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AMD Hardware

AMD Optimal BIOS settings + Overclocking Guide 201

Posted by CowboyNeal from the jumping-off-points dept.
JMke writes "Here's a step by step guide on how to get the most out of your AMD setup. Overclocking tips and BIOS tweak settings discussed, as well as an overview of the more popular overclocking tools. Start your overclocking here!" Lots of good info here for getting the last bit of performance out of your system while also watching out for dangers that could fry your processor.
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AMD Optimal BIOS settings + Overclocking Guide More

AMD Optimal BIOS settings + Overclocking Guide

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  • What overclocks better - 2500+ bartons or 2600+ and why?

    • Re:I was wondering (Score:3, Informative)

      by millette ( 56354 )

      From the article:

      on Prometeia / nVentiv Mk II - 2.7Ghz for average stepping. 3Ghz for super stepping. You won't get as high as TOTAL overclock out of a Barton as you would out of (for example) a Thoroughbred 1700+ DLT3C, however, a Barton at 2.4Ghz can match and beat a Thoroughbred at 2.6Ghz... usually.... 2500+ is the most popular choice. These hit 2.6/2.7Ghz with about 2.1v on a Prometeia. On water expect to top out at around 2.5Ghz or 2.6Ghz... They'll do 2.3Ghz with ease at 1.9v usually.

    • Re:I was wondering (Score:2, Informative)

      by crimsonl ( 720846 )
      I have had problems with stability with the 2600+ so I would not recommend going that route.

    • I've got (Score:2, Troll)

      by metalhed77 ( 250273 )
      I've got a 2600+ barton running right now at 3200+ (2.21 GHz) with a 400 Mhz FSB on a a7n8x with PC3200 and it's solid as a rock. Temperature doesn't seem to be an issue at all, but then i'm using a massive Thermalright SLK-947U

    • Re:I was wondering (Score:2, Informative)

      by stone2020 ( 123807 )
      I would go with the 2500+ barton. They didn't overclock very well when they first came out but they have improved lately. The 1700+ and 2100+ are also very good overclockers. They don't have the extra cache like the bartons but most applications show very little performance improvement with the extra cache.

    • Re:I was wondering (Score:1, Interesting)

      by MoronGames ( 632186 )
      While the 2600+ is a good overclocker, it's a thoroughbred model. You'd be better off getting a 1700+ if you want a thoroughbred. They'll both hit about the same speed, which is usally 2.5-2.7GHz on some good air cooling. The Barton 2500+, though, is the lowest end of the Barton line of processors, and generally hit about 2.4GHz with air cooling, which actually equates to about 3400+. With some exotic cooling, like phase change, you will probably get a few hundred MHz higher out of either chip.
    • 2500+, no question. Bought 2 last week for both my PCs. Upped the FSB from 166 to 200, maintained all other settings (yes, voltage included). Instant 3200+ for the price of a 2500+. I'm sure I can push it about 100-200 MHz further but it's 100% stable like that, I don't really want to waste time tinkering...

    • Re:I was wondering (Score:2, Informative)

      by RKone2 ( 720851 )
      The 2500+.

      It's a Barton running at 1.83 Ghz.

      The 2600+ is a T-Bred, clocked at 2.08 Ghz.

      It seems the Bartons can overclock to about the same clockspeed as the T-Breds. However the Bartons have 512KB l2 cache, whereas the T-Bred is only 256, so at the same clock speed the Barton is generally much faster.

      So the 2500 is cheaper and usually ends up being faster than the 2600.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @12:49PM (#7366980)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Temperature (Score:3, Interesting)

      by freeweed ( 309734 )
      That's bizarre. I have an 1800+ on my desktop, with the stock heatsink/fan.

      I've never seen it go above 45C, even after hours of playing something like BF1942. It idles somewhere around 33C. My video card is a heatsink-only Radeon 9000, and I've got 3 hard drives in the case - only a regular mid-tower too. No case fans at all, no hard drive fans.

      What do you keep your room temperature at? Or could different motherboards have different heating effects? I always figured a setup like mine should run really hot

      • Re:Temperature (Score:3, Interesting)

        by heli0 ( 659560 )
        There are different methods the motherboard can use to measure the die temperature. One is to place a thermal diode on the motherboard in the center of the socket beneath the CPU. Other motherboards report the temperature directly from the CPU's internal on-die thermal sensor.

        Usually the report from the on-die sensor is 10-20C higher than the external sensor reports.

