Overclocking

[chumley]

I have resisted overclocking my CPU for some considerable time largely because I don't understand how to do it and therefore not wanting to be left with a dead system. I don't tinker with any mechanical things for much the same reason.

However, recently I received a PM from another forum participant who suggested that my processor should be capable of a decent overclock and provided a couple of links to some guides.  After reading the information and with some trepidation I made my first foray into overclocking.

Following the information in the guides to the letter I tweaked the system and then rebooted. The machine came to life and I immediately ran SIW and found Core 1 repoprting as 3.6ghz (8.5 x 424 FSB frequency), Core 2 - 4 reporting as 2.5ghz ( 6 x 424 FSB frequency).

Is this correct or should they all run at the higher rate?

The original FSB frequency was 333.3.

I have reverted the system to the defaults in case I did something wrong and it might come back to bite me.

Any thoughts or comments appreciated.

Thanks

Andy b

[flyguy737]

well you seem to have a quad core whereas I only have a dual core. I have experimented many times and joined overclockers forums at www.overclockers.com there you will find lots of help.

What I have found is this with my system over clocked many different ways right up to 3.8Ghz on my stock 3.16GHz Cpu however overclocking your FSB also increases the temperature on the CPU and also WILL increase the RAM bus SPEED.

be careful with temps. use a program called realtemp and another called CPU-Z. I found I have my system now running at 1:1 with my RAM. CPU speed stable at 3.30GHz temps no more then 57 max.

Now a word here overclocking your system wont give you an increase in FPS all it will do is make FSX load faster. RAM increases the FPS next to GPU speed. however memory must have a low Latency to work best. I have found that a 1:1 ratio works best.

My FSB is 348 by 9.5 multiplier. now if I get a better cooler I can go higher but avoid temps in 60 or more. also the higher you go you need to increase your voltages. Now I don't want to get into that so I have ordered a Q9400 CPU.

1 thing I have learnt is all increase's can also affect the PCI bus and that's something you don't want to do so the answer is change your bios settings from auto to recommended in otherwords if you can change the PCI frequency lock it to 100Mhz NOT AUTO.

but use realtemp and CPU-Z and make your increase's slowly 10 - 15 Mhz at first then 2Mhz increase's. Watch your RAM Memory Frequency as it will go up too you can go alittle more on the ram but if too high you will get bottlenecks. try changing this to a lower number and go up from there.

If you get a blue screen of death or system crash increase your CORE Voltage by 1 at a time and the Ram Voltage 2 at a time check your system under load each time. WATCH THOSE TEMPS!!!

Hope that helps

[marshkop]

  Chumley, honestly its hard to screw your comp. up with a bad overclock. There is your jumper switch for the cmos. The only enemy you have is heat. This one rule can save your comp. -Watch your temps-. You have to give things more power to get more power. That means heat. Oveclockers.com and Simforums, are good places to use for knoledge on how and what to put where. Make sure you read about your motherboard and undestanding its limits, specs, and tollerences. Any overclock you do will reduce your cpu over time because it will run hotter. That also goes for your ram and vidcard.

  ps Oh yeah, if you screw it up bad, I got a used P5N-32sli with a E6750

[mozzy_06]

The machine came to life and I immediately ran SIW and found Core 1 repoprting as 3.6ghz (8.5 x 424 FSB frequency)

Seems odd having different readings for the cores. What is SIW?

There are a couple of powersaving BIOS settings that you may want to disable if you haven't already. These can sometimes throttle your overclock if left enabled. On my MOBO they are C.I.A.2, CPU Enhanced Halt, CPU EIST function, CPU Thermal Monitor........some are designed to protect your CPU from meltdown so, as you've already done, double check the documentation.

[TenBlade]

Something is unclear to me. How will overclocking to a higher frequency NOT give you better frame rates, when FSX is so absolutely processor dependent? Why else would anyone go through the tedious task of overclocking?

Bjorn

[Sniper31]

Something is unclear to me. How will overclocking to a higher frequency NOT give you better frame rates, when FSX is so absolutely processor dependent? Why else would anyone go through the tedious task of overclocking?

Bjorn

Well, for me, overclocking has definatley improved my FPS...BIG time!

[mozzy_06]

Well, for me, overclocking has definatley improved my FPS...BIG time!