPU in some cases voids the warranty of the CPU. If we dont properly take care of our overclocking measures, we may reduce the life time of the system itself. This guide will also show how to ensure that your system is 100% stable, however, if these steps arent properly taken, the stability of your system will be compromised. Also, on extreme cases, OS corruption may also occur! So please back up any important files prior to overclocking
The risks are present, however, as long as you adhere to the steps listed below, take tweaking slowly, and carefully, and also ensure that components are properly cooled, then we can reduce the chances of any permanent damage to components.
Getting Cozy With Your BIOS
Part of getting prepared to overclock, is getting familiar with the BIOS. What you want to do is really go through every menu in your BIOS to find a few important settings. You want to make sure you find out where your BIOS's overclocking section is. This will generally be the section that has settings that include FSB, Multiplier, Voltages and RAM timings. When we start overclocking these are the settings we are going to be generally concerned with. Take a look at your motherboard's manual to see if there are any special instructions regarding accessing overclocking features. Some boards actually go ahead and hide certain options to keep you from doing something that may damage your system, your motherboard manufacturer will have more information on what you need to do to see these options if they are indeed hidden.
BIOS Terminology
Vcore – This is the voltage that is pumped into the CPU. Most motherboards will allow flexable adjustment of the vcore, and many overclocking motherboards will have increments of 0.025v.
Vdimm – This is the voltage that is running through the memory. Depending on the type of memory that you are using, this voltage will vary greatly. Please take a look at your RAM manufacturer's specifications to find the maxiumum allowed voltage for your ram.
MCH/Northbridge/Chipset/LDT voltage – These voltages (depending on what type of CPU and motherboard combo you have) will adjust the voltage running through the chipset. The chipset can control the full stability of your system. This is where things will get tricky down the road, and will be explained down the road.
FSB / HTT – On intel boards you will find the main bus speed refered to as the FSB, while AMD boards refer to is as HTT. This number multiplied by the Multiplier will be the frequency (Speed) of your chip. For example, if your FSB is set to 400, and your multiplier is set to 8, this would result in a CPU speed of 3200Mhz (3.2Ghz). This is where we are going to do a lot of focus when it comes to overclocking our CPU.
Multiplier – This is the multiplying controller of the CPU. As stated above, this number multiplied by the FSB/HTT will result in the CPU speed. Many CPU's have their multiplier locked from going any higher than the manufacturers stock setting, however, there are some special CPU's that do allow you full flexability of changing the multiplier both up and down, these include the Extreme Edition CPU's (intel) and the FX Series (amd).
Memory Divider – Naturally, our memory will run in sync (1:1) with the HTT/FSB. As you might guess, this means that as we overclock the HTT/FSB, we are overclocking our RAM. If our RAM is not made to run at higher speeds, this can become a big problem. This is why we have this setting, so that we can divide the ram from the FSB/HTT. For example, if we use a 1:2 multiplier, our ram would be running at ˝ of our FSB speed (200mhz FSB = 100mhz RAM). So keep track of the location of this setting, as it will become very important in stabilizing the system.
Memory Timings – Think of these as speed settings for your memory. RAM modules have many settings regarding how fast it reads from the banks, writes to the memory banks, copies, transfers, clears, etc etc. The faster these settings, the more demanding it is of the RAM. Some RAM modules hare geared towards low latency timings, while others are not. Check your manufacturer for the suggested timings for your ram, generally the most important ones will be the CAS-RAStoCAS-RAS-TRFC.
These aren't the only things in the BIOS that we need to worry about, however, they are the most important when it comes to overclocking. Lets Get Started
The first thing you want to do when it comes down to overclocking is, given that your motherboard has BIOS memory, save your current settings to one of the memory banks (usually higher end boards will have this setting). Next, our goal will be to shut off all thermal and clock management tools provided by your BIOS. For AMD systems this is called PowerNOW! Technology, while Intel systems refer to this as EIST/C1E. This will become very important because it will ensure that our motherboard will keep the settings we provide it for voltages and clock speeds.
Overclocking is usually best done in small increments. Sometimes jumping by a couple hundred Mhz's can help reach your top end, but, isn't really efficient in finding the max overclock you could possibly achieve.
Finding Your Board's Max Stable FSB
There are many things that can keep us from reaching our maximum stable overclock. Theres our CPU, our Memory, and more importantly our motherboard; If our motherboard doesn't overclock well, whats the point of having the best CPU and the top of the line Memory?
Finding our board's max stable fsb is done by first dropping down the CPU multiplier to the lowest setting, and also dropping our memory multipliers to the lowest setting. What this does is totally relieves the CPU and Memory from a lot of stress, and leaves them running at below spec speeds so that we can tinker with the motherboard.
Now with the CPU and Memory sitting at lower multipliers, we want to start increasing our FSB/HTT. Most boards are very tolerant with the bus speeds, so if you started playign with increments of 5-10mhz you might be doing a lot of testing. I suggest that you start kicking up your FSB/HTT in increments of 20mhz.