        Here is what the in-socket thermal diodes look like: http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/r_abit_k r 7a-r/sensor_small.jpg [overclockers.com.au]

      • Re:Temperature (Score:2, Informative)

        by Amorpheus_MMS ( 653095 )
        Two different CPU cores have been sold as 1800+. He probably has the older Palomino, which was still .18 - I have one of those as well and can assure you it's still hot when set up right. Your low temperatures make me rather sure you must have a newer .13 Thoroughbred.

        (Is it just me or does /. eat micron symbols?)
    • yes, they're more probable to crash even on modest temperature when they're overclocked.

      besides than that, rarely anyone has any _REAL_ numbers when they're speaking of cpu temp(the mobos compensate the builtin sensor differently).

      such guides rarely provide anything useful(beyond wire trick instructions & etc that are really useful), real information(written most of the time as mental extensions for the writers dick) and most of the time have one myth or another provided as 'fact'(and have lots of not
      • oh yeah and forgot to add that his line **DON'T FORGET TO WATCH THE CPU TEMPS ALL THE TIME.
        NEVER LET IT GET ABOVE 55C IN MY OPINION ON AIRCOOLING, OR 42C USING WATERCOOLING.** is totally silly, as it indicates that your cpu would blow up at lower temps if you're watercooling. besides, amd cpu's wont break until something way over 100c(of course, they won't _operate_ at that temp but they will work afterwards), so the easiest way to accomplish that is to take the heatsink off while it's on(and indeed newer a
    • My XP1900+ (not overclocked) is at 65C at the moment under a low load. Under a high load it will not peak little over 70C... it has a copper heatsink inside a case with motherboard temp around 30C. No problems at all with any components (HDs are around 20C being in the coolest place).

      I have no problems with a CPU up to 75C and expect 85C will be boarderline but on the OK side.

    • Re:Temperature (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:07PM (#7367054)
      The chips are tested at a DIE temperature of 85C. However, the temperature sensor on you MB isn't at the die, it's at the packaging (or maybe just near the packaging), so it's not going to read as hot. A rule of thumb I've read is a 20 degrees difference, so that would mean 65C.

      Unfortunately, this is all academic because motherboard temperature sensors are notoriously non-calibrated, and I've seen them be 10C off or more! It's more useful to use MB sensors to monitor relative changes than absolute temperature. (In other words, the difference between temperatures running at idle and at load is probably accurate...but the absolute values are probably fuzzy).

      Additionally, the fact that the chip was tested at 85C doesn't mean that it will be harmed by temperatures over 85C; it just means it's likely to not work (a bit won't flip somewhere on the chip). Your system will eventually lock up if this is happening. They used to test some chips at 95C or more, and military use chips get tested even higher, so that shows that the silicon chip itself won't be damaged at those temps...it's just functionality that will suffer. :)

      If your chip is marginal, running for long times at higher temps can cause it to die quickly (atom migration, etc, can be more pronounced at higher temps) so some people will warn of running at very high temperatures. But this is very unlikely, and if it does eventually happen, hey...now you need to upgrade. Sweet.

    • Re:Temperature (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stone2020 ( 123807 )
      Motherboard temp sensors can be off a lot. On my Abit NF7-S they had to fix it in a bios update because it was off by up to 10C. Your 1800+ might also have the Palomino core which ran extremely hot. A good HSF and arctic silver are very good at lowering temps. I have a 2100+ running at 3200+ speeds with full load temp being 52C.

    • Re:Temperature (Score:4, Funny)

      by Ella the Cat ( 133841 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @02:57PM (#7367518) Homepage Journal

      I'm underclocking! My 1400 Athlon Tbird (so 2001) segfaults unless I underclock at 1.3 GHz, but it is then rock solid stable, running at just under 75C at 100% CPU with an external temp sensor. I just wanted a =quiet= PC is all.

      • Heh, this reminds me of a Cyrix 166 I once bought ( Hey! Quit laughing at me! ) over the phone from Treasure Chest computers. Besides the fact that it was delayed because of the UPS strike, it wouldn't run at all! I was furious, and was about to send it back, until I tried re-clocking it. Turns out that it only worked if it was over-clocked at 200.
    • Are overclocked CPUs more sensitive to heat, or is this just a "to be safe" recommendation? AMD says they're good up to 85C.

      Overclocking is all about temperature.

      So long as you don't mess with the Vcore, overclocking does not make a CPU more sensitive to heat. It just will get hotter. If you can keep the temperature of the die under control by dissapating the extra generated heat, there's no problem with overclocking, but it's instrumental that you have accurate temp readings.

