Is overclocking an option?

I have never gotten into overclocking for 2 reasons; one, I'm very risk averse and two, it would be over my head anyway. I just got some new software with my "new" vid card. The software, Vtune, actually allows you to simply dial up the core and memory clocks. Well, I turned them both all the way up and my computer started to smoke. I'm not sure what happened. Ha Ha Ha Not really.

I've always liked the idea of overclocking and this software makes it waaay too easy. But, I don't ever want to post in this section again. Anyway, the dials are color coded from a large area of green, then yellow, orange and red. If I rotate the core clock, I can go all the way from around 400 to 460 and stay within the green range. If I rotate the memory clock I can take it from 500 to 550, within the green. Seems safe but it still doesn't change the fact that I don't know anything about over-clocking.

My question is how many MHz can I go within each and still keep it safe? And, do I need to keep the two clocks proportionate to one another? How much lee way do I have on keeping them synchronized?

 

If you have an Nvidia card you could use Coolbits. There is a section within that prog which provides suggested o/c levels.

Good Luck

 

Just a couple of tips about overclocking. Add better cooling. Overclocking produces more heat, too much heat can let the magic smoke out of your computer. Go slowly. Increase your overclock by a little, benchmark it, and check the temps and stability of your computer, then bump it up a little more.

Have fun!

E

 

a tip about checking temps:check it after its been booted but idle for about 15 - 20 minutes. then for your peak temp, stress out the unit as much as possible. running a high end game can usually do this.

 

if you want to know about overclocking its quite simple doing doing it can be a different story
overclocking is simply making your components run fast and work more, hense less durability and shorter life span but you would rarely notice unless your doing extreme overclocking.
obviously the faster then core speed the faster it work but the faster the core speed the bigger the risk if you take it up in small ammounts all should be okay.
when you think you have a stable overclock you might want to try using 3dmark and check that all is stable.
but if your not deadly serious about scores on 3dmark and just want to for fun dont go too much and have fun with it
good luck on finding a stable OC

 

Some particular makes and models of various components make better candidates for overclocking than others, but many CPU's and RAM DIMMS can be overclocked at least a bit, some quite a bit if you make the additional upgrages to get rid of the increase in heat that nearly always results from overclocking a component.

Some hardware, like video cards and even some motherboards, come with software to make overclocking easier. Otherwise you usually have to tinker with various settings in your BIOS.

Have you read the sticky at the top of this forum, "Overclocking Guide" by Ace256? It's a long post, but overclocking isn't something to try if you don't want to take the time to gain some understanding of what you're doing, how to monitor temp increases and what you can to to dissipate the heat so you don't damage anything.

However, it is often possible to do some modest overclocking and increase your hardware's performance by 5 or maybe even as high as 10% without any special cooling as your stock heatsink fan, in the case of an overclocked CPU for example, may be able to handle the additional heat. You may notice a bit more noise however if your stock heatsink fan has to run a bit faster than before.

Even if you have some hardware specific overclocking software that came with a particular piece of hardware (CPU or graphics card or your motherboard) so that you don't have to make the BIOS changes directly yourself you still need to learn the basics of overclocking so that you'll be aware, for example, of when you may need to increase the voltage for a particular component in order to run it at higher clock speeds.

Without investing in more expensive heat sinks you probably won't be able to overclock very much, but you may be able to eek out a bit more performance that will be noticeable when playing games for example. But don't expect a dramatic difference unless you're going to spend money on more exotic heatsinks/fans and/or heatspreaders/fans (for cooling RAM).