looking to upgrade

[Punk_FAS]

Overclocking is ridiculously easy, as long as you're not trying to go to any extremes.  That is, with just a small bit of research, maybe 30 minutes? of reading online, once you find the make/model of your motherboard, you can be up to speed with the basics of overclocking.  Download and install a temperature monitoring program, like RealTemp (what I use, though there may be better at this point) to make sure you're not running any unsafe temperatures (which you will find what "safe temperatures" are with your ~30 mins of research).

I've been overclocking every single CPU I've owned since 1998 I'd say, and I've never had any issues.  I'm by no means an expert, and I've still never flubbed anything up.  I'm currently running an Intel Q9550 quad-core @ 3.6 GHz UNDER it's default voltage.  Default speed is 2.83 GHz.  I could probably squeeze more out of it, though I've never tried, or found any need to.  It's been running at this speed for over a year and a half now.

[VaeVictis]

Overclocking is ridiculously easy, as long as you're not trying to go to any extremes.  That is, with just a small bit of research, maybe 30 minutes? of reading online, once you find the make/model of your motherboard, you can be up to speed with the basics of overclocking.  Download and install a temperature monitoring program, like RealTemp (what I use, though there may be better at this point) to make sure you're not running any unsafe temperatures (which you will find what "safe temperatures" are with your ~30 mins of research).

I've been overclocking every single CPU I've owned since 1998 I'd say, and I've never had any issues.  I'm by no means an expert, and I've still never flubbed anything up.  I'm currently running an Intel Q9550 quad-core @ 3.6 GHz UNDER it's default voltage.  Default speed is 2.83 GHz.  I could probably squeeze more out of it, though I've never tried, or found any need to.  It's been running at this speed for over a year and a half now.

i overclock as well...

i just mean, you dont want some one reading up on overclocking if they dont know shit about computers lol cause they might bump the voltage .1 instead of .01 and you can really screw up some stuff with just one wrong setting... its simple to do, but it has consequences if you manage to screw it up

also, if you consider a marginal overclock like 200mhz or so... you really wont see any noticable performance increases...

getting a dedicated graphics card would really be the safer and better solution

[Punk_FAS]

getting a dedicated graphics card would really be the safer and better solution

I agree =)

For really basic overclocking, I'm referring to speeds you can reach at default voltage levels; adjusting only FSB speed and/or multiplier, etc.  I've never been a big fan of adding voltage unless you really NEED that extra few hundred MHz it will bring you.  In my experiences, getting to speeds that require additional voltage generally is only for bragging rights, not for a significant performance difference.  Though I did have an old Opteron 165 (default 1.8 GHz) that I could run @ 2.0 GHz at less than default voltage, but I couldn't get it stable @ 2.5 GHz without adding a reasonable amount of extra voltage.  So that was a ~25% speed increase, so definitely noticeable in some instances.

[VaeVictis]

getting a dedicated graphics card would really be the safer and better solution

I agree =)

For really basic overclocking, I'm referring to speeds you can reach at default voltage levels; adjusting only FSB speed and/or multiplier, etc.  I've never been a big fan of adding voltage unless you really NEED that extra few hundred MHz it will bring you.  In my experiences, getting to speeds that require additional voltage generally is only for bragging rights, not for a significant performance difference.  Though I did have an old Opteron 165 (default 1.8 GHz) that I could run @ 2.0 GHz at less than default voltage, but I couldn't get it stable @ 2.5 GHz without adding a reasonable amount of extra voltage.  So that was a ~25% speed increase, so definitely noticeable in some instances.

well he wont have an unlocked multiplier in that processor... so multiplier is out... with fsb he would have to do a bit of adjustment to other hardware which most likely isnt quality stuff if he didnt build his own pc... he may end up frying his ram dimms if he does that

with any overclocking at all, youll want something better than the stock heatsink and fan... im assuming hes using a stock one, so i dont suggest overclocking at all

[The Happy Friar]

with CPU prices being so cheap, overclocking isn't really worth the risk imho.

I did some test on OC's a few years back.  I use a video rendering benchmark & Doom 3 time demo.  Faster speed not always means faster performance.  And the decrease in rendering time & increase in D3 timedemo wasn't worth the temp increase on my CPU imho. 

[Punk_FAS]

with CPU prices being so cheap, overclocking isn't really worth the risk imho.

