The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

I encountered the issue back in the 90's which was about the same time that one no longer needed a bootup floppy to get started. The bios on some systems look only for the hard drive and if it is corrupted it can be frustrating. I then tried the trick that I passed on and it worked. I've since had to do this many times over the years including a couple of years ago on about 20 dell laptops and another 20 or 30 Dell desktops. The trick always works.

 

but if you have OCed it, it will run with a higher power requirement, heat up alot (your using a TRUE IICR), it defeats the point. it would be mroe reasonable to buy a CPU close to that clock speed, which would run fine on a stock cooling, not produce much heat, and wont use as much power.

 

Well you have to realize where I'm coming from. Going from a 3.2Ghz Quad core with a 8800GT to that is a big difference and I really notice the hit when encoding movies and the fact that even old games don't work!

It can still do a decent job browsing the web, MS office, etc. What more do you want from a 100 dollar computer?

 

Sophocles,

I remember a while back when I had a Dell Optiplex P-II 450 and it wouldn't boot until I turned off the hard drive. Once I did that the optical drives would work again and you could boot from either. The problem never came up for me until this HP came in for repair. I guess if I was smart enough at the time I would have asked one of you guys here. I understand the hard drive being messed up but I just don't understand the opticals not working, or does the MBR maybe being messed up, cause the problem?

The computer works fine now. I ran RI4ME and DVDRB/CCE and it took about 2 hours for the whle deal. Not to bad for an old 3.06 P4! Northwood. Damn shame it doesn't have a better bios setup. It's noticeably faster with 1 stick of 512 than the Dell 3000 with the 3.0/800 Prescott and 1GB of Corsair XMS 2-2-2-4 memory. Not a bad machine for a back up.

Thanks again for the help,
Russ

 

Even overclocked by 1.35Ghz above stock, my CPU's power consumption is rated at only 13W above normal. Factoring in the efficiency of the PSU and the Vregs, if my PC had been on 24 hours a day for the 18 months I've had this CPU at full load, I would have spent an extra £29. For £29 above the £105 I paid, I doubt you'd get a 3.15Ghz Core 2 Duo... The cost of the heatsink to keep it cool along with the fan it uses was also an additional £30 - still not even close.

 

its not about money saving (although thats a side effect) its about saving the planet.

what is your power consumption under load and idle when you have it at 3.15GHx and 1.8GHz?

i am sure an E6850 would use less power at 3GHz (and you wouldn't notice a difference between 3.315 and 3) then your chip (E4300?)

 

Full load it's 220W when overclocked and 195W when not. Given that E6850s didn't even exist when I bought my CPU, and the X6800 that did cost several hundred quid...

 

(can you tell me how i can find my power consumption?)

i see. fair enough then. but i am sure now an E8400 at 3GHz will consume less power than an E8200 OCed.

 

I used Maplin's UK equivalent of a Kill-a-watt...

As for the E8200 vs E8400, you're probably right. Overclocking is usually bad for power consumption, but it sometimes makes economic sense.

 

agreed, you'll be out of pocket more, it does make sense to get a lower CPU and OC. wasnt that the whole point to OCing?

 

It was until the Core 2 Duos came out - now they overclock so ridiculously much, you're overclocking to reach speeds you can't actually buy CPUs at!

 

haha thats true.

now you can get the E7200 to about 3.8 on a TRUE/ tuniq/ noctua its mental.

im sure no one would notice the diffrence in gaming between 3.2 and 4GHZ anyways

 

hmm I don't know, my E4300 and X2 4200+ are miles apart. Yes, that's a far bigger jump, but it goes to show that extra speed is important for games even in the dual core sector. If you see a big jump with those, I see no reason why you wouldn't spot a smaller jump moving to 4Ghz - especially in low ceiling games like Flight Sim X, Age of Conan and Crysis.

 

im pertty sure there is a point in games where your more GPU then CPU bound (at higher res)

 

All games benefit from CPU processing power in varying degrees, but which it uses the most of is generally determined by the game design. Some games rely fairly heavily on a systems CPU and other largely on the gaming cards Graphics processing power.

Clock speed on a processor is relative. It matters only when one is comparing like cores, but to compare different cores is comparing "apples to oranges" Case and point: A D945 dual core processor at 3.7 GHz doesn't stand a chance against an E6600 at 2.67 GHz.

 

Indeed there comes a point when the GPU will be a limiting factor, but with a lot of games it's actually quite a high level. The CPU ceiling for Crysis in particular is only about 30fps for most Core 2 Duos seemingly, which is pretty dire.

 

CPU Power Management

Porpper use of power mamagemant can work on OC'd systems and reduce heat to extend the life of your overall system and keep the room just a pinch cooler.

C1E is still the best method to date since it functions on the CPU directly. EIST functions along the system bus to the NB chipset so it uses system resorces to wor all the time. I have not used these other power saving features from either ASUS or Gigabyte but if they indeed run in software then they also have to pass through hardware (usually the BIOS and NB) and are then twice as proned to a failure if there will be one during OC'n. This why BIOS "C" states are locked out for OC'n and why C1E and TM can still function on even high end OC's. I use C1E+TM at a 4GHz OC to reduce multi to reduce system load for things that do not require 4GHz of poerw and heat like surfing the net and viewing PIX or such.

I don't OC to save poewr but when I have a feature that can help system run slightly cooler during idle, I will use it if I can.

 

Thanks for that Nuck, I'll look into it.

 

NuckNFuts,

GigaByte's system is totally based on the demands of the CPU, as the demand increases, the power savings decrease! Still you would be saving some power. You're also doing it all with one less stage, as there's no hardware involved and is controlled by existing, in-place monitoring functions. In otherwords it analyzes the existing data and regulates all the power circuits in tune with the needs of the various power circuits. A very clever idea. BTW!

Eventually we'll see Name brand motherboards with all the same socket, but the motherboard will have no chipset! A one chip solution! You buy the MB of your choice and buy the chip with both the CPU and Chipset you want, along with the memory controller and it will make for one very very fast computer. Pipelines will be zilch! The majority of heat will all be in one main location so it will be a lot easier to cool the computer more efficiently. Just what I see in my "Crystal Ball" (finally got it fixed! LOL!!), that's all!

To the Future,
Russ

 

Makes sense. My board is loaded with power saving features that I've never used before and I'm still studying them.

In regards to CIE and EIST

I turn off CIE and EIST during the overclocking phase and then turn them back on once I've reached the highest stable overclock (the key word being highest stable). Too many people believe that if it boots and appears to work then everything is alright which couldn't be further from the truth.