What you want to do after increasing the bus speed, is to go ahead and get into Windows. Running some of the lesser intense stability tests like SuperPi or OCCT might help, but chances are if you got into windows, things are running smoothly.
Eventually you will hit a FSB/HTT speed that results in the operating system not booting, or throwing a Blue Screen at you. At this point you have a few options; You can back down about 10mhz and try again, or, you can bump the FSB/HTT voltage up a little bit.
Once you have found a point where your FSB is nice and stable, and the temperatures are looking good, you have now found your max stable bus overclock. This comes in handy because for example, if my max stable bus overclock was 400mhz, then I can be sure that if my CPU doesn't boot at 10x300mhz, that the motherboard can be ruled out as the source of the error.
WARNING: When changing FSB/HTT voltages, please, monitor temperatures at all time. Most motherboard will prohibit you from using voltages that will damage the bus, however, please research your chipset to see how many volts is safe!
Time To Find Your Maximum CPU Speed
The first thing we want to do, is find out exactly how high we can push our CPU. So to do this, we need to rule out as many possibilities of failure as we can. Locate the memory multiplier and drop it down to as low as you can. What we want to do here is make sure that our memory doesn't exactly limit us from achieving our highest CPU overclock.
If your using an AMD board, please ensure that you tone down the HTT Bus Multiplier. Older AMD systems could only handle a 2000mhz HTT bus speed. Usually an HTT Bus Multiplier of 3x is perfectly fine for overclocking (as opposed to the default 5x)
Now that our memory is sitting at safe, low speeds, we want to slowly increase our FSB/HTT speeds. First, give the FSB/HTT a 10-20Mhz boost, save your settings, and see if your system boots. Hopefully, (dont worry im crossing my fingers for you too!) your Windows system will boot normally, and all will seem well, run a quick stabilization test, and hopefully you will see normal operation. At this point, congratulations are in order, you have made your first attempt at overclocking!
Although the paragraph above may make the experience seem “easy,” I must warn you that there is far more to it than just that. Eventually you will reach a point where booting to windows is no longer possible. You may encounter a blue screen error upon booting, or lockups during the boot process. This is normal (so to speak) so dont get too worried just yet. At this point, what we want to do, is deal with some voltages. Chances are if you have been following my guide, you're still resting on default volts. Eventually your overclock will get to a point where the stock voltage will no longer be able to support the speed of the cpu. To remedy this, bring the voltage up one notch, and test to see if your system is stable again. Repeat this process again, until you have seemed to reach a point where increasing voltages no longer helps clock speeds. At this point, back down a couple 10Mhz, and start running some higher end stability programs to ensure your system is 100% stable.
WARNING: As a rule of thumb, i suggest never going higher than +0.2v over default CPU voltages. From what I have experienced, anything more than +0.2v is reaching dangerous voltages.
WARNING: As you increase voltages, it will significantly increase the heat output of the chip. Please monitor temperatures at all times. As a rule of thumb, safe CPU temperatures rest below 55-60C
Time For RAM Adjustment
Once we have reached a CPU speed that is stable, now it is time to start notching up the memory multiplier to see how far we can push our RAM. Start increasing that multiplier more and try to get your ram back to stock speeds. Mind you that now you will need a lower multiplier than before since the bus speed is running faster (the RAM speed is the result of the FSB/HTT divided by the RAM divider).
In a perfect world there would be a divider to get our RAM back to stock speeds no matter what FSB we have, however, this isn't always the case. Either the divider brings us to a lower-than-stock speed, or one thats significantly higher. Because most of us do not want to be lower than stock speeds on RAM, we are pretty much forced to overclock the RAM also.
RAM can be quite tedious to overclock. The first step is to see if your RAM can even handle the desired speed on stock settings. Luckily, if you have a wonderful piece of RAM, it will, and all will be well. However, most of us arent that lucky. One thing you want to try is to bring the RAM voltages up a notch or two. Again, depending on what type of RAM you have, your max voltage will vary. On DDR2 systems i suggest not going higher than 2.2v without some kind of active cooling, on DDR systems I suggest no more than 2.8v. Once you increase the voltages, test to see if your system is stable. The best way to test RAM stability is by using one of the RAM stability programs that I list below.
WARNING: It is always best to test the RAM before booting your operating system. Faulty RAM overclocks are the number one cause of OS corruption when overclocking!
If the increase in voltages dont help you get stable, what you want to try is to loosen the timings on your ram. For example, if your ram has stock timings of 5-4-4-12, try brining the timings down to 5-5-5-18. Test, and retry if failure occurs.
Graphics Card GPU Overclocking
GPU's are also parts of our system that we can try and overclock. However, unlike memory and RAM, newer GPU's have fully locked voltage regulators, so flexability in overclocking is a bit tight.
