new to overclocking

S

SweatyGangsta

Geek Trainee
Ive never really contemplated overclocking and to be honenst i wont need to for sometime yet ...but im kinda curious.

A lot of u guys r talking about bridges and stuff and i have no idea what that means.

i thought u cud just clock the processor by upping the fsb. if u can just do this then how much can u do before needing extra cooling?
 
Well, on both AMD and Intel chips, you can overclock them with the FSB. However, the Intel P4/Celeron's tend to scale very well here.

To get a very high FSB with the Athlon, you'll need to drop the multiplier, but you'll usually need to connect the L1 bridges on your CPU. (same goes for the Duron) Starting with the Athlon XP (Palimino and Thoroughbred cores), AMD made a laser-cut trench through the bridges to prevent the easy L1 pencil trick.

Before I go any further, lemme explain what the "pencil trick" is. All you do is connect the dots noted as L1 on the processor packaging with a sharp, graphite (or lead) pencil. Personally, a mechanical pencil helps here. This works on any Socket A Duron/Athlon using the "Thunderbird" core, and these do not have any XP lable on them (nor MP, which denotes the multiprocessing capable version of the Palimino/Thoroughbred core). From 1.2 to 1.4GHz, the Thunderbird Athlons came with the L1 bridges uncut. I have a 1.4 Thunderbird, and it did come with the L1 bridges intact.

Anyway, starting with the Palimino's, the laser-cut trench on the L1 and other sets of bridges to keep people from reconnecting them and playing with the multiplier. This didn't stop people however. They got around it by filling the trenches and connecting the bridges. Most people use rear-window defogger repair paint.

Cooling depends on the stock speed of the CPU and what cooler you're starting out with. The Pentium 4 stock cooler is really pretty good, and unless you're a die-hard overclocker (and even then) the stock cooler is more than enough.
For the Athlon's, the stock cooler is good enough. If you want to pursue overclocking, look at getting a cooler that has a copperbase, or at the very least, a copper insert in the base. Expect to pay at least $20-30 online for a good cooler, and then some extra for a fan, depending on how big and how fast it is.
Other factors that can affect the cooling of the CPU is the airflow in your case and the thermal compound you use, Arctic Silver II being some of the best available.
 
i have a p4 2gig. currently the fsb is 100
and the bios will allow me to go up to 150 i think.
So i cud clock all that way and the fan i have got will cope?
 
Well, that's providing the memory can take it as well. If you already have the memory running at 133MHz (sometimes HOST CLK +33), you've probably got very little room to OC. 2nd, there's no guarantee the CPU will remain stable at that high of bus speed (it would be nice though at 3GHz).

Best thing to do is try it in small increments, like 5MHz on the FSB at a time, and then make sure it gets into Windows. If it passes that successfully, run a CPU pummeling program, like Prime 95 (the torture test specifically) and see if it lasts 24 hours without an error. If it does, it's pretty much stable at that speed.
Also, if you can adjust the voltage, that will help to. However, try not to go above 1.7v, as people have eventually killed their P4's this way, regardless of cooling methods.
 
damn a 2ghz with 100fsb?!!
I didnt even know that was posible
your mainboard should suport 133fsb atleast I think

Can you write down your mainboard name and who made it ?
I have 1,33ghz and I overclocked it to 1,5ghz with 150fsb with no problems :)

BTW if you want an easy way for changing you fsb in windows go here http://www.podien.onlinehome.de/CPUFSB.HTM
 
There's a big difference. You have an Athlon, he has a P4. I've got a Tbird 1.4 that can do a 150MHz FSB no problem. My P4 1.6A tops out around 145MHz or so running the chip at 2.32GHz. He'd probably get around 2.4GHz providing it's the newer Northwood core and not the older Willamette one which went up to 2GHz. If it's the Willy, I doubt he'll get very much out of it.
 
how do u know if it is the willy or the northwood?

i think ill clock it just to see how much of a performance boost i get.;)
 
Northwood has 512kB of L2 cache
Willy has only 256kB of L2 cache

A utility called WCPUID can tell you that information.
 
HELP ME!!!!!!!!