      I'm only familiar with Inte

    • From the article: NEVER LET IT GET ABOVE 55C IN MY OPINION ON AIRCOOLING

      When I had the stock heatsink/fan on my 1800+, it would IDLE at over 55C, and peak at around 63C under a full load.

      My dual MP2100 rig (on a Tyan S2466N-4M with a pair of Vantec Aeroflow coolers) gets into the mid-50s when TMPGEnc is running. At idle, it drops into the mid-40s. If you're idling in the mid-to-upper 50s on a single-processor rig (especially at a slower clock speed), something is wrong with your cooling. Did you le

  • Overclocking (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @12:49PM (#7366983) Journal
    The biggest thing I've always found with overclocking (both Intel & AMD) is that 'YMMV' (your mileage may vary). I've talked to people who say they run their systems at 20% more speed than they should be doing, yet one of my systems constantly locks up even if midly overclocked. Increasingly I wonder, given the current prices for this kind of technology, whether overclocking is a bit pointless. Do I spend $100 extra or do I spend 12 hours mucking with my BIOS? You decide!

    Overclocking also seems so 1990s now, most people I speak to who rate themselves equal to my own geekdom are in to case modding and quiet PCs... concepts which I find much more interesting than getting 5% extra FPS in Quake.

    • Re:Overclocking (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bullseye_blam ( 589856 )
      ... yet one of my systems constantly locks up even if midly overclocked... Do I spend $100 extra or do I spend 12 hours mucking with my BIOS?

      Well, here's the thing: first, you have to have good parts. Unless you have good quality RAM, a properly cooled processor, and a decent power supply, you probably won't be able to overclock very much. To your second point, you can get a 10-20% increase in speed by overclocking, and once you know most of the tricks to overclock, you can probably fix your machine u

      • Re:Overclocking (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @12:56PM (#7367015) Journal
        The point is though, that if I spend $500 on a (ficticious) 2GHz processor and $100 on cooling so I can run it at 2.1GHz, does it really make sense to do this when the 2.1GHz processor is available with a crappy (but adequate) fan for $550?

        • Yes, but (Score:3, Insightful)

          by metalhed77 ( 250273 )
          What if you get a $100 processor (barton 2600+) spend $50 on cooling (Slk 947 U plus fan) and overclock it to the performance of a $250 (barton 3200+) processor with no problems? The same can be said of video cards. It seems that cooling has a higher ROI than just buying the better chip.

        • Re:Overclocking (Score:4, Informative)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:29PM (#7367136) Homepage Journal
          the current pricing of cpus however would indicate that your hypothetic 2.1ghz would cost 800$.

          AMD Duron 1600 MHz, 64 KB 50.7 e
          AMD Athlon XP B 2800+ 2.08G/333 MHz, 512 KB 156.0 e

          (some of the disabled cache is re-enableabe on those durons, afaik, and seemingly most do run 2.2ghz+ or even 2.4ghz)

          Intel P4 HT 2600 MHz s478 Northwood, 512 KB, 800
          boxed 198.2 e

          Intel P4 HT 3200 MHz s478 Northwood, 512 KB, 800
          boxed 472.5 e

          for most though the point is that they can't afford that high end cpu, and for the rest is that they don't want to pay such prices you end up buying for high end cpu(that can't be overclocked in the same ratio as cheapos can). the cooling costs anyways, regardless of if you're going to use it for oc or not(unless you're willing to go with a cheapo, or one that comes with boxed cpus).

          hell.. i don't make my buying decisions based on overclockability, i make them on other factors. i just oc them as far as they're willing to go after i've bought them(well, i got one underclocked machine too, as nat-box).
        • Yes, it does make sense. One, is that when you upgrade your cpu again, you don't have to put out the money for the water cooling system. And Two, what happens when you want a 2.2GHz computer, and none is out.

          You guys are missing the point that overclocking is about being a nerd, and fooling arround for optimization. Its not going to save you money, like any other hobby, it will make you spend more. You spend it because you enjoy the hobby, not because its economical.

        • I know two people who have bought Barton AXP 2500+s and overclocked them to 3200+s easy. So you buy a $100 CPU + $50 in cooling, and get a $350 CPU out of it. Sweet deal if you ask me.

    • Re:Overclocking (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jameth ( 664111 )
      "case modding and quiet PCs"

      That's the real key.