Back 10 or so years ago, some video cards used digital potentiometers to regulate the voltages to their core and memory. One could easily increase the voltage by just writing to the register that controlled the Digipot. However, nowadays, to modify the voltage settings, one would require modding the card by soldiering on manual adjustable potentiometers across the voltage regulators. However, this guide wont be showing how to go about that.
First, when overclocking the video card, we must get a program that will help us access the clock speeds. A great program to use is ATITool. This tool will work both with Nvidia and ATI cards, will allow you to overclock the core and memory, and also run a stability test on the card. More advanced users may want to look into a program called RivaTuner, which has far more advanced options.
To get you started, download either RivaTuner (http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner) or ATITool (http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/). If you are using ATITool, what you want to do is just start the program. The program interface will show you the current clock speeds and temperature of your card. If you would like, you can click on the "Show 3D View" button to see a 3D render. This will help in the display of any artifacts. On the other hand, if you are running RivaTuner, what you want to do is start the program, and then on the main page, locate the section called "Driver Settings". The first box will show the name of the driver, for example, nvidia users will see "Forceware Detected". Next, click the customize button to the right, and then click on the first icon to the left that pops up. This will take you to the page that shows you the clock speeds.
Just like overclocking your CPU, you want to start pushing the card in very small increments, starting with the core first. Because a video cards overclockability isn't as great as a CPU's, we want to only be pushing the clock speed by about 5mhz at a time. Again, just like with a CPU, you want to test out the stability of the card. You can either run a loop of 3DMark, or play one of your favorite video games. With all luck, the loop will go through, or the game will run fine, and so we can push further.
Once we find a stable Core clock speed, what you want to do is bring back the speed to default. Now we will test the memory clocks in exactly the same way. You can have a bit more flexability with the memory as its more forgiving, so you can actually push this by about 10 mhz at a time to be safe. Again, after every notch, test with 3dmark or your favorite game.
After you find a stable memory speed, you want to put the core speed up to the stable core overclock, and once again, run 3dmark or play your favorite video game. This step is to ensure that our memory and core clocks will play nicely together. In the event of a crash, what you will want to try is to back down about 10mhz from both the core and memory and try again.
At this point some of you may be wondering what exactly is "stable" in a video card. Basically, if you are able to loop 3DMark once or twice, or even play your game without seeing any artifacts (random lines across the screen, or incorrectly rendered images), or without having the computer crash, you can be sure the overclock is somewhat stable. To ensure full stability, you may want to set 3DMark to loop about 3 or 4 times.
A wondeful way to see how well your performance has increased with your overclock, is to run 3DMark both before and after your overclocking, and compare the results. Hopefully you will see a wonderful increase in "3DMarks" after your overclocking experience
WARNING: Remember, as with all overclocking it is very important to monitor temperatures. General rule of thumb for video cards is to ensure that the temperatures do not rise above 90C.
Recommended Stability Testing Programs
CPU Stability
Prime95 – One of the best programs out there for CPU stability. Its been debated on which test stresses the CPU the most, however, my personal favorite is SmallFFT testing. Let Prime95 run for at least 8 hours, however, the “standard” time table of stability among overclockers is 24 hours of Prime stability. Take note that new versions of Prime95 will allow you to run multiple threads, making it easier to stress multicore cpus. Location: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
OCCT - This is another great program for CPU testing. OCCT will run for about 30 mins by default, and stress your CPU to the max. Although Prime95 is preferred, this is an amazing test when time is of the essence. Location : http://www.ocbase.com/
StressPrime - This program is based off of Prime95 but has a bit of an easier interface to work with. This was my stress program of choice however, newer versions of prime make it a lot easier to stress muli core CPU's. With StressPrime you will have to open up multiple instances of the program. Locaion: http://sp2004.fre3.com/
SuperPi - This program is great for a quick test of CPU stability. I usually like to run this as soon as I get into windows. I run a 1M test to see if I can complete something that easy, and then, if all is well, I then step up to one of the higher end stress programs listed above. Location: http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/
SiSoftware Sandra - This program is more of a benchmarking program than a stability program, but it does deserve a spot here. This program can be a wonderful benchmark to see exactly how well your new overclock is scoring compared to your stock settings. Running an Arithmatic benchmark is the fastest and best way to test your new overclock when it comes to this program. Location : http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/
RAM Stability
Memtest86+ - Honestly, this is the only program I am going to recommend because it is simply the best. The best thing you can do is boot to memtest86 from a floppy disk or CD, and run the entire test to check your RAM. There is also a Windows based version of this program, however, remember, it is always best to test ram before booting into Windows. This way we can minimize the risk of OS corruption as fauly RAM overclocks increase the risk by a lot! Location : http://www.memtest.org/
Memtest for Windows - Submitted by Robodude666. This version of memtest runs within the windows environment. It is wonderful for those of us that dont have floppy drives or unable to boot into memtest86 from a CD. More than one copy of this program must be run for users with more than 2gb of ram. Location : [ur]http://hcidesign.com/memtest/[/url]
GPU Stability
3DMark - This program is definatly one of the best when it comes to testing both the performance, and stability of your graphics card. It is very simple to use, just install the program, run, and then click "Run 3DMark" to get started. The loop will go for about 5-10 minutes depending on your system. Location : http://www.futuremark.com/. You may also want to download 3Dmark05 and 3Dmark06.