What risks do you speak of?  There are no tangible risks, above an beyond having any power running through the chip at all, with mild overclocking.  Generally speaking, many CPU's of the same model line are essentially all the same.  The only thing that differentiates the fastest rated chip from the lowest rated chip is, generally, an artificial governor of sorts, or locking/crippling of the chip by the manufacturer (Intel, AMD, etc.).  When the chips come off the fabrication line, they are all tested, and separated by their abilities (binned) to pass stress testing at various speed grades.  At some point, the fabrication becomes so refined, pretty much every chip made can pass the highest speed rating stress test.  The problem is that in the retail market, not everybody wants to pay $900 for the highest end Intel CPU.  Therefore, Intel still has to take these chips, that would normally pass every stress test thrown at them at 4 GHz (just a hypothetical figure indicating the max speed for that series of chip) and cripple/lock them so they can be sold at a lower speed rating/price point in the retail market.

To attempt to keep this explanation more brief:  Given the above, there are motherboards that can somewhat override these locks, or alter other factors to increase the effective running speeds of these gimped/crippled/governed CPU's to that of the highest end CPU of that line, or well beyond that.  There are many free stress testing programs you can run on your home computer (overclocked or not) to test the integrity of your CPU's functions.  If your overclocked CPU's pass a thorough stress testing with these programs (some are the same that Intel uses, I believe, like Linpack, etc.), then it's generally considered a stable overclock, and there is no exaggerated risk of data corruption, etc.  As long as you're not significantly over-volting your CPU, and the heat your CPU is producing isn't at dangerous levels, you should be able to expect a fairly typical life span for your CPU.  Perhaps it might be cut short a couple years or so, but I believe the typical lifespan of a CPU is at least 10 years anyway, so if you envision still having a dire need of this CPU in ~8 years time, then perhaps it's not worth the risk.

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of unwarranted paranoia about overclocking, and I just find it silly.  I think it's a great way to extend the productive life of a CPU, all while saving you money initially, and in the long run as well.

[VaeVictis]

with CPU prices being so cheap, overclocking isn't really worth the risk imho.

What risks do you speak of?  There are no tangible risks, above an beyond having any power running through the chip at all, with mild overclocking.  Generally speaking, many CPU's of the same model line are essentially all the same.  The only thing that differentiates the fastest rated chip from the lowest rated chip is, generally, an artificial governor of sorts, or locking/crippling of the chip by the manufacturer (Intel, AMD, etc.).  When the chips come off the fabrication line, they are all tested, and separated by their abilities (binned) to pass stress testing at various speed grades.  At some point, the fabrication becomes so refined, pretty much every chip made can pass the highest speed rating stress test.  The problem is that in the retail market, not everybody wants to pay $900 for the highest end Intel CPU.  Therefore, Intel still has to take these chips, that would normally pass every stress test thrown at them at 4 GHz (just a hypothetical figure indicating the max speed for that series of chip) and cripple/lock them so they can be sold at a lower speed rating/price point in the retail market.

To attempt to keep this explanation more brief:  Given the above, there are motherboards that can somewhat override these locks, or alter other factors to increase the effective running speeds of these gimped/crippled/governed CPU's to that of the highest end CPU of that line, or well beyond that.  There are many free stress testing programs you can run on your home computer (overclocked or not) to test the integrity of your CPU's functions.  If your overclocked CPU's pass a thorough stress testing with these programs (some are the same that Intel uses, I believe, like Linpack, etc.), then it's generally considered a stable overclock, and there is no exaggerated risk of data corruption, etc.  As long as you're not significantly over-volting your CPU, and the heat your CPU is producing isn't at dangerous levels, you should be able to expect a fairly typical life span for your CPU.  Perhaps it might be cut short a couple years or so, but I believe the typical lifespan of a CPU is at least 10 years anyway, so if you envision still having a dire need of this CPU in ~8 years time, then perhaps it's not worth the risk.

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of unwarranted paranoia about overclocking, and I just find it silly.  I think it's a great way to extend the productive life of a CPU, all while saving you money initially, and in the long run as well.

not understanding the risks of overclocking... that means you shouldnt be overclocking either

and btw, the chips from intel that cost a grand cost that much because they dont have a locked multiplier, all cheaper chips have a locked multiplier forcing you to overclock with your fsb speed (different on the new chips due to the integrated memory controller chip, and amd is also different)... when you overclock your fsb speed, it doesnt just overclock your processor, it overclocks everything... just imagine a motherboard where the value of your fsb is linked to the value of your pcie bus, you could fry a 500$ video card with just like a 10mhz increase... ram is also ALWAYS connected to your processor speed, and overclocking your processor can very easily fry your ram if you have no idea that it does that... on top of that, screwing with voltages AT ALL can cause some serious problems, motherboards will default the voltage to auto, which usually sets it just a little high for stock, but you have to set voltages manually for overclocking and if you set the wrong voltage, even if its just an honest mistake, that difference of .05 or .1 can REALLY screw some stuff up... along with that you have your north bridge voltages and temps which are VERY often over looked and if left to auto can over heat, fry your motherboard, whatever...

over clocking is not advised to ANYONE who doesnt know the risks and knows wtf they are doing... unless you have the time to research and learn a lot about computer hardware and how it all works together so you can safely overclock without any unknown variables, just upgrade your pc by buying better parts

[Punk_FAS]

just imagine a motherboard where the value of your fsb is linked to the value of your pcie bus, you could fry a 500$ video card with just like a 10mhz increase...

