Overclocking CPUs

alvaro84 · Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 2:25 pm Post subject:

It's more than okay to me, it's another game. The first CPU I overclocked was my AMD 5x86-133 ADW. It could run at 160 MHz, but it wasn't fully stable back then. With today's coolers and some thermal grease it would surely work. But 150 MHz was often faster (thanks to the 50 MHz bus) and also more stable. I overclocked my K6 CPUs too (I had a Little Foot 266, a Chomper 266 and a CXT 500 which I still have in a Socket 7 test board), though those weren't that great at this respect. The Athlon XPs, on the other hand, were nice: 1700+ and 1600+ AGOIA at ~1760 MHz (the former burnt thanks to the plastic fastener of a water cooler block which I replaced with a 4mm thick iron plate later so it never broke again Very Happy

) and a 2100+ JIUHB above 2200 MHz.

But my last 2 CPUs (both Core 2 Duo) were/are still better than any earlier piece. An E6420 Conroe 2.13 GHz, not even a strong piece, could do 3.1GHz at stock voltage. Its salvaged replacement, an E8500 Wolfdale 3.16 GHz runs at 3.8 GHz right now, without even trying too hard. I've tried it at 4 GHz too, it seemed stable but I don't trust my RAM sticks so I just let it run at (4*)400MHz FSB, which gives this nice 3.8 GHz.

The 5x86 and the K7 series had the most interesting support hardware for overclocking. I equipped the 5x86 with basic room light switches that connected to the jumpers on the main board so I could switch the FSB and multiplier on the fly. Switching the multiplier and the 50 MHz FSB could hang the computer though. And accidentally switching to 4*50 MHz always did Very Happy

The K7 rig had water cooling for a while. On my first K7 board (ECS K7S5A) I even piggy backed an IC socket with a fixed and a variable resistor on the VRM controller to change the core voltage (the BIOS did not have this option).

It was before I changed for a greener mindset and never raised any voltage again for prolonged use. And even this 3.8 GHz Wolfdale is plenty fast for me in this 8-year-old 965 board... even the 6420@3.1 GHz that I used for more than 7 years was enough. Now that I added 4 more GB RAM and resurrected my half-dead SSD with a new firmware the system is fine and snappy again.

agent_x007 · Joined: 16 May 2014 Posts: 14 Location: Europe

Core 2 Duo's cant beat Pentium's in RAW clock speed : http://i.imgur.com/2ps5uOd.jpg Wink

^That speed is 100% stable to run games btw.

So o course it's OK to overclock - who doesn't want free speed/performance improvement ?

PS. Here's a small "bonus" : https://youtu.be/W7bRzhqY6xk Cool