Rthdribl - Standing for Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image Based Lighting, this program is also great at stressing the video cards shading and lighting properties. This program will usually show artifacts within seconds if your overclock isn't that stable. Location : http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/ (http://www.daionet.gr.jp/%7Emasa/rthdribl/)
Temperature Monitoring
CoreTemp - For Intel Users this is one of the most accurate programs that you can get to read your core temperatures (hence the name lol). The program reads directly from the DeltaT to TJunction register from the CPU which in essence tells you what temperature each core is running at. This is a great program and recommended above other programs for Intel users. Please take note that most new Intel Chips have a TJunction of 100*C. If you have any Exx50 chip, the program will show you a TJunction of 85*C. If this is the case what you need to do is add 15*C to each core to get a more accurate temperature. Location : http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/CoreTemp/
SpeedFan - This is another great program for both Intel and AMD users. Speedfan always assumes a TJunction of 85*C for Intel chips so you may have to add an extra 15*C to get a correct reading. For AMD users ther have yet to be any issues. This program is very accurate when it comes to CPU temps, however, don't rely on it too much for other temps such as chipset and system temps, as it may be reading from the wrong thermal diode. Location : http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT) - TAT was a beta program released from the Intel company. It was made to accuratly display core temperatures, and also provide stability testing for their processors. The program only worked for Core2Duo processors and above, however, support ended before the core2quad was released. Because Intel discontinued the program, I will respect that and wont post a link to the download, however, if you are a C2D user and would like to give it a shot, search around
Conclusion
Sometimes the cost of a new rig is prohibitive to one’s budget. By acquiring a few of the right parts at low cost you can often save a lot of money and extend the life of your computer for another year or two. The biggest benefit is the ability to use games that would be out of reach for your stock processor to run. Remember that voltage increases cause heat and heat is the enemy of your system, so to enjoy your overclock and keep it cool.
__________________
Send Inquiries to:
Ted Freeman
teddonn@sbcglobal.net
Catchy title though, huh? If you are like a few hundred thousand people who have purchased FSX and like most of what you see, but the frames move week by week instead of in seconds, part of the problem is your system. As we have discovered in this forum a great system produces better results than a mediocre sysem, graphically and otherwise(this also applies to wife or husband hunting). This section will deal with the option to overclock ol' Bessie instead of replacing her, not your wife silly, the computer:costumes:
First assess whether or not it is worth it or if you can. Most store bought units you cannot overclock, because the motherboards don't contain a BIOS capable of overclcocking or in DELL's case they will void your warranty. If you were one of those lucky ones who took good advice and bought from a builder(like me) or built your own, you are probably a candidate to overclock.
If your video card is not a Nvidia 7000 series/ATI X1650 series or higher it may not be worth it to overclock your GPU, in most cases you will not be able to on older cards anyway because of cooling issues. See the author about a video card upgrade
Memory if you are using anything less than DDR PC3200 memory on a desktop you probably not benefit from overclocking. See the author about upgrading your system
OK, on with the post:
12/05/2007
This advisory will be updated as new equipment becomes available
Another easy to use overclocking guide similar to the last one and is a conglomeration of the best overclocking advice on the Internet today.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Disclaimer
Before you Overclock
Recommended Parts
The Benefits and Risks of Overclocking
Getting Cozy With Your BIOS
BIOS Terminology
Let's Get Started
Finding Your Board's Maximum Stable FSB Speed
Time to Find Your Max CPU Speed
Time For RAM Adjustment
Graphics Card GPU Overclocking
Recommended Stability Programs
Conclusion
Introduction
Ghz, Mhz, Hz. For some, these three measures of frequency are just advertised speeds on a PC, but for many of us, they are goals. Sometimes the words “fast enough” have no meaning, and push us to push our hardware to the max. Even those with the latest and greatest in computing technology stress their hardware to break unthinkable speeds, in unthinkable ways. Overclocking has become a huge part of the computing community, and hopefully this guide will get you started and headed in the right direction.
Disclaimer
Please take note that the following guide is to be taken “as is.” The author of this guide is in no way responsible for any damage that may occur to your equipment. I ain't takin' the blame for any hardware malfunction that may occur while following the steps in this guide. You are assumed to be a grown-up and need to take responsibility for your own foolishness...did I say that? The reader (you) must agree to these terms prior to proceeding. If you are under the age of 21 and do this to your parents computer you deserve what's coming to ya.:costumes:
Before You Overclock
Before you start adventuring to the world of overclocking, we need to cover a few ground rules. Take a good look at your hardware, or the hardware that you plan on purchasing. To overclock, you must be sure to select the proper hardware.
