Trying to Overclock My CPU

[Jeremizzle]

Im having a little trouble overclocking my CPU, and I hope you guys can help. First off, can I even OC? I have Pentium 4 800fsb 512k cache CPU at 3.0ghz, but I remember reading an article somewhere that most modern processors only overclock your FSB. When i look at my CPU specs In BIOS, It wont let me access the are where you would be able to user define the speed. Right now my Processor is running at 43C so i was hopping to bump it up 500 to 2000 mhz. If you guys could help me try and figure this it that would be great.

Thanks

[xmetal2001]

You wan't to bump up what from 500mhz to 2000mhz??

Your proccessor is overclockable, it just depends what mobo you have...

Which mb do you have?

[Jeremizzle]

no lol i guess i worded it wrong i want to bump up the speed anywhere between 500 to 2000mhz (depending on how much it can handle, ive never tried this before)

Anyways though, I have the ASUS P4P800 SE Motherboard.

[fire1811]

IMO its not worth it to overclock you cpu anymore. the speed your going to maybe gain is not worth the chance,risk, and problems you can have. unless you have very good cooling i would not recommend this

[Jeremizzle]

IMO?

I think I have decent cooling, my case temp when playing UT2004 never goes above 31C

[fire1811]

in my opinion= IMO

[Jeremizzle]

oh yeah i get it

[DJBacon06]

IMO its not worth it to overclock you cpu anymore. the speed your going to maybe gain is not worth the chance,risk, and problems you can have. unless you have very good cooling i would not recommend this


Agreed. Jeremy, It's not really worth it. You are not going to see any significant increase in speed and power.

[WickeDKlowN]

It's not really about squeasng that little bit more performance out of it like it used to be. It's more about bragging rights nowadays.

I used al AMD so I'm not too familia ith intel, but Im guesing the chip is locked. Try asking in the forums over at Overclockersclub.com

[Jeremizzle]

Is there a type of ratio that shows the amount of heat that is increased by the amount of speed that you increase? Intel reccomends that the threshold for a pentium 4 is 70C now my CPU temp is 42C I can use ASUS probe to my advantage and set the threshold around 65 then if it starts getting too hot itll shut down and cool off before reaching the heat threshold.

[Jeremizzle]

I just checked BIOS again, does Ratio Status have anything to do with it? because thats locked and from what i see i cant unlock it

[xmetal2001]

You should be able to increase the FSB in the bios, I'm not specifically famililar with that board.

Theres no way you are gonna get close to a 2000mhz overclock! 500mhz might even be pushing it depending on the stability of your ram...

[fire1811]

but if you do get it up to 2000mhz please let me know how you did it :)

[Jeremizzle]

xmetal-your right. I updated my BIOS and now theres this thing under "Jumper Free Configuration" called AI overclock tuner that i found last night. If i set it to manual, then CPU External Frequency appears. By defualt it was set at 200mhz. This is what it says

CPU External Frequency-Indicates the frequency sent by the clock generator to the system bus and PCI bus. The bus frequency (external frequency) multiplied by the bus multiple equals the CPU speed. The value of this item is auto-detected by BIOS and is not manually configurable. The values range from 100 to 400.

So i have a 800fsb CPU and that was set at 200 by defualt. Can someone please explain that to me? Whats it mean by the Bus Multiple.

[mikey101]

what it's saying is your FSB speed multiplied by it's multiplier equals your cpu frequency (speed). So if your FSB is set to 200mhz and your cpu runs at 3ghz then your multiplier must be set around 15. either upping your FSB speed or upping your multiplier will cause you to overclock. Most people just stick with increasing the FSB speed because you can do it with no adjustments to the processor itself. to increase/decrease the multiplier you have to physically unlock the processor (can you do that with pentiums? it's possible with amd..don't know about pentiums)

what a lot of people recommend is go into your bios and up the FSB speed by 1mhz increments, rebooting, then making sure your comp is still stable. if it becomes unstable then bring it down a few mhz's and you should be good to go. Like everyone else said though you gotta worry about heat, i don't know how hot pentiums get, just keep an eye on it. heh, overclocking may not gain that much performance, especially on fast cpu's like you have there, but it's still fun to tinker :)

here's my specs as of now:
-AMD 2000+ XP (1.25ghz @ default with multiplier at 12.5)
-Palimino core (hot :( )
-OC'd to 1.8ghz with an FSB running at 141mhz
Not too bad of a gain especially with the somewhat weak processor i'm using. I've been running this way for over a year now and havn't had too many problems.

[Jeremizzle]

Thanks for explaining that mikey, I boosted my processor to 3.15ghz and in the middle of playing UT2004 the hottest it got was 52degrees C. Im gonna try to bump it up another 150mhz. Believe it or not I did notice an increase in speed. Faster loading levels and no lag when there were graphic/data intensive moments.

[Can_Opener]

I'm a member of the AMD crowd myself, and have overclocked my 2500+ to 3200+ speeds (I know its a weak overclock, I'm working with stock cooling right now though.) Anyways, Intel (I believe) and AMD processors (I know) are now multiplier locked, so the only way to overclock is to change the front side bus.

[Jeremizzle]

Is only being able to change the front side bus a bad thing? How would changing the frequency directly be any different.

[mikey101]

it's definitly still possible to unlock at least some AMD athlon XP's with the palimino/t-bred/barton core, you can either solder it yourself, or buy a small kit that clips onto the processor such as This (http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030210/barton-06.html)

congrats on the successful OC Jeremizzle! Some people will say the only true way to OC is to bump the multiplier..some will say you have to bump the FSB. Then there's the small group who say it's better to lower the multiplier enough so you can bump the FSB a lot more. in any case you just gotta find what method you can squeeze the most power out of without heat issues.

[xmetal2001]

Is only being able to change the front side bus a bad thing? How would changing the frequency directly be any different.

The multiplyer has been locked on almost all Intel chips for quite some time now, so you just have to accept only being able to change the FSB. Unless of course you have an engineering sample, but I think you would know if you did :)

It hasn't stopped people from gettin amazing overclocks on their Intel chips.

[Jeremizzle]

I have sucessfully oveerclocked my CPU to 3.51ghz. I tested it using the record temperature feature in ASUS probe while playing Raven Shield on all high settings. The CPU temperature dwindeled around 50C, and i did notice a big change in speed. Thanks to everyone who helped me with this.