Various overclocking questions

[CaelumMan]

Hey there!

I have a few questions concerning overclocking. I can't say I've done it before and I've been sent some "guides" which I can't say have made that much sense and I just stopped reading them.

My spec is:

*asus a8n-sli premium nforce4 mobo

*corsair 2gb ddr pc3200 400mhz 2,3,36 (2*1024)

*amd opteron 146

*2xasus extreme n6600gt 256 mb

*Seagate barracuda 250 gb with 16mb cache.

*Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro

And I just bought a Enermax Liberty 500W,8 SATA, ATX/EPS, 2xPCI-E, 20/24pin thanks to some pointers by enVias.

This has probably been answered by you a million times so you should be able to give a fairly good answer

Now my question is first about the cpu. I know you need to turn up the voltage in order to be able and clock it. And you need to set the multipliers to xx and so on. But I heard that if you're going to clock the cpu you also need to do it with your memory and that involved alot of weird settings.

I'm also a little curious if it's possible to clock my geforce cards some to get more out of them. I guess I haven't set the SLI up properly so it wont matter that much but atleast it could be interesting to see some changes.

Any answers are greatly apprechiated since I'm a newbie at this! :wavey:

 

[FragTek]

Unfortunately I'm at work right now and can't spend too much time getting in to detail, so sorry for that in advance.

Firstly you don't necesarily need to increase your vcore to achieve a decent overclock, this will vary processor to processor however. Some barely function correctly as stock volts, while some are ready for some mean clockin' at stock volts. Now increasing the vcore is undoubtedly one of the best ways to increase your CPU's potential for overclockability but you need to make sure that you stay within reason for your particular method of CPU cooling.

Overclocking is achieved by finding the optimum vcore, cpu multiplier, fsb, and memory timings. Most CPU's will clock higher with a slightly lower multiplier than stock with some good fast RAM capable of higher FSB speeds @ moderatly tight timings. To figure out your overclocked speed while in the BIOS, just multiply the FSB x multiplier, this will give you a good starting point as to taking baby steps in the clocking department, I recommend 50-75mhz increments so that it takes less time in the long run to find your max stable overclock. OC'ing isn't a fast process either, it will take some time to learn how your components react with each other and discovering their maximum potential.

Have to go now, sorry to cut it short, got customers coming in to the store. I'll try to elaborate further when I get a chance.

 

[JN]

This recent post here may also help you get started

 

[Dav0s]

im not sure if you have read the guides on OC3D, but we like to think that they are newbie friendly.

FragTek has written This guide on overclocking A64's, which is relevent to your Opteron.

Give it a read, and it should explain many of the terms you need to understand when overclocking, if you are unsure of anything after this, post back here and we will try to explin further

 

[CaelumMan]

Okay thanks. My enermax psu should be arriving today so hopefully I can try it out! My telestation got trashed by lightning aswell so perhaps I won't have all the programs required unless I can burn the programs down from work.

we'll see how it goes. I'll let you know what happens in a few days I guess^^

 

[Dav0s]

good luck