CPU – This isn't really an introduction to hardware, so I’m not going to go into much detail about Intel and AMD as far as who is better and what not. However, choosing the proper CPU for your overclocking needs will be a very important part of your overclocking experience. Some CPU's do in fact overclock better than others. The best thing we can do is to decide first on which CPU we are interested in, then, do some research on which batch numbers are the best overclockers. Sometimes different batch numbers can make the difference of a 100mhz overclock to a 1ghz overclock.
RAM – RAM is usually an overlooked piece of hardware when it comes to overclocking. Later in this discussion we will talk about how the RAM and CPU will relate to eachother when it comes to overclocking. None-the-less, to do proper overclocking, we need to make sure to pick RAM capable of hitting higher speeds for the best results.
PSU – The PSU takes the cake when it comes to the most overlooked piece of hardware in a computer system. When we overclock, we stress every component in our system. Suddenly our components go from the standard manufactured specs of power consumption to far higher levels. Suddenly stability becomes very fragile, and one thing that can help the stability of a system (overclocked or not) is a nice strong, quality powersupply. So please, if you plan on overclocking, choose wisely.
Cooling – Because we are expelling more energy when overclocking, heat becomes a major factor. Stock cooling for CPU's are only designed to handle the manufacturer suggested specs. When overclocking our systems, we must ensure that we are capable of handling the heat expelled by the CPU. There are many methods of cooling including air, water, and phase change, ranging from easiest to more complex. Various cooling kits provide different cooling specifications. Proper research must be done to see how well each cooler and each type of cooler performs on the CPU that you wish to overclock. Also, ensure that your case has proper airflow, as this can only aid in cooling down motherboard components along with your CPU and RAM.
Recommended Parts
You may inquire of the author if you are unsure what kind of rig to get and where, or whether to build your own.
The Benefits and Risks of Overclocking
There are many benefits to overclocking a computer, however, as with all things, there are also some risks that are present.
The benefits of overclocking are for gaming satisfaction primarily. Some of us overclock to beat a goal or record(how stupid can you be). They overclock to get the sense of “hey I made my PC go faster”, and to feel the rush of pushing the limits and achieving goals we set for ourselves. The real benefit is the increased performance of the processor. When overclocking, we can essentially take a lower costing CPU and have it perform more like a more expensive CPU.
We do however risk quite a few things when we overclock. First off, overclocking our CPU in some cases voids the warranty of the CPU. If we dont properly take care of our overclocking measures, we may reduce the life time of the system itself. This guide will also show how to ensure that your system is 100% stable, however, if these steps arent properly taken, the stability of your system will be compromised. Also, on extreme cases, OS corruption may also occur! So please back up any important files prior to overclocking
The risks are present, however, as long as you adhere to the steps listed below, take tweaking slowly, and carefully, and also ensure that components are properly cooled, then we can reduce the chances of any permanent damage to components.
Getting Cozy With Your BIOS
Part of getting prepared to overclock, is getting familiar with the BIOS. What you want to do is really go through every menu in your BIOS to find a few important settings. You want to make sure you find out where your BIOS's overclocking section is. This will generally be the section that has settings that include FSB, Multiplier, Voltages and RAM timings. When we start overclocking these are the settings we are going to be generally concerned with. Take a look at your motherboard's manual to see if there are any special instructions regarding accessing overclocking features. Some boards actually go ahead and hide certain options to keep you from doing something that may damage your system, your motherboard manufacturer will have more information on what you need to do to see these options if they are indeed hidden.
BIOS Terminology
Vcore – This is the voltage that is pumped into the CPU. Most motherboards will allow flexable adjustment of the vcore, and many overclocking motherboards will have increments of 0.025v.
Vdimm – This is the voltage that is running through the memory. Depending on the type of memory that you are using, this voltage will vary greatly. Please take a look at your RAM manufacturer's specifications to find the maxiumum allowed voltage for your ram.
MCH/Northbridge/Chipset/LDT voltage – These voltages (depending on what type of CPU and motherboard combo you have) will adjust the voltage running through the chipset. The chipset can control the full stability of your system. This is where things will get tricky down the road, and will be explained down the road.
FSB / HTT – On intel boards you will find the main bus speed refered to as the FSB, while AMD boards refer to is as HTT. This number multiplied by the Multiplier will be the frequency (Speed) of your chip. For example, if your FSB is set to 400, and your multiplier is set to 8, this would result in a CPU speed of 3200Mhz (3.2Ghz). This is where we are going to do a lot of focus when it comes to overclocking our CPU.
Multiplier – This is the multiplying controller of the CPU. As stated above, this number multiplied by the FSB/HTT will result in the CPU speed. Many CPU's have their multiplier locked from going any higher than the manufacturers stock setting, however, there are some special CPU's that do allow you full flexability of changing the multiplier both up and down, these include the Extreme Edition CPU's (intel) and the FX Series (amd).
