Back in the day, only the foolhardy overclocked a PC. Today? It's practically expected for home builders. We walk you thru the basics of getting free performance from your processor.
Weston writes in, "Could do explain how to to overclock? I have a I have an Opteron 165, 1.8 Ghz Dual core proccessor and my mother board is MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum and wanted to overclock."
No problem, Weston. Tho we don't have quite the same configuration as you do, the basics of overclocking, the fine art of tweaking your CPU, memory or GPU to get more performance than the part is rate for, hold pretty much the same, whether you've got an Intel or AMD processor.
Back in the day, only the brave and the foolhardy overclocked. Today, it's practically expected. Motherboard manufacturers have made it easy to overclock without puttering with tiny jumpers on the motherboard; it's all in the Bios, and most mobos will automatically reset if you push things too far. GPU manufacturers like Nvidia and ATI put overclocking tools in their drivers.
On the show we walk you thru the basics of turning up the Front Side Bus, along with the bus multiplier, since our processor's multiplier isn't locked... we ended up boosting our procesor 13% over stock. Not a huge gain, but nothing to sneeze at.
We also test our systm's stability using Prime95 for 30 minutes between each tweak to the BIOS.
Want to get more in depth with overclocking? We highly recommend the Extremetech Overclocking Guide, by Joel Durham, Jr. It's packed full of great info on overclocking your CPU and graphic card!
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Posted by patrick@revision3.com on 04/28/2008 at 06:16:48 pm in Systm
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Actually, it is. I had no idea Loyd did an overclocking show on DL.TV. Frankly, I would have loved having him w/ Dave and I doing this, 'cause Loyd's the best hardware guy I've ever met. Here are links to his viddies:
Overclocking your PC with Loyd Case Part 1
Overclocking your PC with Loyd Case Part 2
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Posted by patrick@revision3.com on 04/28/2008 at 06:12:43 pm in Systm
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I dunno Tilman, will it be a Google Cloud PC or a MS Live Mesh PC? heh...
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Posted by Silly_Elf on 04/26/2008 at 06:09:17 pm in Systm
I have really enjoyed watching systm and it will not be the same with out mr. randolf. Best of luck!
I OC'd my Athlon 64 4200+ from it's stock clock speed of 2.21 GHz to 2.71 GHz. I'm using the stock AMD heatsink & fan, but I added an 80MM fan to the case to help with cooling and air flow (my first case mod!). I did have to increase the voltage to the CPU and RAM. Once all of the voltage issues were worked out my PC has been rock steady.
The biggest improvement I've seen from my OC is in encoding video files. What used to take 15 minutes now takes me 10. I love the added performance the OC has given me, and I have to admit I feel pretty cool about having done it. I plan on doing more overclocking with my next system build.
Maybe on a future episode of systm they could show how to install a water cooling sytem in a PC (show hint).
Anybody else notice that DL.TV did a 3 part segment on OC'ing with Lloyd Case recently? coincidence....hmmmmm
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Posted by Sam__ on 04/26/2008 at 03:36:52 am in Systm
"This is kind of absurd. I remember when my primary linux workstation ran a mid-grade single core opteron. Those things overclocked like hell, my system was faster than any stock processor system on the market at the time and I didn't even have to raise the voltage on the thing. People were getting absurd overclocks of up to 800 MHz with stock coolers.
Sometimes its just stupid not to overclock, depending on what's on the market. And I love Macs, the system I'm on right now and am at 90% of the time is one, but "PC Hardware" always has a place. For example, there are no macintosh or professionally manufactured equivalents for a middle-end RAID server, small clusters for rendering or math stuff, etc etc. I usually ssh into a Linux PC to to simple tasks like run fixed LAN/security scans or to just dump files on via SCP for exchanges. It would frankly be dumb to throw down several times the price for something you don't need or something that would work even worse for specialized applications.
Just because you have a fancy power screwdriver doesn't mean the manual screwdrivers or a power drill for driving don't come in handy sometimes too."
+1 on that.... i dont see how anyone can say its pointless, its free performance.
and with C2D and C2Qs OCing so well at the moment its easy as hell.
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Posted by scienceking on 04/25/2008 at 10:17:43 pm in Systm
"
This is kind of absurd. I remember when my primary linux workstation ran a mid-grade single core opteron. Those things overclocked like hell, my system was faster than any stock processor system on the market at the time and I didn't even have to raise the voltage on the thing. People were getting absurd overclocks of up to 800 MHz with stock coolers.
Sometimes its just stupid not to overclock, depending on what's on the market. And I love Macs, the system I'm on right now and am at 90% of the time is one, but "PC Hardware" always has a place. For example, there are no macintosh or professionally manufactured equivalents for a middle-end RAID server, small clusters for rendering or math stuff, etc etc. I usually ssh into a Linux PC to to simple tasks like run fixed LAN/security scans or to just dump files on via SCP for exchanges. It would frankly be dumb to throw down several times the price for something you don't need or something that would work even worse for specialized applications.
Just because you have a fancy power screwdriver doesn't mean the manual screwdrivers or a power drill for driving don't come in handy sometimes too.
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Posted by Sam__ on 04/25/2008 at 03:41:36 pm in Systm
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sorry but i dont believe thats true. It would take too much time and money to develope a chip to find out if a cpu had been OCed. The most they can do is look for burn marks on the IHS or somthing.
on a lighter note.. I love OCing, iv only been doing it for a few years but already i have got a PentiumD 945 from 3.4Ghz to 5.2Ghz. Linky
And a Celeron 420 from 1.6Ghz to 3.3Ghz... yes.. thats a 106% overclock :D:D
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Posted by hitnruntony on 04/23/2008 at 09:02:22 pm in Systm
Like alot of people, I'm sad to see Dave go. He showed us a lot of cool things and I would've loved to see what more he could've done with the Versa Lazer. Also Like a lot of people, I don't think Rev3 would be what it is today without Dave.
You will be missed man.
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Posted by criddopher on 04/22/2008 at 08:58:03 pm in Systm
great segment. patrick rules hardcore!
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Posted by Tilman on 04/22/2008 at 04:15:59 pm in Systm
Overclocking is useless. It is fun if you have time for it.
And it _can_ be very rewarding. But just finding this out and at some point of course, finding out you did it too much wastes so much time you could better invest in fun software stuff.
Did i tell you that i find PC hardware boring and dumb? *g*
I will buy the first pc without hardware if there ever is one. ;)
When i was a kid, i liked all this stupid bigger fan more volts and Hz stuff. But i liked some other strange things as a kid...
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Posted by Bani-Banan on 04/22/2008 at 07:44:40 am in Systm
Overclocking is fawking awesome!
Most fun I've had is overclocking my computah.
Back in the day, I used to overclock my integrated graphics card... = epic failure!
Saddens me that randolph is leaving =/
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