      How about a guide on underclocking something far enough that it can be passively cooled? Most chips are so much too fast that it hardly matters. (As always, results may vary)

      Or, what about the power-on-demand-or-whatever-they-call-it that mobile chips have? How about a guide on setting up a heat-sensitive fan so your system is silent when idle?
      • Yep I agree, for my main PC (for games) I'd like a lot of speed, but for a linux/bsd server I don't need any speed at all, and would prefer to have it quieter and more economical. Though I'd need a quiet PSU then as well...

        Can anyone provide any info on this end of things?

        • As far as the PSU, I know that it is possible to get a solid-state PSU. I do not know where. I saw a system with a fanless PSU at a LAN party. I really wish I knew where to get one.

          As for the CPU, I'd recommend the VIA. Sure, it sucks ass on floating-point, but 12 watts for 1ghz is fine. I can cope, as long as I have my integer.

          On the video-card end, if you want to be able to occasionally play games, I'd still recommend the Voodoo3. Yes, I know, it's older than dirt by now, but it really is pretty good, a
      • How about a guide on underclocking something far enough that it can be passively cooled? Most chips are so much too fast that it hardly matters. (As always, results may vary)

        I've got an old BP6 motherboard. I'm wondering if I could shove a pair of 1.4Ghz Celeries into it (clocked for 1Ghz, drop the voltage a bit too) and cool it with a pair of Zallman flowers but without the fan.
      • How about a guide on setting up a heat-sensitive fan so your system is silent when idle?

        Well, that's not hard. There are a number of fans that come with temperature sensors in them (I personally use the volcano9), just put the temp sensor under the cpu, wire it into the speed control (the volcano9 has a connector for 3 different speed controllers; one is a jumper for 100% speed all the time, one is a knob for manual speed control, and another is the temp sensor, which I use).

        Then it speeds up as it heats
      • It doesn't take much, really...

        I'm running an AthlonXP 1500+ at stock speeds and it's almost silent. To start with, I picked up an oversized heatsink with a 80mm fan (nothign fancy, just a $10ish low-noise model). Then I got myself a -good- PSU (350W Vantec with dual temp-controlled fans) and one of those oh-so-sexy Zalman fan speed controllers.

        I'm sure, if I wanted, I could've gone even more extreme, but as it is (coupled with my fanless graphics card) I can barely hear it. I'm sure with something lik
        • There is a world of difference between quiet enough for you and quiet enough for me.

          I want to be able to run my computer 24/7 in the room I sleep in. I once had an analog alarm clock, but the ticking kept me up at night. I sleep with the window closed and the fan off during the summer because I'd rather be drenched in sweat than irritated by the surrounding noise.

          Specifically, there is an enormous difference between 'fairly quiet' and 'silent.' I want a system that creates NO noise (I will accept the elec

          • I don't expect to get it.

            Most any Via based system can be made silent. A good PSU, a Seagate Barracuda between two lumps of metal with some foam around it (build from scrap or buy off-the-shelf), a northbridge heat sink on the CPU and the CPU fan at 5V to move some air (saves 15C at 100% CPU). I did this only last week "to see if I could". It's =spooky= it's so quiet. If you need more CPU throughput, use the Via box as your (X) terminal and network to your big iron located in the loft or garage.

    • Re:Overclocking (Score:5, Funny)

      by obsidianpreacher ( 316585 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @12:57PM (#7367023)
      But ... but ... but ... it's QUAKE! I simply HAFTA play at 400 frames per second! Have you tried playing it at any less? It's practically a slideshow!
    • Overclocking is definitely NOT for production systems or machines that one does for paying work.

      If it is for paying work, it is worth spending the extra $100-$200 for a chip that the manufacturer will guarantee the stability with and will honor the warranty. Plus, the performance should pay for the cost and if there is anything weird with the system, the overclock settings is one less thing to check.

      When one says you have to have "good" ram and other parts, I don't think that necessarily means that RAM t

    • Re:Overclocking (Score:4, Informative)

      by imnoteddy ( 568836 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @02:35PM (#7367400)
      'YMMV' (your mileage may vary)

      This is true. The way to understand the YMMV factor has to start by understanding how integrated circuits (chips) are made. They are produced on wafers - flat, round thin slabs of (usually) silcon - typically 200 millimeters (mm) or in some cases 300 mm in diameter. The wires and transistors are created during dozens of steps that involve exposure to light, vapor deposition, chemical etching, and other processes. Many steps involve heating and cooling the wafer.

