Ready to overclock? READ THIS FIRST
May 02 '01
The Bottom Line Want to learn to overclock? Well this article gives you info about how to and what components to buy for the best overclock
Ok, so you've decided to overclock your PC. Think you will finally be the geek you have always wanted to be? Well I believe in you.
Lets go into the basics. Overclocking is obviosly running your PC at a speed higher than it is supposed to. I know, I know, you are thinking... How is that possible? Well here is the scoop. The big chipmakers, AMD and intel (and I didn't list AMD first because A is before I, but I will get into a bit later) make huge batches of chips. Now the chipmaker needs to make sure that the chip will run at the speed it is supposed to. Knowing the error rate in making a chip, there could be up to 5% of chips not making the grade if they were made at the specified speed. This would be a customer service nightmare, so the chipmakers make the chips at a higher speed, and then mark them down. Sometimes they will test a chip, see what speed it will make it up to, and mark the speed accordingly. But most of the time, they are rated according to market demand, if the market needs more 1ghz chips, then the chipmaker will be producing chips at say 1.2ghz, but mark them down to 1ghz. Understand? Well if you dont, that really doesn't matter anyways.
Now you want to overclock your PC, but how is this magical feat done? Well if you have a Dell, Gateway, Compaq, or a computer made by a company like this, the coyote has a better chance of catching roadrunner than you have of overclocking your computer. The problem is that the motherboard on those computers will not allow it. So just move your mouse up to the upper right hand corner and click the 'X', because you dont deserve to read this.
Good... Now all those people are gone, lets get into the details. Lets compare AMD to Intel. AMD chips are cheaper, faster and more easily overclocked. The reason is the evil Intel goons locked the multiplier on their chips. The multiplier is the number of times the processor will run faster than the front side bus. So if you have a 450mhz processor, the FSB runs at 100mhz and the multiplier is 4.5. Because this is locked on an intel processor, the only way to overclock one is to raise the FSB (thats a little later). The AMD multiplier on the other hand, is technically locked. On the chip there are 4 tiny bridges called the L1 bridges. They are unconnected, but with a mechanical pencil just write a line between the bridges and then your multiplier is unlocked. But if you are buying a AMD Thunderbird at 1.1ghz or higher, the L1 bridges are already connected, and your chip is already unlocked.
Ok, so now we know what chip to buy, but now what else is of importance? the motherboard. Now from now on I am going to talk about AMD chips specifically because they are the most popular for overclocking. If you have an intel chip, this paragraph really wont be any help to you. Now as of the current time (may 2001), the AMD chips are using a Socket A chip. You are going to want a motherboard that runs Socket A and can overclock. Most AMD motherboards can overclock, but some better than others, and some use jumpers and some dont. You want one without jumpers, because it makes life easier, but jumpered mobos are cheaper. Right now one of the best chipsets is the via kt133a. The chipset is the 2 chips on the motherboard that control the communications between CPU-hard drive-PCI slots-AGP-RAM and everything else. I talked earlier about overclocking the front side bus, and in order to overclock it you need a chipset that is compadible. The via kt133a chipset seems to be the highest quality at the time of this article. I personally like the Abit Kt7a motherboard, it has a very high quality chipset (kt133a) and the BIOS is very easy to overclock. But there are many other ones from places such as Iwill and Asus. For the best prices look at http://www.pricewatch.com/ .
Now I mentioned the BIOS earlier, and you may not know what this is. This is the communications between the hardware and software. Using the BIOS you can up the multipler and FSB and overclock the computer. In order to get into the BIOS you press -delete- at the startup of your computer. Once inside, goto the CPU settings and slowly increase the FSB first. Then reboot and see what happens. Keep this in mind though, a computer running at 7.5multipler*133FSB = 1000mhz is faster than a computer running at 10multplier*100FSB = 1000mhz. This is because when you up the FSB, you speed up everything including RAM, PCI cards, Graphics card, but this can be a problem because some PCI cards cant take a high FSB and wont work, holding back your overclock.
Your biggest enemy is heat though, you must get rid of it. I recommend getting the best Heat Sink and Fan you can get, right now the Global win CAK38, CFK38, and the alpha PAL6035 and PEP66 are nice ones. Taisol also makes some nice ones. The higher you overclock, the more heat you get.
For more information, visit these websites:
http://www.overclockers.com
http://www.hardocp.com
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dan9993
|
|
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.