next »

[Omnius_The_Evermind]

anyone ever try overclocking? i have my current socket 478 clocked fairly high, without liquid cooling. comment for more details.

[ElvisKungFu]

I haven't tried it yet, always a bit nervous about crashing my system and having to spend more money on something.

[Omnius_The_Evermind]

most ASUS products are pretty darn good for overclocking, and they have plenty of tools to fix a board if something goes down the hole.... it's saved me more than once i can tell you... but anyway... just overclock it with an automatic utility if you have Abit, ASUS, or nVidia boards. just keep in mind that it can be a slow process, or, you can try on an older rig and make certain that your confident in your abilties. for example, i'm making a render-server out of 8 pentium 2's, all 350, being clocked up to 500 with some Vantec Tornado fans (6000 RPM case fan) running. just try it out. i know XP has built-in voltage utilities. just research and look at BIOS and your motherboard to see if you can clock safely. some boards are more reliable than others. right now my current rig is:

1 GHz FSB from an 800

3.1 GHz processor from 2.6

232.89 MHz external bus

1.6 volt AGP from 1.5

2.65 volt memory from 2.55

DDR latency at 1-2-2-4 from 2-4-4-8

DDR speed at 557 MHz from 400.

[blahism]

I don't bother overclocking anymore.  Back when there was that 1ghz barrier to break it was fun to push your equipment for bragging rights but for the most part today its just not worth the cost.  For the added cost of cooling/power/fans & equipment you could just spend the extra on a faster GPU/CPU combination and better ram.

[Omnius_The_Evermind]

ahhh... to offset the cost i often to my local computer recycling plant. i can find hundreds of fans and bsically any cooling item i need, offsetting the cost to only a few dollars. i might just be in the range of "it's fun" but the power/cooling/fans aren't really much of a cost, if you know where to go. not to mention, my system is growing absolete, so i just overclock to break the barrier. today is also good because of the tools and precise control a newer motherboard can get. for me, it's worth the cost, but i admit, i have fried older hardware.

I guess it's really up to the owner of what to do.

[blahism]

Well, i tried not to overclock but newegg had a sale on some Brisbane 3600 X2's and i built myself a new gaming rig.

2 Gigs PC 6400 Ram
Athlon X2 3600 overclocked to 3.01 ghz STABLE
Geforce 8600GTS - Overclocked (still tweaking)
2 x 200 gig Sata drives raided
Air Cooling - huge Coolmax fan that eats up the entire case practically.

Been running stable doing 4-6 hours of wow and i get crazy fps even in stormwind and ironforge where even my core2duo starts to chug.    However on the c2d battlefied 2042 runs better yet so it really seems game particular at over 3ghz.. c2d would probably smoke me more if i poot water cooling on it, but i'm not overclocking that expensive pc an ounce - the above setup cost me 350 bucks and most of that was just the video card!

I went with an 8600gts just to have dx10 support and no point in going back to 7 series.. i don't quite need a 8800gts on this box either as you really need a high end c2d to make use of that 8800 and i just don't play the games that would push it - only reason i would need an 8800 is if i decide to jump on a 24" 1080p display which may be tempting sometime next year after Intel released 3rd gen c2d's or AMD comes out with K10 architecture.

stuff changes too quick

[18Weapons]

2 Gigs PC 6400 Ram
Athlon X2 3600 overclocked to 3.01 ghz STABLE
Geforce 8600GTS - Overclocked (still tweaking)
2 x 200 gig Sata drives raided
Air Cooling - huge Coolmax fan that eats up the entire case practically.

wow that sounds awesome... now get on xfire and play a game with me!

[MonkeyKungFu]

Niiiiice...

Agreed - play some RoN or something, scrub.

[blahism]

alright.. now that i know 2 people on xfire i think i'll load it up. Just can't post the little sig thingy any where my wife will be able to see it.  I need wifefire so i can track how long i hang out with her compared to my "bad" habits

[blahism]

Niiiiice...

Agreed - play some RoN or something, scrub.

i'll have to load that puppy up..   i'm being hassled to load up Supreme Commander as well - anyone tried that?

[Shaolin Kung Fu]

I need wifefire so i can track how long i hang out with her compared to my "bad" habits

Brilliant!

[Omnius_The_Evermind]

- system update -

i finally solved an issue that has plagued me for sometime now, RAM speeds.

apparently i was using two different latencies of RAM, so my RAM decided to slow itself down to 200MHZ (effective) from using conflicting types of RAM. as strange as it may seem, BIOS thought the RAM speed was 557MHz, had me fooled. after i performed a much-needed BIOS update, the RAM magically slowed down to 200MHz, scratching my head i finally got around to running CPUz again. it said too, that the RAM was running 200MHz, so i solved the issue 4 paychecks later.

Now i'm running 4 sticks of 512MB PC4000 DDR BallistX RAM from crucial, and now i can finally feed my CPU and squeez out that extra 5 fps. now, the RAM is stuck at 2.5-4-4-8, at 70ns refresh. interesting. anyway, to any potential overclocker, get the fastest RAM possible, and avoid an EXPENSIVE mistake... latency. just get the same kind of RAM and normally the issue is solved. a twin-kit is normally a good choice. 

and now once i get the money for a Radeon X1950 pro, i can say "i'm done now" and move to a newer AMD system (i'm hoping by then i'll have a Quad Core AMD and DDR 3 RAM with PCIe 2.0)