Memory Divider – Naturally, our memory will run in sync (1:1) with the HTT/FSB. As you might guess, this means that as we overclock the HTT/FSB, we are overclocking our RAM. If our RAM is not made to run at higher speeds, this can become a big problem. This is why we have this setting, so that we can divide the ram from the FSB/HTT. For example, if we use a 1:2 multiplier, our ram would be running at ˝ of our FSB speed (200mhz FSB = 100mhz RAM). So keep track of the location of this setting, as it will become very important in stabilizing the system.
Memory Timings – Think of these as speed settings for your memory. RAM modules have many settings regarding how fast it reads from the banks, writes to the memory banks, copies, transfers, clears, etc etc. The faster these settings, the more demanding it is of the RAM. Some RAM modules hare geared towards low latency timings, while others are not. Check your manufacturer for the suggested timings for your ram, generally the most important ones will be the CAS-RAStoCAS-RAS-TRFC.
These aren't the only things in the BIOS that we need to worry about, however, they are the most important when it comes to overclocking. Lets Get Started
The first thing you want to do when it comes down to overclocking is, given that your motherboard has BIOS memory, save your current settings to one of the memory banks (usually higher end boards will have this setting). Next, our goal will be to shut off all thermal and clock management tools provided by your BIOS. For AMD systems this is called PowerNOW! Technology, while Intel systems refer to this as EIST/C1E. This will become very important because it will ensure that our motherboard will keep the settings we provide it for voltages and clock speeds.
Overclocking is usually best done in small increments. Sometimes jumping by a couple hundred Mhz's can help reach your top end, but, isn't really efficient in finding the max overclock you could possibly achieve.
Finding Your Board's Max Stable FSB
There are many things that can keep us from reaching our maximum stable overclock. Theres our CPU, our Memory, and more importantly our motherboard; If our motherboard doesn't overclock well, whats the point of having the best CPU and the top of the line Memory?
Finding our board's max stable fsb is done by first dropping down the CPU multiplier to the lowest setting, and also dropping our memory multipliers to the lowest setting. What this does is totally relieves the CPU and Memory from a lot of stress, and leaves them running at below spec speeds so that we can tinker with the motherboard.
Now with the CPU and Memory sitting at lower multipliers, we want to start increasing our FSB/HTT. Most boards are very tolerant with the bus speeds, so if you started playign with increments of 5-10mhz you might be doing a lot of testing. I suggest that you start kicking up your FSB/HTT in increments of 20mhz.
What you want to do after increasing the bus speed, is to go ahead and get into Windows. Running some of the lesser intense stability tests like SuperPi or OCCT might help, but chances are if you got into windows, things are running smoothly.
Eventually you will hit a FSB/HTT speed that results in the operating system not booting, or throwing a Blue Screen at you. At this point you have a few options; You can back down about 10mhz and try again, or, you can bump the FSB/HTT voltage up a little bit.
Once you have found a point where your FSB is nice and stable, and the temperatures are looking good, you have now found your max stable bus overclock. This comes in handy because for example, if my max stable bus overclock was 400mhz, then I can be sure that if my CPU doesn't boot at 10x300mhz, that the motherboard can be ruled out as the source of the error.
WARNING: When changing FSB/HTT voltages, please, monitor temperatures at all time. Most motherboard will prohibit you from using voltages that will damage the bus, however, please research your chipset to see how many volts is safe!
Time To Find Your Maximum CPU Speed
The first thing we want to do, is find out exactly how high we can push our CPU. So to do this, we need to rule out as many possibilities of failure as we can. Locate the memory multiplier and drop it down to as low as you can. What we want to do here is make sure that our memory doesn't exactly limit us from achieving our highest CPU overclock.
If your using an AMD board, please ensure that you tone down the HTT Bus Multiplier. Older AMD systems could only handle a 2000mhz HTT bus speed. Usually an HTT Bus Multiplier of 3x is perfectly fine for overclocking (as opposed to the default 5x)
Now that our memory is sitting at safe, low speeds, we want to slowly increase our FSB/HTT speeds. First, give the FSB/HTT a 10-20Mhz boost, save your settings, and see if your system boots. Hopefully, (dont worry im crossing my fingers for you too!) your Windows system will boot normally, and all will seem well, run a quick stabilization test, and hopefully you will see normal operation. At this point, congratulations are in order, you have made your first attempt at overclocking!
Although the paragraph above may make the experience seem “easy,” I must warn you that there is far more to it than just that. Eventually you will reach a point where booting to windows is no longer possible. You may encounter a blue screen error upon booting, or lockups during the boot process. This is normal (so to speak) so dont get too worried just yet. At this point, what we want to do, is deal with some voltages. Chances are if you have been following my guide, you're still resting on default volts. Eventually your overclock will get to a point where the stock voltage will no longer be able to support the speed of the cpu. To remedy this, bring the voltage up one notch, and test to see if your system is stable again. Repeat this process again, until you have seemed to reach a point where increasing voltages no longer helps clock speeds. At this point, back down a couple 10Mhz, and start running some higher end stability programs to ensure your system is 100% stable.
