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RE: Overclocking (was New PC recommendations)


  • To: <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
  • Subject: RE: Overclocking (was New PC recommendations)
  • From: "Timothy Morris" <timothy.morris@xxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 20:30:37 +0100
  • Delivered-to: ukha_archive@xxxxxxx
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  • Reply-to: ukha_d@xxxxxxx

I’ve got an XP 1500+ putting out the same as a 1900. To be honest I wouldn’t worry about it. A couple of years ago CPUs where well behind the leading edge software and wringing out every ounce of performance made all the difference to frame rate.

 

Nowadays anything faster than a PIII 600 is fine for general office/HA applications. If you also want to run it as a games machine, a decent graphics card together with an Athlon XP1500 or a 1.5 gig or faster P4 will be more than  capable. Anything faster is just icing on the cake.

 

Tim.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Bovingdon [mailto:bov@xxxxxxx]
Sent:
18 April 2002 13:18
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Overclocking (was New PC recommendations)

 

Wow - great reply - thanks Tim. So what are you running at what new speed

and can you really notice the difference?

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 12:48 PM

Subject: [ukha_d] Overclocking (was New PC recommendations)

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Bovingdon [mailto:bov@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 17 April 2002 09:09
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] New PC recommendations

 

> In addition to an Athlon XP processor, think about 512Mb RAM (don't

> bother about the Corsair stuff unless you want to overclock - and you

> won't need to unless you want to run the latest games - I run a very

> processor intensive simulator for my helicopter so I run an XP1500 at

> the same speed as a 1900)

 

How do you actually go about overclocking? Apart from ensuring the

chip is kept cool?

 

Overclocking is based on the premise that with adequate cooling processors can be run at far faster than the rating printed on them. This is for two reasons – in your average office where vents are typically blocked and pretty average cooling systems are employed processors need to run at the rated speed while they are pretty hot – reduce the temperature of the CPU and you can get more speed out of it. The other one is that when the factory makes chips it doesn’t set out to make say 2000 chips one day and 1800 chips another. It makes chips and puts them on a test rig to see what speed they can get out of them. Generally all chips from the same batch of silicon will generate roughly the same speed. Now it gets more complicated, because one particular batch may be more than capable of running at 2000 speeds, but there may be demand for say 1800s. These chips will be marked as 1800s and then copper links on the surface of the chip cut to set the speed of the chip electronically. Whether you get a good 1800 capable of running at much higher speeds or an average one is pot luck. Overclocking used to bring with it massive cost savings (in the case of 486 processors), now it doesn’t yield as much of a saving, people tend to overclock “because they can”.

 

It actually gets more complicated with each iteration of processors. AMD and Intel really don’t care about people at home overclocking chips, what they don’t want is some Far Eastern bucket shop re-marking chips and selling 1600s as 1800s. To this end they make it more and more difficult to overclock each time the hobbyists find a way to circumvent the protection they build in.

 

There are two methods to overclocking – the first and easiest is simply to turn up the bus-speed in the bios (most Abit and Asus boards amongst others will allow you to do this) so that instead of running at 10x133 (1333MHz) you run at 10x140 say (1400MHz). This means that you’ll be running everything though at faster than its rated speed – PCI bus, AGP, and most importantly the DDR memory bus (which is already running at twice the speed of the PCI bus!) Manufacturers of performance hardware realise this, and so produce DDR ram rated at faster than the stock 266MHz. My Corsair ram is rated to 333MHz, and is actually capable of running reliably at 360MHz.

 

The other, more complicated method involves keeping the bus speed set to standard and changing the multiplier in the bios. AMD and Intel don’t want you to do this so they build a number of bridges into the processor to lock in the multiplier marked on the chip.

 

My current processor is an AMD so I only know how to unlock recent versions of their chips. It used to be relatively simple use a pencil to join up all the relevant links – these are the same links that AMD join on the test rig so they can set the multiplier in software to find the maximum speed the processor can reliably run at. Then the pencil line didn’t reduce the resistance enough, so people started to use conductive paint for repairing PCB traces. In the latest generation of Athlon XP processors AMD cut through the top layer of substrate with a laser. Beneath this substrate lies a conductive grid – if the conductive paint gets into this grid it really screws with the multipliers you can set – and in some cases you’ll no longer be able to run at the speed you could before you started.

 

The answer is to fill these holes with something before you start (I used 30 minute epoxy) and then join up the dots. They are tiny so need masking off with tape before you paint on the silver lacquer with a pin!

 

You’re now in a position that you can set any multiplier and clock speed, you like. The best position is to run the lowest multiplier and highest bus speed that you can. This determines the bandwidth between processor and main memory.

 

There’s more, but I’ve spent more time typing this than I originally intended.

 

Tim.

 



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