      So why is there variation among chips? Because the process cannot be controlled perfectly, though the manufacturers try really hard. For example, chips on the edge of the wafer will cool off faster than chips in the middle. There are so many variables to control that some will be off. Twenty percent variation is very common, and designers often do simulations based on that amount of variation.

      People design chips to a given clock rate, then test to see what they get. A simple example is the Power PC (PPC) that IBM makes and Apple markets as the G5. Apple sells systems that run at 1.6, 1.8, amd 2.0 GHz, but all PPCs come from the same design. The chip in a 1.6 GHz G5 may run at 1.79999999 GHz if given the chance, but it also might fail at 1.61 GHz. Some chips might test out at 2.2 GHz, but probably not enough to sell.

      • There is one other issue: the high rated chips sell for a lot more than the lower rated chips because a few people are willing to pay for them. From time to time it happens that a chip that can run at say 2.2Ghz will be marked as 1.6Ghz just because all the orders for 2.2Ghz chips are filled already, and they have some orders for 1.6Ghz chips. So you can get lucky bying cheap, and get a chip that can run at a much faster speed.

        Unfortunatly you do not have access to all the tests the manufacture has. Yo

    • IMO it's still a good bang for buck with certain processors (usually the slowest on a given process)... i.e.

      - Slowest P4
      - Slowest Athlon XP (1700)
      - Slowest Barton (2500)

      Got a Barton 2500 for $90 the other day. Changed one bios setting and it's run stable for ~1 month @ 3200. AMD heatsink.

      On the other hand I have another Barton 2500 that doesn't like high fsb speeds... it's running about the same cpu clock as the one above at a lower FSB.

      If you've got more time than $, overclocking still can make sense
    • Overclocking for most is an achievement, not a result. Their are lots of issues and obstacles. That is part of the appeal. Solving those problems showing your skill.

      Its not so much about extra FPS anymore.

      I agree that tinkering has turned into case mods and quiet PCs as well. I do not overclock because the boost is now negligible for the effort, as you suggest. And in 6 months a processor will be cheap enough to buy a faster one and sell my old on on ebay anyway...

  • Fry? (Score:2)

    by Davak ( 526912 )

    I always hear rumors of "frying the processor." Has anybody actually seen this happen? I locked up my CPU hundreds of time with overheating due to overclocking or dead fans... and I have never actually burned out my processor.

    My buddy works at a local computer shop and he has never seen it either. He's seen burned out CPUs for other stuff (mice, etc) but never from just overclocking...

    Anybody?

    Davak
    • They fry their CPUs by using too much voltage.

    • Re:Fry? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Scottaroo ( 461317 ) <scott@NospAM.statzs.com> on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:01PM (#7367036) Homepage
      Tom's Harware loves doing stunts like this. They've run processors without coolers just to see what happens, and they investigated problems with the early AMD thermal diodes. Check it out [tomshardware.com]
    • I.ve burnt my motherboard (K7) because the fan had stopped. The CPU (Athlon 900Mhz) survived unscathed.

    • Fry?-Bake-off (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You may not "fry" a processor, but you can compromise it's operation. I have a video card that over-heated (fan failure), but it still works. However it's more sensitive to system settings than before (underclocked the processor), and occasionaly I have to unplug the monitor cable during boot, to get a display. I may also get lockups that I otherwise wouldn't have. So why do it, for so little benifit?

      BTW "./" submission is still broke with Mozilla 1.4, but works with Konq and IE.
    • Fry the processor??? How about fry the egg on the processor! [hex-tech.co.uk]
    • remove the heatsink from a running (socket, slot based have heatspreader and so are more probable to survive) athlon once you've disable every caution system from the mobo. or alternatively mount the heatsink wrong on those(so that it doesn't touch the core at all).

      so yeah.. frying the chip purely because of overclocking doesn't happen too often(i'm pretty sure you could fry cpus with enough voltage though pretty easily but that's beyond the point).
      -

    • Re:Fry? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ShadeARG ( 306487 )
      Believe it or not, one of the most common problems with frying a processor is applying way too much thermal grease to the core. Some people get crazy with this when attempting to overclock. It only takes a couple of drops, not a layer of grease to do the job. In fact, too much grease does the exact opposite and acts as an insultor which causes the processor to fry even faster.

      • Re:Fry? (Score:3, Funny)

        by VistaBoy ( 570995 )
        ...So the processor becomes so amazingly pissed from all the inflammatory insults that it refuses to continue doing work?