WARNING: As a rule of thumb, i suggest never going higher than +0.2v over default CPU voltages. From what I have experienced, anything more than +0.2v is reaching dangerous voltages.
WARNING: As you increase voltages, it will significantly increase the heat output of the chip. Please monitor temperatures at all times. As a rule of thumb, safe CPU temperatures rest below 55-60C
Time For RAM Adjustment
Once we have reached a CPU speed that is stable, now it is time to start notching up the memory multiplier to see how far we can push our RAM. Start increasing that multiplier more and try to get your ram back to stock speeds. Mind you that now you will need a lower multiplier than before since the bus speed is running faster (the RAM speed is the result of the FSB/HTT divided by the RAM divider).
In a perfect world there would be a divider to get our RAM back to stock speeds no matter what FSB we have, however, this isn't always the case. Either the divider brings us to a lower-than-stock speed, or one thats significantly higher. Because most of us do not want to be lower than stock speeds on RAM, we are pretty much forced to overclock the RAM also.
RAM can be quite tedious to overclock. The first step is to see if your RAM can even handle the desired speed on stock settings. Luckily, if you have a wonderful piece of RAM, it will, and all will be well. However, most of us arent that lucky. One thing you want to try is to bring the RAM voltages up a notch or two. Again, depending on what type of RAM you have, your max voltage will vary. On DDR2 systems i suggest not going higher than 2.2v without some kind of active cooling, on DDR systems I suggest no more than 2.8v. Once you increase the voltages, test to see if your system is stable. The best way to test RAM stability is by using one of the RAM stability programs that I list below.
WARNING: It is always best to test the RAM before booting your operating system. Faulty RAM overclocks are the number one cause of OS corruption when overclocking!
If the increase in voltages dont help you get stable, what you want to try is to loosen the timings on your ram. For example, if your ram has stock timings of 5-4-4-12, try brining the timings down to 5-5-5-18. Test, and retry if failure occurs.
Graphics Card GPU Overclocking
GPU's are also parts of our system that we can try and overclock. However, unlike memory and RAM, newer GPU's have fully locked voltage regulators, so flexability in overclocking is a bit tight.
Back 10 or so years ago, some video cards used digital potentiometers to regulate the voltages to their core and memory. One could easily increase the voltage by just writing to the register that controlled the Digipot. However, nowadays, to modify the voltage settings, one would require modding the card by soldiering on manual adjustable potentiometers across the voltage regulators. However, this guide wont be showing how to go about that.
First, when overclocking the video card, we must get a program that will help us access the clock speeds. A great program to use is ATITool. This tool will work both with Nvidia and ATI cards, will allow you to overclock the core and memory, and also run a stability test on the card. More advanced users may want to look into a program called RivaTuner, which has far more advanced options.
To get you started, download either RivaTuner (http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner) or ATITool (http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/). If you are using ATITool, what you want to do is just start the program. The program interface will show you the current clock speeds and temperature of your card. If you would like, you can click on the "Show 3D View" button to see a 3D render. This will help in the display of any artifacts. On the other hand, if you are running RivaTuner, what you want to do is start the program, and then on the main page, locate the section called "Driver Settings". The first box will show the name of the driver, for example, nvidia users will see "Forceware Detected". Next, click the customize button to the right, and then click on the first icon to the left that pops up. This will take you to the page that shows you the clock speeds.
Just like overclocking your CPU, you want to start pushing the card in very small increments, starting with the core first. Because a video cards overclockability isn't as great as a CPU's, we want to only be pushing the clock speed by about 5mhz at a time. Again, just like with a CPU, you want to test out the stability of the card. You can either run a loop of 3DMark, or play one of your favorite video games. With all luck, the loop will go through, or the game will run fine, and so we can push further.
Once we find a stable Core clock speed, what you want to do is bring back the speed to default. Now we will test the memory clocks in exactly the same way. You can have a bit more flexability with the memory as its more forgiving, so you can actually push this by about 10 mhz at a time to be safe. Again, after every notch, test with 3dmark or your favorite game.
After you find a stable memory speed, you want to put the core speed up to the stable core overclock, and once again, run 3dmark or play your favorite video game. This step is to ensure that our memory and core clocks will play nicely together. In the event of a crash, what you will want to try is to back down about 10mhz from both the core and memory and try again.
At this point some of you may be wondering what exactly is "stable" in a video card. Basically, if you are able to loop 3DMark once or twice, or even play your game without seeing any artifacts (random lines across the screen, or incorrectly rendered images), or without having the computer crash, you can be sure the overclock is somewhat stable. To ensure full stability, you may want to set 3DMark to loop about 3 or 4 times.
