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Safety in Overclocking
Mai-Kero
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I recently acquired a desktop that I can actually run things on. I've been wondering about the worth of doing the research necessary to overclock a few components, so I thought I'd inquire here.
The processor is an Athlon 64 x2 6400. 3.2 GHZ, etc.
The video cards are two NVidia 8800 GTs, SLI'd.
700 watt power supply.
4 gigs of DD2 ram.
Fans that are huge like Xboxes. Two of them on the side are the size of the case. I have no idea why that could ever be necessary or efficient.
Will I be able to see any noticeable performance increase (Particularly in games) if I overclock the processor or video cards? I realize this information might not be enough to give me an informed opinion, and I also realize that I need to do a ton of research and be comfortable with the technology before I attempt to overclock something, so please, let me know if I need to include any additional information.
The processor is an Athlon 64 x2 6400. 3.2 GHZ, etc.
The video cards are two NVidia 8800 GTs, SLI'd.
700 watt power supply.
4 gigs of DD2 ram.
Fans that are huge like Xboxes. Two of them on the side are the size of the case. I have no idea why that could ever be necessary or efficient.
Will I be able to see any noticeable performance increase (Particularly in games) if I overclock the processor or video cards? I realize this information might not be enough to give me an informed opinion, and I also realize that I need to do a ton of research and be comfortable with the technology before I attempt to overclock something, so please, let me know if I need to include any additional information.
Mai-Kero on
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You also need to provide specific info about your motherboard.
In your case an A 64 x2 6400 is a pretty old dual core, and near the top of the line when it was out. You're probably not going to get that big of an overclock out of it so the gains aren't going to be that big. On the other side the more modern quadcore phenom blacks at 3.0ghz, can easily be cranked to 4.0ghz and the gains are fairly impressive. CPU overclocking is always where you are going to see the biggest gains.
As per the video cards, the gains aren't as impressive as CPU overclocking, and in your case dual 8800's are already going to be starved by that CPU so I wouldn't bother.
I really wouldn't worry about ruining things. That's mostly a problem when gunning for really high OC's that involve raising voltage levels to dangerous levels and not having adequate cooling.
Motherboard information would help, but looking at SLI and that CPU I'm guessing it's a socket AM2 nforce 590? In which case those overclock just fine.
Overclocking requires a lot of patience and trial-and-error. Generally in the form of picking a good (and generally somewhat conservative) overclock, and running a burn-in overnight. Like large prime numbers or PI. Then you tweak up or down just a little. Once you get it stable, maybe you'll tweak another parameter, maybe taking the voltage down. It's always good to see if you can find posts from people who have the same motherboard, processor, and memory as you - as you'll be able to get a good idea as to what is typical, and you can save a LOT of time by choosing a reasonable starting point based on other's experiences. You can also save a lot of frustration by learning from their experience (always stable at such-and-such FSB, but if you go over it'll never work on this particular hardware, etc.). It certainly can also give an amount of comfort in being able to validate your results by seeing how they compare to others in terms of what speeds, voltages, temperatures you're seeing with that oranges-to-oranges comparisons.
Often times, you can find some guide or another someone has written that features your configuration (or close enough), and not just performance numbers.
I wouldn't bother with the video card overclocking. They're a lot more skittish, you can do permanent hardware damage a lot easier, and there's not a lot of headroom on the hardware for overclocking in general (especially if you don't replace the cooling).
Just an FYI "always stable" at X, is not really true. That really is only "mostly correct" if you know CPU stepping. My I7 C0 stepping wouldn't clear 4.0ghz even on water, a D0 did easily.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
No such thing exists. Because overclocking an AMD64, AMD Phenom II, core 2 duo, and i7 are all very different and you don't go about them the same way. Likewise, each generation of GFX the overclocking changes, prior to DX10 hardware you were just talking about core and memory OC's, now you have shader OC's.
There is no "generic" guide that applies to everything. The best advice is to go here http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/ where all the best liquid, phase change, ln2/dice OC'ers hang out and pick up what you can.
o_O
How so? I can take a quadcore phenom II from 3.0ghz to 4.0ghz, I can take an I7 920 from 2.66 to 4.0ghz, I can take an e8600 from 3.33 ghz to over 4.0ghz.
It's not all that hard, and the performance gains are pretty good.
OCing is very practical, especially now that significant overclocks can be done on air. You don't have to go exotic cooling to get significant overclocks these days, and since faster parts usually are on an exponential price curve, you can save a lot of cash doing so.
I overclocked my Q6600 on air, and got it to 3.2GHz. It's stable, I've pretty much completely forgotten I've overclocked it. The price difference between a 2.66 and a 3.2 was HUGE at the time. A handful of hours over the weekend doing research and getting initial settings, followed by setting up some overnight stress tests to dial in the final numbers was well worth it for the performance gains and cost savings. My only cash outlay was buying faster memory than I would have otherwise needed, and the small incremental cost of a aftermarket heatsink.
Certainly, if your cooling system is well over the price difference on the processor, you have to consider the benefit and whether you have a need to clock even higher than they actually sell the processors at or not...
Spending $600 extra on gear to push a $150 processor is fine perhaps; but it's not that great a deal if you're only able to push it to the performance level of a $250 processor by doing so (in other words, yhou just spent $500 on cooling gear that might leak or sucks power or whatever, when you could have just bought a faster stock processor). I'm oversimplifying, but don't overspend on one area to "save" money elsewhere.
So yeah, I'd agree with psychotix, there's good gains to be had overclocking in most circumstances, and it's a lot easier than it was in the past. It just requires some willingness to sit and do some research and some trial-and-error. But, it's not going to be turnkey, there's a little effort involved.
Overclocking sounds sort of scary, but it's not like you need to double your clock speed. You can get yourself some reasonable gains for very little extra cost (if anything). As long as you understand how far you can expect to push your CPU, and take it slowly, testing regularly and paying attention to temperatures, the risk is next to nothing.
Not much. Your CPU doesn't run fully loaded over all cores all the time. It will suck more power, but not by much. Keep in mind that even if you are upping say vcore (CPU voltage) and vdimm (memory voltage) on a core2 from say 1.35 vcore to 1.45 and 1.9 vdimm to 2.1 that's not a huge change when it comes to power draw. And in general, your video card is going to guzzle more power then your CPU regardless.
As for noise, that really depends on your cooling. Faster fans = better cooling and louder. Most high end air coolers though are built to work around lower RPM fans so the system becomes a lot quieter. But keep in mind these will cost you over 60 bucks. Water cooling will net you a higher overclock, and can be nearly silent, but the price jumps through the roof quickly.
What's your goal though? Are you trying to turn a cheap proc into a faster one? If so you probably don't need anything more then you already have. Are you trying to OC the crap out of something beyond the speeds of anything currently out? In that case you're probably looking at a hefty cooling bill.
Something to keep in mind is that cooling can be reused. I've kept the same radiators, pump, fans, and CPU water block through several builds. The initial buy in for my CPU loops (across all systems) was around 160 bucks each, but I can reuse them, so it's not a bad deal. On the other hand exotic cooling for video cards (namely water blocks) is about 150 bucks per block and needs to be repurchased whenever you upgrade video cards. :? It's not really worth it unless you are volt modding things.