    • Re:Fry? (Score:4, Funny)

      by futuresheep ( 531366 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @02:05PM (#7367288) Journal
      Pan fried is an excellent way to cook your processor. After 24 hours in buttermilk, lightly coat it with some chili powder, granualted garlic and onion, a nice coating of flour, then into a cast iron skillet with a quarter inch of crisco at 325 degrees. About 10 minutes on each side, depending on the size of the CPU die should make for a tender and tasty meal. I like some mashed potatoes and gravy, and coleslaw on the side, with a pilsner to wash it all down.
    • The only way I've seen (I also work in a computer shop) has nothing to do with overclocking; it's putting your heatsink on backwards. When the step on the heatsink is reversed with the step on the socket, you power on and less than two seconds later get a puff of smoke. It's hard to do, but we were gettings several processors per month RMA'd after Bob Newbie jammed the heatsink on upside down with a screwdriver. Finally we started including a slip of paper telling people not to do this, and warning them
    • My old 1.1GHz athlon got fried.
      Occasionaly the CD-rom drive would spin up for no (apparent) reason, and would vibrate like mad - the sound it made was very annoying.
      I'd sometimes hit the top of my case, which would cause the sound to stop as the cd-rom drive was jolted into a slightly different position.
      I apparently hit my case a lot harder then I thought when I'd do this - because one time, the last time, my screen all of a sudden went blank about 10 seconds after I'd hit the case. No signal. I loo

    • Re:Fry? (Score:2)

      by Maul ( 83993 )
      I've met people with a substantial "Athlon Keychain" collections, many of them were attempting "water cooling" and just screwed up.

  • Not so fast... (Score:4, Funny)

    by EmCeeHawking ( 720424 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @12:57PM (#7367020)
    while also watching out for dangers that could fry your processor.

    With all of the offshore outsourcing going on, we geeks need as much practice frying things as possible. =)

  • And remember guys.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lussarn ( 105276 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:02PM (#7367042)
    No overclocking is considered rock solid before you have compiled a complete gentoo on your OC CPU.

  • I'll vouch for the guide (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tomster ( 5075 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:13PM (#7367076) Homepage Journal
    It's pretty much what I did when I bought my new system a few months ago (Barton 2500+, 8RDA+ mobo). Their recommendations match the experience I had. I used (and deleted, stupid stupid me) a spreadsheet to track my changes as I stepped through FSB, multiplier, voltage and memory settings until I found my maximum performance.

    Then I backed off by about 10%. I'm more interested in overall reliability and longevity than maximum performance, since I want this system to last for at least three years as my primary.

    -Thomas
    • I'm more interested in overall reliability and longevity than maximum performance, since I want this system to last for at least three years as my primary.

      then why are you overclocking?
      underclock if that was true

  • Am I the only one who UNDERCLOCKS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:17PM (#7367095)
    I for one don't need the horsepower of a top-end CPU. I have a KT266a-based board (max FSB=133/266) and I put an Athlon-xp 2500/333 into it.

    My CPU is underclocked from 1.83G to 1.46G, it dissipates about 45W, which is about the same as a G4, and HALF what a modern P4 drops. It's stable as all hell and I'm very happy with the speed.

    I do the same thing to my G3/450, I use it as a fileserver so the 450MHz is totally wasted. I turned it down to 300MHz with less than 2% 'real world' performance difference from the client machines. It also generates less heat and uses less power now.

    Any of you living on your own and paying electric bills would be well-served by underclocking, as the VAST majority of our CPU cycles go to waste anyway.
    • The new AMD Athlon64's do this automatically.

      http://www.msi.com.tw/html/e_service/techexpress/ t ech_column/6702/page11.htm [msi.com.tw]

      Take Athlon(TM)64 3200+ for example, the standard clock is 2000MHz. After adjusting it to the Minimal Power Management, as long as you PC stays under the low loading circumstance, the CPU clock will be located in 800MHz. As soon as there is a program starts running, the CPU clock will begin to add 200MHz each time according to the loading of data.

      AMD Cool'n'Quiet! Technology allows

      • This is WAY cool!!!

        But if you're stuck with an old CPU a very good place to look is SilentPCReview.com [silentpcreview.com]. There is a thread in their forums with a list of undervoltable mainboards (can't post the direct link, cause the site is down at the moment).

