To Overclock or Not to Overclock??

What are the advantages versus the disadvantages? is it worthwhile?

I ask this because ive read a bit on it and in some points it seems like a good idea... opinions?

I have often wondered about that as well...

Does it actually improve performance?

Does it create more heat?

Why even do it?

Semper

I am by far not a professional when it comes to computers, but I do have my computer set to overclock. It has been overclocked now for a year, and I have had no problems, and it did smooth my computer performance a bit.

Of course, I also keep my computer next to an A/C unit, and it never gets hot anyway.

I wouldn't play around with this though if you are not prepared to buy a new computer unless you know what you're doing.

As MrMonsoon said to me once, "you'll only end up with a $1400 paperweight."

One line responce.

DON'T DO IT,PERIOD!!!!!!!

Overclocking is the fastest way to burn up parts there is-experts that do it have a long list of expensive distroyed parts.

Answer is if you have studied your particular components and specifications, and understand the potential risks involved then yes.

Overclocking is a whole new science and art and requires alot of knowledge I think you should visit these sites before starting a fire :

overclock.net

Selmer..

Thanks for all the info... Exactly what I was looking for!!!!

Well off to start reading and hopefully learn something..

I have a PC I use to play on and don't really care if it "Blows" up or not...

(They don't really "Blow Up" do they?? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

Semper

Originally posted by semperfortis
I have a PC I use to play on and don't really care if it "Blows" up or not...

(They don't really "Blow Up" do they?? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

Semper

your right a handful of volts + heat can't combust. The worst case scenario is what we call the 'magic smoke'.

If anyone has any questions and/or finds this info a little confronting feel free to post or u2u me anytime.







[edit on 3-2-2007 by Selmer2]

So would you get any significant gain.... say hypothetically it didnt roast your computer?

Originally posted by iCEdTenG
So would you get any significant gain.... say hypothetically it didnt roast your computer?

these three catergories

Yes, no and not worth ocing.

1. Yes: You buy a middle priced component and you oc it, some products are like a gold mine and will double give or take, some reasonably increase and others will have a neutral or unstable response.

2. No: As I said some products respond negatively and unstable (but this does not damage your hardware see bottom note)

3. Not worth it: If you have no reason for the performance gain ie nothing for it than no. If it is a work computer and it adequetly does its task then no. Or if its special i.e. only pc in the house used by multiple people or a server than def. no.

Note: Overclocking doesn't destroy hardware it may cause no booting (reset CMOS to fix) or errors but no damaged hardware. The damage comes from increasing the VOLTAGE via bios, software or physical modefication that destroys hardware

overclock = potential increased instability
more voltage = potential fried components

Well why don't I just overclock and forget voltage?

To get a significant overclock you have to give the component more juice (volts) to run harder thus creating heat.

There are so many variables and advice that if you proceed with reason and take advice, you will not have a problem. For example, A doctor doesn't go ahead and prescribe you a large dose of morphine for pain without knowing your medical history, your problem, your statistics and still then he proceeds with caution and increases the dose till a desired result is achieved.



Just to give you an idea of the variables are involved i'll show you a few:

Motherboard: Chipset, northbrige, southbrige, chipset speed, bus type, speed and voltage and components, memory base configurations, transistor, capacitor types etc.

CPU: Clock speed, multipler, core voltage, other voltage, fan speed, processor special functions, Front Side Bus, L1 and L2 cache

Memory: Memory speed, memory timings, memory voltage, memory channels and memory chips.

Graphics Card: Graphic chipset, g chipset special functions, g chipset clock, g chipset voltage and temperature g memory speed, g memory voltage.

its a never ending learning process

My 2nd PC on which I let 3DSMax and Blender renders run and on which I compile Windows Applications is my old Ahtlon XP 2500+ system, which has a default CPU speed of 1833Mhz with 333Mhz DDR ram as the default for the motherboard.

It runs overclocked and stable at 2302Mhz for the CPU and with some quality ram I'm doing 433 (at which point the motherboard can't take it anymore, the ram is capable of doing close to 500Mhz DDR).

Thats a 500Mhz surplus on the core and 33% increase on the ram. Ya think it might be a bit faster?

My CPU in my gaming rig is a Core2Duo E6600 (default clock 2.4Ghz on both cores) and my graphics card in there has default clocks of 450 for the core and 1.4Ghz for the ram(7900GTX).

Overclocked I'm getting 3.62Ghz on the Core2Duo, while the graphics card does 700 core and 1.86Ghz on the ram, it can still do more but i haven't found a suitable watercooling heatsink for it yet and thats as far as I'll go on air.

So thats 50% extra on the CPU, considering C2D's have 2 cores, thats 2x 50% extra, in other words, the speed of an extra core XD. Nealy 50% on the core of the video card and 33% on the video ram.

Ya think it might be a bit faster?

Overclocking does recude the life of hardware, especialy when you don't know what your doing, but if you do it right, the shorter life will still be close to a decade.

When you do alot of gaming, encoding, compiling and 3D Rendering, all that extra speed can save you days if not weeks.

A 3D Scene with heavy fluid dynamics and physics callculations can easely take 100CPU hours per 10 seconds of scene you render, so if you can get your CPU to run a 3'de faster, your saving yourself more then a day per 10 seconds you need to render.

For everyone here that runs folding@home or seti@home, you all know that every CPU cycle you can put into it more and every second you can spit out a workunit faster is an extra your glad to accept.