I imagine that any motherboard made that allows the user to manually adjust the FSB speed would not have the PCIe speed directly linked to this adjustment.  Nothing made currently anyway.

Successful overclocking is about following a set of guidelines.  One of those guidelines would be to not touch the PCIe bus speed, since if there is any benefit to it at all, it would be incredibly marginal and not worth the risk.  So, your hypothetical situation is not a "risk" it's just something you don't do.  I never said to just blindly go into your BIOS (it would have to be a motherboard geared for overclocking anyway for you to be capable of manually changing a value that could damage your system) and start increasing values.

Overclocking your FSB speed alone will not fry your RAM.  If you have overclocked significantly past the RAM's threshold, your computer will fail to boot.  The only surefire way to fry your RAM is if you unsafely over-volt it.  Then again, this goes back to following guidelines.  A little research and you'll know what you should and shouldn't do.

Temps can be monitored.  Don't just "set it and forget it".  Set things how you would like them, monitor temps with software, etc., and if things are looking out-of-spec (guidelines again) back things down a notch.

I stand by what I said earlier... With a small bit of research, there is very little risk to mild to medium overclocking.  If you're too lazy to do the little bit of research required, then you deserve the results of your efforts, or lack thereof =)

[The Happy Friar]

over clocking is not advised to ANYONE who doesnt know the risks and knows wtf they are doing... unless you have the time to research and learn a lot about computer hardware and how it all works together so you can safely overclock without any unknown variables, just upgrade your pc by buying better parts

bingo.  Not worth it.

I stand by what I said earlier... With a small bit of research, there is very little risk to mild to medium overclocking.  If you're too lazy to do the little bit of research required, then you deserve the results of your efforts, or lack thereof =)

like vae said  & i said (and you said we're wrong, but you just stated the same thing), not worth it.  Nothing to do with lazyness.   Has to do with not putting a v10 in your taurus just because you CAN.  It wouldn't be worth it.  You shouldn't OC because you can, only if it's worth it.  "mild to medium overclocking" isn't worth it.  Getting an extra FPS in Doom 3 or shaving an extra 5 seconds of a 5 our render isn't worth the investment.  Wait six months @ buy something 5x faster then what you got for 1/2 the price it was when you wanted to OC & you'll get 25fps more in D3 & an hour off that render.  and you wouldn't of wasted days "tweaking" something that had nothing wrong in the first place.

If you're doing "serious" overclocking then, odds are, it's not worth it either: buy that extra customizable MB for $300, the high speed ram for $300, the easily overclocked CPU for $1000.  Or buy the plain jane MB for $80.  Buy the normal speed ram for $125.  Buy the faster but not OC-able CPU for $500.

It's not 1994 where the fastest machines were 100mhz & cost $4k & the slowest 66mhz costs $3k.  It's 2010 when the fasted machine costs $4k & the slightly-slower machine costs $500.  Spending an extra $300 to OC your machine in 1994 was worth it.  Spending an extra $1000 to OC in 2010 isn't.

[VaeVictis]

only large benefit i saw from overclocking was in 3dmark06... and that was mostly just due to removing the cpu bottle neck of my sli graphics cards... so the cpu performing better wasnt even the reason the performance increase was large, it was that my cpu wasnt dragging behind my other hardware that was significantly more powerful, and in a case where the person is running onboard video that would never happen

if your system is already quite high end and you still need that extra performance for bench marks or whatever, then that is the time to overclock...

if you just want a extra few hundred mhz to see if your game will run better, its not worth it, just buy a graphics card...

[Punk_FAS]

like vae said  & i said (and you said we're wrong, but you just stated the same thing), not worth it.  Nothing to do with lazyness.

I was implying that if someone makes the decision to overclock a CPU, but is too lazy to do the little bit of research necessary to do things properly/safely, then it's likely things will go awry.  I'm not saying everyone should overclock their CPU just because they can.  I mentioned earlier that I could probably push my current CPU more, but I haven't encountered a situation where it's necessary.

Has to do with not putting a v10 in your taurus just because you CAN.

This is more akin to reprogramming the onboard computer on your Taurus for free and getting a noticeable boost in performance from the same engine.

"mild to medium overclocking" isn't worth it ....... Wait six months @ buy something 5x faster then what you got for 1/2 the price it was when you wanted to OC & you'll get 25fps more in D3 & an hour off that render.  and you wouldn't of wasted days "tweaking" something that had nothing wrong in the first place.