        Most Athlons undervolt quite nicely (mine goes from 1,5 Volts down to 1,35; wattages should be reduced by 12-15 watts). Remember that you don't sacrifice performance by undervolting. When you combine undervolting AND underclocking you can get Athlons that do consu
    • Are you positive that the wattage is the same when under no load? I forget the actual numbers but the amp readings jump sky high when we actually use our dual xeon machines (correspondingly the temperature of the chips jump from 22C to 60C). I got the impression that
      the current draw is highly dependent on what you are doing w/ the processor on most modern processors..

      • Well, it depends on the definition of "modern". It wasn't too long ago (less than a year) that AMD chips did not reduce power usage by much when in an idle loop. There was some weird issue that prevented proper power savings from occuring. I think this finally changed on the Tbred A's or B's... motherboard support came a little while after that.
    • No, I do the same. I clock my Athlon 1800XP down to 1150MHz (100MHz bus) from 1533MHz. I then 7 volt my fans [freenet.de] and I basically don't hear the machine.

      The unit now runs at 48 degrees at idle instead of 58 at the stock speed which is an added bonus.
    • I agree. I wish computers had more sophisticated frequency selection. I know the Intel mobile chips cut the clock in half when not plugged into the wall.
    • The industrial computing world underclocks routinely. Much of the stuff sold for "it has to work" applications is underclocked, as it should be.

    • No you're not.

      During the unaccustomedly (is that a word? It is now!) UK summer this year, I underclocked my XP1800+ to about 1.2GHz (native speed IIRC is 1.46).

      My temps were nudging 55+ on the hottest days, where temps in some places hit 100F+ - bear in mind that in this country home air conditioning is still the preserve of the rich and shameless...

      I barely notice the difference, still get a good game of Max Payne out of the damn thing while the CPU ticks over at 40-42C, and the internet still runs
    • "Any of you living on your own and paying electric bills would be well-served by underclocking"

      What that $6-8 a month is bankrupting you? Even if you peg your cpu at full load 24/7 your probably only looking at $16-$18 a month Maximum. So the average person with 2pcs 24/7 is only about $15 a month.

      Based on your needs why didn't you just get a low end duron or celeron? Your obviously not a gamer, so why did you waste all that money on a more expensive CPU? That would have saved you some of the money your
      • I also buy PC3200 RAM and run it at PC2100, because it's cool to the touch, and I replaced my first-gen radeon card (the ones with a fan) with a later-model one that has a GPU that doesn't need a fan. The specs on my card are the same, no performance difference, but that's one less fan in there, and it's a lot cooler in my 'computer cabinet' since the upgrade.

        I might underclock my CPU, but I want the most bang for each cycle, so I got the latest athlon-XP with a bigger L2 cache and SSE. I get MUCH better p
    • I had a P120 that was mistakeningly overclocked for years - one day it quit working. I noticed that the jumpers were running it at like 90 or 100 mhz - I set the multipliers properly and it booted right up.

  • What apps for checking cpu temp/linux? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What are the applications that I can use to check cpu temperature/fan speed under linux?

    preferably something that is common on most distros, as I'm using knoppix right now and running off the cd, so apt-getting it won't work with my current setup.

    If I had windows I could check temps during daily bootups in the bios, or with the windows software that came with the motherboard, but since I'm running knoppix, it's been almost three months since I last rebooted, and I don't know which app to use for hardware
    • look for lm sensors. I'm afraid you'll have trouble setting it up on Knoppix if you have some not-very-standard sensor hardware - in that case it often requires patching and recompiling kernel.
    • As someone else already mentioned, get lm_sensors. Also, you'll need to add i2c support to your kernel.
    • Linux users also have a handy way to check for stability: compile and attempt to install a kernel. One bit in one byte will send it spiralling off into oblivion. Don't actually change your configuration, though. Just keep recompiling the same source as you are already using, so if the installation part messes up, you can slow down, boot from CD and try again.

      If you're running a stock kernel, you should customise that first before you try overclocking. You wouldn't want to waste that improvement!
  • And alot of people that don't do heavy gaming or graphics processing are right. Think about this . A majority of us use 56k dial up to get on the net but what would happen if the dream of 'Fiber to the home' came true ? We would get 100 megabits of data a second ,enough for HDTV on demand and an alternative to the other monopoly that is cableTV(great evil) . That would be THE day that would signal most of our computers as extinct. Alot of our present computers couldn't even come close to handling that kind
    • Alot of our present computers couldn't even come close to handling that kind of data.

