couple of newbie questions...

[devilfire]

Ok, i'm such a newbie at overclocking :\ . Tbird 1ghz (not oc'd yet), Asus A7V, 128mb pc133, nVidia GF2pro 64mb, fan cooling. computer runs at about 50C in windows...is there a good guideline to figuring out what is the best voltage for the speed your overclocking to? and is there anyway to get the voltage above 1.85? What's the difference between CPU Freq and front side bus? i don't understand a lot of this! :\

[ReNeG@dE]

>computer runs at about 50C in windows...

Personnaly I wouldn't start overclocking until you got this quite a bit lower

>is there a good guideline to figuring out what is the best voltage for the speed your overclocking to? and is there anyway to get the voltage above 1.85?

I just pick a speed and then run Prime95 torture test (I can't remember a good place to get this prog from...) If it comes up with a round off error, then you either have to up the voltage or if you can't up it anymore, lower the CPU speed.

I'm not positive about the A7V but I think you can do a voltage mod, but it involves soldering ***** onto your motherboard (too much for me personally) and you will DEFINITELY need better cooling before you think of going over 1.85V if you're getting 50C under 1.75V.

I just try to find a balance of speed (CPU speed + memory speed), and cooling. So right now I'm at 9 x 145 @ 1.70V, because in my opinion the extra 100MHz I get isn't worth the extra 5C and .15V (see my survey question...)

>What's the difference between CPU Freq and front side bus? i don't understand a lot of this! :\

dunno... the manual should say I'd think...

[Kryogenitor]

devilfire (Apr 10, 2001 09:02 p.m.):
Ok, i'm such a newbie at overclocking :\ . Tbird 1ghz (not oc'd yet), Asus A7V, 128mb pc133, nVidia GF2pro 64mb, fan cooling. computer runs at about 50C in windows...is there a good guideline to figuring out what is the best voltage for the speed your overclocking to? and is there anyway to get the voltage above 1.85? What's the difference between CPU Freq and front side bus? i don't understand a lot of this! :\


Ok, first off. The best thing you can do as of right now is just lurk on alot of the boards and read everything your eyes can possibly handle. Alot of these guys have amazing experience with OC'ing and so long as you dont sound like a total jackass in your post theyre almost always willing to help you. As you can see i just registered today but ive been lurking on the board for about two months now. Here are some of the links i have saved in my favorites:

Virtual Hideout (http://www.virtualhideout.net/index.shtml)
Hard OCP (http://www.hardocp.com/)
Athlon OC (http://www.athlonoc.com)
Overclockers Australia (http://www.overclocks.com.au)
Sharkey Extreme (http://www.sharkeyextreme.com)
Toms Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com)

Just go through those and read up everything you can in the forums and most have tutorials in other sections on the site. G'luck Neophyte.

[devilfire]

looked through the manual, didn't say anything...multiplier is at 10, cpu freq is at 100, ram at 133, i don't understand where the 200mhz fsb comes into play tho...thx for helping out the idiot :)

[Fiz]

Amd uses a DDR(double data rate) fsb, so basically you just double it: 100=200, 133=266. To get the CPU freq, the fsb is multiplied a certain amount of times, an example of this is: Athlon 1GHZ =100MHZ fsb times 10=1000MHZ. But first things first, you have got to get those temps down before you even begin to think of raising volts, as an OCer your newest enemy is heat. As far as deciding which voltage is best at a certain speed, when you reach a certain speed and you notice the stability start to crap out a little, it's time to up the volts. Be careful though because more volts=more heat. Are you using any thermal paste on your heatsink or do you have a thermal pad? Also, what kind of case cooling do you have going on? You want to keep you temps in the mid 40's (degrees celcius) under full load, that should keep you nice and stable. I would not let it get any higher than say the mid to high 50's in any case. Hope this helps a little. :)

Fiz

[Squid]

Got the A7V133 to and have also had the heat issue, i am about t to try and drop the voltage as the bios always defaults to 1.72, so i am hoping when i drop it to say 1.5, it will also drop my temp.
So far to date people have recommended not to change the FSB but up the multiplier, you can do this in bios. Then just adjust your voltage as need.
I would recommend as other have to get your heat right 1st, since i had a major lock up where i had to reset my cmos by leaving the battery out all night.
but before i did i got my A900@1125 almost stable, but i need to get my heat in check before i go back.
At the moment i am getting about 50 to 51 c

[devilfire]

****, you guys are helping me out so much, i was soooo F***ing lost on that fsb thing. Thank yoU!!!! My cooling = cheap. I have the Coolermaster DP5-6H51. That's all my cooling for the CPU! yea i know i need more, but, i have nothing for money :( With all the panels on after i run a benchmark proggie (or play some intense tribes 2 or 12 hours) i can get up to like 67C lol, that must be horrible for the cpu) With all the panels off i can get it down to about 48C, i'm doing a lot of research on water cooling. my case is the worst peice of ****, 20 dollars on ebay :( . BTW my power supply is on the table next to it since it covers the intake for the hsf. So with everything off and my window open i usually keep it pretty cool. i need money! god damn heat!!

[Fiz]

Dude, be careful with the mouth, Daniel doesn't like that kind of stuff. :)

Fiz

[Oni]

Overclocking on this board is a little difficult. To save yourself a lot of hassle, set your board to JumperFree mode. It'll help out a lot, because then you don't have to open the case and dink around w/ the DIPs everytime you wanna go up a multiplier level. Why do you wanna up the voltage? Look at my stats at the bottom of this post. 1000 Mhz @ 1200 w/ 1.5 Vcore stable! You don't need huge voltage w/ the Athlon's unless you're gunna be insane ^_^. If I were you (which i'm not :P), I'd also spend the extra coin and get a GW FOP38. Excellent hsf for the money, and some Arctic Silver II, that'll help your heat problem a LOT! Make sure to lap the hs though so you can squeeze a few more degrees celsius out of it. The lower voltage will also help you get your heat down. I hope it goes well for you! :)

[Oni]

Oops, I almost forgot. Do you have your processor unlocked? Have you connected your L1 Bridges, I mean?

[devilfire]

haven't tried unlocking it, i've read a lot of articles, i think i wanna just get a duron 600 to mess around with, is unlocking it similar?

[Tachyon]

devilfire (Apr 11, 2001 04:17 p.m.):
haven't tried unlocking it, i've read a lot of articles, i think i wanna just get a duron 600 to mess around with, is unlocking it similar?

Having the 4 L1 bridges connected is the key to unlocked AMD processors...be they Duron or T-Bird.