A wondeful way to see how well your performance has increased with your overclock, is to run 3DMark both before and after your overclocking, and compare the results. Hopefully you will see a wonderful increase in "3DMarks" after your overclocking experience
WARNING: Remember, as with all overclocking it is very important to monitor temperatures. General rule of thumb for video cards is to ensure that the temperatures do not rise above 90C.
Recommended Stability Testing Programs
CPU Stability
Prime95 – One of the best programs out there for CPU stability. Its been debated on which test stresses the CPU the most, however, my personal favorite is SmallFFT testing. Let Prime95 run for at least 8 hours, however, the “standard” time table of stability among overclockers is 24 hours of Prime stability. Take note that new versions of Prime95 will allow you to run multiple threads, making it easier to stress multicore cpus. Location: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
OCCT - This is another great program for CPU testing. OCCT will run for about 30 mins by default, and stress your CPU to the max. Although Prime95 is preferred, this is an amazing test when time is of the essence. Location : http://www.ocbase.com/
StressPrime - This program is based off of Prime95 but has a bit of an easier interface to work with. This was my stress program of choice however, newer versions of prime make it a lot easier to stress muli core CPU's. With StressPrime you will have to open up multiple instances of the program. Locaion: http://sp2004.fre3.com/
SuperPi - This program is great for a quick test of CPU stability. I usually like to run this as soon as I get into windows. I run a 1M test to see if I can complete something that easy, and then, if all is well, I then step up to one of the higher end stress programs listed above. Location: http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/
SiSoftware Sandra - This program is more of a benchmarking program than a stability program, but it does deserve a spot here. This program can be a wonderful benchmark to see exactly how well your new overclock is scoring compared to your stock settings. Running an Arithmatic benchmark is the fastest and best way to test your new overclock when it comes to this program. Location : http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/
RAM Stability
Memtest86+ - Honestly, this is the only program I am going to recommend because it is simply the best. The best thing you can do is boot to memtest86 from a floppy disk or CD, and run the entire test to check your RAM. There is also a Windows based version of this program, however, remember, it is always best to test ram before booting into Windows. This way we can minimize the risk of OS corruption as fauly RAM overclocks increase the risk by a lot! Location : http://www.memtest.org/
Memtest for Windows - Submitted by Robodude666. This version of memtest runs within the windows environment. It is wonderful for those of us that dont have floppy drives or unable to boot into memtest86 from a CD. More than one copy of this program must be run for users with more than 2gb of ram. Location : [ur]http://hcidesign.com/memtest/[/url]
GPU Stability
3DMark - This program is definatly one of the best when it comes to testing both the performance, and stability of your graphics card. It is very simple to use, just install the program, run, and then click "Run 3DMark" to get started. The loop will go for about 5-10 minutes depending on your system. Location : http://www.futuremark.com/. You may also want to download 3Dmark05 and 3Dmark06.
Rthdribl - Standing for Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image Based Lighting, this program is also great at stressing the video cards shading and lighting properties. This program will usually show artifacts within seconds if your overclock isn't that stable. Location : http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/ (http://www.daionet.gr.jp/%7Emasa/rthdribl/)
Temperature Monitoring
CoreTemp - For Intel Users this is one of the most accurate programs that you can get to read your core temperatures (hence the name lol). The program reads directly from the DeltaT to TJunction register from the CPU which in essence tells you what temperature each core is running at. This is a great program and recommended above other programs for Intel users. Please take note that most new Intel Chips have a TJunction of 100*C. If you have any Exx50 chip, the program will show you a TJunction of 85*C. If this is the case what you need to do is add 15*C to each core to get a more accurate temperature. Location : http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/CoreTemp/
SpeedFan - This is another great program for both Intel and AMD users. Speedfan always assumes a TJunction of 85*C for Intel chips so you may have to add an extra 15*C to get a correct reading. For AMD users ther have yet to be any issues. This program is very accurate when it comes to CPU temps, however, don't rely on it too much for other temps such as chipset and system temps, as it may be reading from the wrong thermal diode. Location : http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT) - TAT was a beta program released from the Intel company. It was made to accuratly display core temperatures, and also provide stability testing for their processors. The program only worked for Core2Duo processors and above, however, support ended before the core2quad was released. Because Intel discontinued the program, I will respect that and wont post a link to the download, however, if you are a C2D user and would like to give it a shot, search around
Conclusion
Sometimes the cost of a new rig is prohibitive to one’s budget. By acquiring a few of the right parts at low cost you can often save a lot of money and extend the life of your computer for another year or two. The biggest benefit is the ability to use games that would be out of reach for your stock processor to run. Remember that voltage increases cause heat and heat is the enemy of your system, so to enjoy your overclock and keep it cool.
__________________
Send Inquiries to:
Ted Freeman
teddonn@sbcglobal.net