      What about 10mbit ethernet for 8bit Atari?
      You forget that in many cases we don't USE our hardware at its maximum settings. I have a 10mbit LAN but my 486 firewall simply won't process stuff that fast. I have motherboard with two ATA100 controllers, yet I use one of them at 66, just because that's how much my HDD supports. I use SB16/ISA instead of far superior FM801 because I value compatibility and stability over perfor

  • The biggest performance difference you can make? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @01:46PM (#7367202)
    The disc is the slowest point, add plenty of RAM as buffer, but nothing makes up for having a fast disc.

    15,000 rpm, 3.6ms access time, 8Mb onboard buffer. And an HBA to match.

    I find it ironic that people buy cheap systems with slow discs, slow network and insufficient RAM and then try to make it faster by overclocking the CPU.

    • I find it ironic that people buy cheap systems with slow discs, slow network and insufficient RAM and then try to make it faster by overclocking the CPU.

      Because once the application is loaded from hd to ram it's the cpu & ram speed that matters, not the hd speed.

      Let's not forget that very few apps even need fast load speeds, even games don't need it. A modern IDE hard drive offers 50+ mB/sec speeds, that's fast enough to load even the largest games quickly, only when video editing would faster spee

    • Maybe they're gamers. Those people tend to care a lot more about frame rate than loading time.

    • 15,000 rpm, eh? Bet it sounds like a jet taking off. Honestly, yes, the disk is the slowest thing in your system. In most of my usage, however, I don't use the disk very much. What do you need it for? Well, there's launching programs, loading the binary into memory. I do that about once and then leave the programs running all day. I'm satisfied with the launch times, especially given how easily and quickly I can switch between processes that are already in memory.

      What else is there? Every now an

      • 15k drives aren't loud, at least mine aren't. I have two 18GB Seagate drives that were included with the system, the entire system is quieter than a lot of gaming computers I've seen.

        For frame rates, a faster drive doesn't do jack.

        A faster drive does speed up boot time it does make apps start quicker and the system feels more responsive. I suppose booting is a foreign concept to some people, I shut down just to save power.

        For anyone going this route, using one faster drive as the system drive and one s
    • There are actually three things that could do a lot to speed up computer systems without going the route of getting a faster CPU.

      First, get as much RAM as you can afford. Nowadays, you want at least 384 MB of RAM installed, which drastically reduces the need of the operating system to do virtual memory swapping to and from the hard drive. With Linux running a full Gnome or KDE environment or running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Home/Professional, you probably want at least 512 MB of RAM installe

  • Useless (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RKone2 ( 720851 )
    The only people who would find this article noteworthy are people with AMD processors on Abit motherboards (only company with the softmenu bios option to my knowledge) that have the via KT266a or KT333 chipsets.

    Many of these bios settings are based on these boards in particular, most of the time other motherboards don't have these settings, or they're called something else. It's a shame the article is written for Abit boards, because generally if you've gone out of your way to buy one, you already know

  • Tuning for 15-minute MTBF (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday November 01, 2003 @03:31PM (#7367692) Homepage
    If you follow the directions in that article, you are tuning a system for a mean time before failure of about 15 minutes. Look at the directions. If it crashes within a few minutes, back off the settings; if it doesn't, crank them up. That's going to yield a system with an MTBF of slightly longer than the test period.

    Overclocking is stupid. Especially since it started costing more than buying a faster CPU.

  • The article starts with the note that you should keep your cpu temp below 55'C (42'C w/water cooling) when overclocking. WTF--k are they talking about? Im running an AMD 2500 that I got about a year ago and it runs HOT! like high 60's low 70's according to ASUS probe v.2.21.05 (obviously on an Asus mobo) with no overclocking... Im running the OEM cooler. When I play a top FPS game like MOHAA it hits 80'C! I wrote AMD about it and they said its within the operating range..(95'C I believe) Its nice now that
    • The OEM cooler, in an average one-fan case, will see temps in those neighborhoods. The OEM cooler leaves a little something to be desired in its ability to shuck heat. They use a little thermal sticky pad between the CPU and the sink, IIRC. Those work, but not nearly as well as a small dab of thermal paste.

      You're fine as long as you don't try to O/C. If you do, you'll quickly find out that OEM sink's shortcomings.
    • Is your 2500 a Barton Core? They tend to be a bit hotter, I've noticed.

      Anyhow, the AMD OEM heatsink/fan combo is garbage, but even with that, I haven't seen temps into the 80s before! AMD says the thing can take up to 95C, but that's friggin hot.

      I don't know what everything else is like, but I'd definately check into finding ways to cool down your box if you haven't already. Properly placed case fans and trying to keep wires out of the way will help a bit. Also, I've found that a power supply with a f

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