Lots of major exaggeration going on here.  First off, I think of mild to medium overclocking as a ~25% overclock.  25% improved performance can easily equal or surpass a full generation change for CPU's.  CPU's don't come anywhere close to 5x, or even 2x the performance of a 6 month old chip.  Not even +50%, and if it's +25% that's a rare scenario.

If you're doing "serious" overclocking then, odds are, it's not worth it either: buy that extra customizable MB for $300, the high speed ram for $300, the easily overclocked CPU for $1000.  Or buy the plain jane MB for $80.  Buy the normal speed ram for $125.  Buy the faster but not OC-able CPU for $500.

More gross exaggerations.  Sure, you can buy the bleeding edge highest end products for a ridiculous amount of money, but that in many ways defeats one of the main advantages/purposes of overclocking: value.  I spent approx $120 on my motherboard, $180 on my CPU, and maybe $50 on my RAM.  They all overclock quite well, but none of these items are considered on the elite end of the OC'ng spectrum.  I actually SAVED money by overclocking.  That's the whole point.  FREE performance.  Buy cheap, overclock it because manufacturers have to sell things at speeds that are GUARANTEED to work over the entire product spectrum, and reap the rewards at no additional cost.

It sounds like you're rehashing a lot of misinformation, or have just read the wrong doomsday articles on why overclocking is bad.  Perhaps memos by Intel, who of course doesn't want you to get comparable performance out of their $100 CPU, by overclocking, as you would from their $500 CPU.

[Punk_FAS]

Going a ways back here... Back in '98 or '99, I bought a Celeron 300A (300 MHz) for probably somewhere in the ~$50 range.  I honestly can't remember.  Anyway, the top of the line Intel CPU at that time was the Pentium II 450 MHz.  The Celeron 300A had nearly a 100% success rate to overclock to 450 MHz (50% increased clock speed) and actually outperformed the $400-500 (mostly pulling that number out of my ass, I don't recall exactly) PII 450.  For a fraction of the cost, you got a CPU with performance that surpassed the best CPU you could buy at that time.  That is what overclocking is about.

Recently (came out in late '08), the Pentium i7 920 (default speed 2.66 GHz) commonly overclocked to 4 GHz (a ~50% overclock) without much fuss.  Again, a HUGE performance gain, and to this day, when overclocked, is faster than anything released by Intel nearly 2 years later.

I imagine there are other CPU's that have come out since that time that offer great value when overclocking is factored in, but I've been out of the loop for a little while now.

[Punk_FAS]

How many CPU's, or other components have you guys personally fried due to "overclocking"?  I'm curious.  Did you find out what you did wrong afterward?

[VaeVictis]

lol you have to look at it in context punk... you are telling some one who knows very little about computers to overclock their cpu for performance increase in a game that probably doesnt even use a third of that cpu

there is no point, say he put some settings in that his motherboard didnt like, so it wouldnt boot... he would think his computer completely died and wouldnt know how to go about clearing his cmos

with processors now adays, you really wont notice any difference in game unless you are playing something like crysis with lots of physics calculations for debris and shit so it ends up very cpu intensive... just about any processor is 2.6ghz and up, most of which now being 3ghz and up, with multiple cores/threads

another big thing you arent seeing is that he is using onboard video and your telling him to overclock his processor for performance increase... now theoretically it would increase the performance of the onboard video having a faster general processor, BUT not even enough to notice it in a game, while applying risk to hardware due to lack of knowledge by the user... its just MUCH better to avoid overclocking all together unless you know what you are doing, if you want to put in the time to learn about all that stuff then go for it, but its not really worth it right now

also, you dont think that newer generation processors can be fast enough to permit a wait... which is completely untrue, each new generation releases with it new technologies and architecture which make processors much more efficient per clock cycle... comparing the amd phenom I and phenom II processors with eachother this is extremely visible with the phenom II's completely smashing the phenom I processors, also comparing the i7 to the core 2 quad is another great example, the i7 uses an integrated memory controller chip which is much MUCH more efficient than using a north bridge system like the older core 2 quads did, and even though they are both quad cores, the i7 has each core hyper threaded allowing more threads of data to be processed making crunching data much faster allowing it to handle more load

[Punk_FAS]

I was under the impression the conversation had transitioned to overclocking in general.  I'll quote myself from a few posts ago

getting a dedicated graphics card would really be the safer and better solution

I agree =)

I was agreeing with you that for Alpha's situation, his top priority would be to ditch the onboard graphics for a real GPU.  My other comments are addressing overclocking in general, and a commonly held, but in my opinion naive attitude about how all overclocking is viewed as
THE DEVIL