HELP I TRIED CLOCKING TO 2.4ghz WITH FSB AT 120 AND NOW MY COMPUTER DOES NOT WORK. FROM THE MOMENT I CHANGED IT, IT WILL NOT DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN DISPLAY THE VERY FIRST LINES THAT U SEE AT START UP. NOT FAR ENOUGH TO ENTER BIOS TO CHANGE IT. WHEN I LEAVE IT FOR A LIONG TIME IT GOES A BIT FURTHER AND I MANAGED TO GET INTO BIOS BUT ONLY HALF THE OPTIONS LOADED AND IT WOULD NOT RESPOND TO THE KEYBOARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1) WHAT CAN I DO, DO I HAVE TO REPLACE THE PROCESSOR?
:mad: :eek: :( :tired:

plz answer as soon as possible.
 
I hope I'm right at this:
You probaly only hafta clear the bios, how u shud do it should be in your mainbaord manual, most times you just have put one pin on the mainboard a little diferent

Have you checked your cpu to see if its burned, I sure hope for ya its not ?

and eh using caps lock wont help anyone ;)

EDIT:Hmmz with CPUFSB I always had to put my power completly off if my system crashes with a too high fsb, so have u tried switching the power off using the button behind your pc where the power goes in and leave it off for like 5-10 secs?
 
HELP ME!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by SweatyGangsta
HELP I TRIED CLOCKING TO 2.4ghz WITH FSB AT 120 AND NOW MY COMPUTER DOES NOT WORK. FROM THE MOMENT I CHANGED IT, IT WILL NOT DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN DISPLAY THE VERY FIRST LINES THAT U SEE AT START UP. NOT FAR ENOUGH TO ENTER BIOS TO CHANGE IT. WHEN I LEAVE IT FOR A LIONG TIME IT GOES A BIT FURTHER AND I MANAGED TO GET INTO BIOS BUT ONLY HALF THE OPTIONS LOADED AND IT WOULD NOT RESPOND TO THE KEYBOARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1) WHAT CAN I DO, DO I HAVE TO REPLACE THE PROCESSOR?
:mad: :eek: :( :tired:

plz answer as soon as possible.
Click to expand...

That's a big jump for overclocking. Try no larger than 5MHz increments on the FSB.
Remember each MHz you up on the FSB, it goes up 20MHz on the processors clock speed.
Also, try upping the voltage a little too.
 
ok thanks rza thats really useful. i wasnt sure i there was a manual way of clearing the bios and i didnt think to look in the mainboard manual. But ill try the power supply thing u mentioned first.
 
ok things are getting worse.

switching off at the back will work in theory but 5-10 seconds is a joke as there is a long life battery which keeps the bios memory alive, 5-10 weeks might work.

the pins that u mention are the jumpers and apparently switching the correct one will clear the bios. however i dont have the mainboard manual as i got the computer from pc world and there is no documentation regarding the mainboard with it. i cant look it up on the net because i cant identify who manufatored it and what model it is.

After researching more i found a post on amother forum which stated that u could clear the bios by removing the mainboard battery. which i did. after leaving it for an hour i replaced it and turned on. and nothing happened, and i mean NOTHING. the monitor recieved nothing and there were no bleeps from the cpu.

Obviously this is worse than before when i got one bleep and the monitor recieved data before everything froze.

Has anyone got anymore suggestions before i go to a store to pay large amounts of money to get this fixed?:confused: :( :mad:
 
You sure you've got everything plugged in? (I know, silly, but it happens).
Do you get any fans spinning in the system?
 
I didnt mean switching off power would clear the bios but it would set the fsb back to normal (it does that on many pc's)

About the battery thing I think u hafta buy a new one and it should work(and btw such batteries will live years ;) )

Cant u search the model name on the board it self, it would be really strange if nothing is on it

good luck
 
i get all the fans going and nosie which i think is the hardrive getting going, but nothing else. becasue it is worse than it was before it must be the battery allthough i dont know how i can have damaged it. i think ill have one more go checking everything is in properly and then swallow my pride and take it to a repair shop.
 
Good idea. Look around the battery and see if there are any jumpers and if they are labled in relation to CMOS or BIOS.
 
AHA

i found my motherboard manual and have discovered that the third pin on the CMOS jumper is bent. this is the one used in clearing the CMOS. But the default pins are ok.

so i looks like when i popped out the battery (Which is very close to it) i knocked the jumper.

But if the defualt pins are fine then everything should still work shouldnt it? unless the whole jumper is damaged.

can a jumper on a motherboard be replaced or do i need a whole new motherboard.
 
It can, but an easy fix is to just use a screw driver to short out the pins to clear it. Some Asus boards have shipped without an actual set of pins to clear CMOS with and the way you'd have to go about it was to set a screwdriver head across the contacts to short them.
 
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