Help a poor sap Athlon Xp 1800+

Ahem. I'm a total newbie to overclocking. I've never over clocked my system before. But I understand if I screw around with some options in the voltage area of the bios I can over clock my computer at the risk of frying it but it should be cool provided I have adequate fueling. For my first attempt at dabbling in the mystic arts of over clocking I think I'll try to get a modest increse like +100 MHZ or something. I really need some tips on how to learn a lot more about how to optimize and any special tips for the Athon XP 1800+. I don't understand the whole big deal with the memory speed either, is the memory as important or more important than the CPU clock speed?

I know that FSB is multiplied by the multiplier to determine the CPU speed but I don't know much much else really other than what I just said. Please I beg of you, seasoned experts bequeath your almighty knowledge onto this humble and poor sap.

increasing the cpu voltage a little bit is safe, if you have adequate COOLING.

but first try and see if you can overclock just using the standard voltage.

tips on optimizing your system... read the FAQs.

memory is important, but not as important as CPU speed. So if you have to choose, take more CPU speed rather than more RAM speed.

I'd advice you to read up a bit more before overclocking. It won't take long, and there are plenty of good guides and FAQs on the subject.

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know whether I am a member of the "holders of the sacred OC papers" yet, but here goes:

First, we need some system specs. Like the ones in my signature, the most important are:

Power supply wattage and brand (more important than wattage)
Motherboard make and model
RAM type / number of sticks / brand
Cooling you have on the processor

Also you need some applications that are standard issue in the Overclocker's toolkit:

Motherboard Monitor 5 - http://mbm.livewiredev.com - voltages and temperature monitoring

GCPUID - http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/apps/GCPUID16.6.zip - dump the results to a text file and post

Memtest86 - www.memtest86.com (run this when overclocking your RAM)

Prime 95 - www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm - Stress testing your CPU when overclocked

We need the stepping of your processor to determine whether it will overclock well or not. If it's a Palomino core, it won't overclock very well and it is probably not worth it. Thoroughbred -A cores overclock to about 100MHz more than Palomino cores but they still suck. Current bee's knees are the Thoroughbred-B cores - they do 2.2GHz minimum on air cooling.

An increase in core voltage is not necessary for an overclock, but when you hit the maximum (Errors in Prime95 torture test) an increase in core voltage will allow some more speed out of your processor. The same applies to your RAM.

u forgot to tell him to get prime95 that is to test if your system is stable if u can run prime95 for 12hours

u should get the maxium fsb u can for example:

220*10 = 2200mhz
207*11 = 2277mhz

it would be faster at 220*10 then the other

Edit: so u added prime95 lol

Rule of thumb: If you don't get errors in the 1st 15 minutes or so, you might be able to overclock some more. The final stability test is 12 hours of Prime95 torture test with the priority set to Normal or High.

Well hell, thanks for the info. It's definitely a start. I needed to know where to get all those software tools. Unfortunately I think my stuff sucks for overclocking. I'll post about it in another topic.