The official overclockers beginner's guide

**RGM-79N_GM_CUstom** · 07-19-2005, 08:24 AM

Hi guys I recently got into overclocking and I wanted to make a post about overclocking and explaining how to do it. However I found a helpful site with a handy beginner's guide to overclocking. There are two guides.

This link leads to the video card guide. It has pages for ATI and Nvidia cards.

This link will send you to the guide for CPU, memory, and motherboards. It has sections on Pentium 4's and Athlon XPs and 64's.

And for the bold/crazy PCStats also has a guide on how to flash your video card. Flashing a video card refers to erasing the card's BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) and replacing it with the BIOS of a different card. Companies like ATI and Nvidia usually make just a single graphics core and use it for all of their cards. All they do is just tone it down. An example of this was some Radeon 9800 256MB Pro cards actually are Radeon 9800XT cards. By flashing the BIOS you can make your computer think its a Radeon 9800XT card.

Good luck.

Flashing a card is not for the faint of heart and can damage your card. I really gotta try it out though. I am sure my X800XL is an X800XT deep down inside.

Anyway enjoy these guides and have fun overclocking. Try not to melt your CPU.

warcriminal2 · 07-19-2005, 09:27 AM

WOW! Outstanding post dude. There is a lot of stuff about overclocking that the COMPUTER MANUFACTURERS dont want the general public to know about. With the right settings you could take over small countries. Ok I was overstating but did you know that on many of the new AMD64 boards by ASUS, there is a new feature called AI overclocking which is good for moderate performance boost when on AUTO but I have a feeling if more can be gained if I manually OC'd my system. Another nice thing about this the ASUS A8V mobo is you dont need to clear the BIOS or deal with jumpers if the overclock doesnt take. You just powerdown and reboot, the BIOS hooks it upppppppp......if you were a computer geek you'd think this was cooool

SLOW SYSTEM?

NO BF2 FOR U!

**RGM-79N_GM_CUstom** · 07-19-2005, 10:28 AM

^^^^I do my GIgabyte mobo is like that. I just got into OCing though. I was reading my mobo's manuel and then i ran into a section where it mentioned that i could overclock so I tried it out. I messed up a bit at first but it was pretty simple I didn't really do any of the things that the guide i just found mentioned. I just turned up my FSB. Got my Athlon 64 3500+ to 2.4 Ghz. I am gonna get an X2 4800+ for my college computer. I can't wait to mess around with it. On a darker note I did push my old 9800 Pro to much and hurt it a bit so I had to get a new one.

Spyder · 07-19-2005, 12:01 PM

Generally speaking, the average "safe" overclock is 10% performance boost. The general "good" overclock is 20%. You really shouldn't try anything over 10 without a significant cooling system figured out though. (I wouldn't overclock at all on just stock cooling, but that's just me)

T_BEAR · 07-19-2005, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RGM-79N_GM_CUstom

^^^^I do my GIgabyte mobo is like that. I just got into OCing though. I was reading my mobo's manuel and then i ran into a section where it mentioned that i could overclock so I tried it out. I messed up a bit at first but it was pretty simple I didn't really do any of the things that the guide i just found mentioned. I just turned up my FSB. Got my Athlon 64 3500+ to 2.4 Ghz. I am gonna get an X2 4800+ for my college computer. I can't wait to mess around with it. On a darker note I did push my old 9800 Pro to much and hurt it a bit so I had to get a new one.

How do you know you pushed your 9800 too hard? what happened? Did it blow up?

**RGM-79N_GM_CUstom** · 07-19-2005, 06:08 PM

^^^^Preformace problems and stability issues.

T_BEAR · 07-20-2005, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RGM-79N_GM_CUstom

^^^^Preformace problems and stability issues.

Well I oced my ati 9600 pro and I think I might have screwed it up performance wise. For some reason the card feels like its running slower than default even though the current clock speed is much higher than default. The card is very stable so I am not sure what’s going on. Have you heard of problems similar to this before?

A very good tool to oc any ATI card is ATItool. I don't know if that was mentioned or not.

Spyder · 07-20-2005, 02:36 PM

I've always held off on OCing video cards. I think it's because most of the time I know what I'm doing when I'm oc'ing my CPU, and if I screw up, I can always flash the bios, and I won't damage the CPU with anything short of user error (and I'm very careful about this stuff, because I can't afford to replace things) but with a GPU, I've heard it's possibly to easily damage them if you don't realize you're OCing too hard.

If you feel it's running slower T_bear, what'd I'd do is download a 3dmark program, run it, record your benchmarks, and then revert the GPU to stock, and run 3dmark again and see what your performance difference actually is. It may be that the GPU doesn't like running at your OC'd frequencies, even though it's stable.
It's a very inexact science.

**RGM-79N_GM_CUstom** · 07-20-2005, 04:27 PM

Spyder is right. Overclocking a GPU is really a pain but the guide on PCStats went over it pretty well. I think I wanna try it out but I think I will wait until I have some extra cash so in case I do mess up I can get a new card imediately. A tip for anyone that wants a PC and wants an X2 processor but don't feel like dropping the 1000+ for the 4800+. The X2 4400+ is a market down 4800+ just buy that and make it run at 2.4. The 4400+ and the 4800+ have 1MB of L2 Cache while the 4200+ and the 4600+ has 512MB.

BTW does anyone know if the X800XL is just an underclocked XT model. I wanna flash my card if it is.

T_BEAR · 07-20-2005, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RGM-79N_GM_CUstom

Spyder is right. Overclocking a GPU is really a pain but the guide on PCStats went over it pretty well. I think I wanna try it out but I think I will wait until I have some extra cash so in case I do mess up I can get a new card imediately. A tip for anyone that wants a PC and wants an X2 processor but don't feel like dropping the 1000+ for the 4800+. The X2 4400+ is a market down 4800+ just buy that and make it run at 2.4. The 4400+ and the 4800+ have 1MB of L2 Cache while the 4200+ and the 4600+ has 512MB.

BTW does anyone know if the X800XL is just an underclocked XT model. I wanna flash my card if it is.

yeah I think I will test my card out and compare the results.

Custom have you checked other overclocking forums and if there is software that is even available?

This guy says that XLs aren't known to oc well =/ http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...ghlight=x800xl
XL cores are probably the bad XT cores.

**RGM-79N_GM_CUstom** · 07-20-2005, 09:03 PM

^^^^^^Damn its alright though the XL is a solid card. I was just hoping I could have got more bang for my buck.

Syn · 07-21-2005, 12:42 PM

The XL is the best bang for any buck, even stock. Any overlocking gains is icing on an already sweet cake.

Now, I ended up getting a much sweeter deal, an 850XT for the price of an XL, which I'm gonna tinker with, so I guess I got the extra icing on an already very choclatey sweet cake with triple fudge....m,mmmm

T_BEAR · 07-21-2005, 02:34 PM

I want cake

Also where did you get your 850xt at?

**RGM-79N_GM_CUstom** · 07-21-2005, 05:46 PM

Damn for the price of the XL. The best I could do was 350 because my friend works at best buy. I got the XL for 317.99 (with tax) from CompUSA. I usually buy from computer shows but the next show in my area is at the end of july and I don't like newegg.

Spyder · 07-21-2005, 08:59 PM

Don't like newegg?
How can you not like newegg? =P
fedex 3-day shipping on everything (sometimes 2-day)
best prices anywhere, and I've RMA'd stuff half a dozen times and had it all replaced within a week.