Can i overclock my computer?

fight2fight

New Member
hi,

just wondering if i could overclock my computer, like is it safe, can my computer do it etc...

specs are as follows...

motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI
Ram: 4 gig
CPU: Quad core 2.8gig
GFX: 9800GT in sli 2x
power supply: 1200 WATT thermaltake


and im running triple boot xp, vista and windows 7...

thanks...
 
thanks.. :)

i spent alot of money when i first built this, but over time i got excited to get the asus striker extreme board, looks crazy, get that, with a i7 cpu and the new nvidia GTX 295 card, maybe my next build, ill think ill leave the computer how it is, its been running very good and quick for just under a year...
 
Nice rig like I said, it should perform any kind of activity fairly well, from 3D games to chess calculations. I wouldn't overclock it and if you are so ready to upgrade why don't you upgrade with a couple of DirectX 11 cards ? I doubt that Corei7 will give you an extreme boost to what you have.
 
hi,

just wondering if i could overclock my computer, like is it safe, can my computer do it etc...

thanks...

Are you really asking CAN ... or are you asking SHOULD ? Back in the day when a system actually had to wait on the processor the Celeron 300A was a dream come true for overclocking. It was cheap and would run as fast as anything avilable. But today you get a LOT more performance out of tweaking the processes and turning off the ones that you don't need than you would if you overheated .. .ummm I mean overclocked your $250 cpu. If you overclock the hell out of a processor but have a 5400 rpm hard drive it won't make any difference. If you have 40 applications loading from your start menu...with Norton, you may notice a difference if you overclock.

Here... you'll need a good heatsink and they only have 2 left in stock

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You might also want to take a look at :

PC Perspective - To Overclock or Not To Overclock, That is the Question
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Overclocking guide:


Link Removed due to 404 Error
Link Removed - Invalid URL



Risks:



Risks of Overclocking the Processor



My humble opinion is that you shouldn't, especially that your hardware is all modern and hi-end. How comfortable do you feel with your system, do you experience any serious bottleneckings? If you really want to overclock, study what it can give you and search for hardware cases close to yours.

Link Removed - Invalid URL
Overclocking C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - A Guide - Overclocking Wiki
 
thanks guys for the heads up, yea iv made up my mind was so close to overclock, but alot of my friends were telling me it shortens the life of the cpu, like you said do i experience bottleneckings, and i don't have that issue, been running smooth, since i look after the computer by doing the regular scans, defrag etc..

although only thing this board i got annoyed with, that when running in sli mode the pci-e slot were the graphics card go into there both run at 8x, but if running just one, then it runs at 16X, is that normal? for the board???


thanks again guys...
 
sadly some boards do chop ya bandwidth to 2x 8s rather than 2x 16s to use SLI/Crossfire hence always pays to do intensive study on manufacter's sites before spending bucks on something.

On the topic itself :- The gains from overclocking a decent rig is bordering on pointless in my view since would you honestly notice the extra 5-10fps it would give? I doubt it. These days its cheaper to buy faster gear than to overclock and toast the gear prematurely, in my own studies at overclocking I ran my CPU at 3.6ghz (a huge jump from stock 2.4) and guess what the framerates bearly changed, so looks like in my example I'd need a very high end GPU to make it worth the effort anyway. The moral? GPU is more important than a fast CPU these days.
 
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Much agree with Highwayman, on all these good points in particular:

The gains from overclocking a decent rig is bordering on pointless in my view since would you honestly notice the extra 5-10fps it would give? I doubt it.

+ add pootential risks, reduced life tiime of the overclocked chip, and the need of more intensive cooling.

These days its cheaper to buy faster gear than to overclock and toast the gear prematurely, in my own studies at overclocking I ran my CPU at 3.6ghz (a huge jump from stock 2.4) and guess what the framerates bearly changed, so looks like in my example I'd need a very high end GPU to make it worth the effort anyway. The moral? GPU is more important than a fast CPU these days.

Last one is a very good example which we have lacked so far. Very true.
 
lol *bows* thankyouverymuch...ahuh :D

Especially the bit about "pootential risks" I love it when a typo actually resembles the original meaning and an action in this example. Great job on creating another buzzword for our generation Cybercore mate :D

Pootential : - The potential of something causing you to shit yourself
Useage ; - "yep I had a Pootential of 10/10 when I overclocked by 50% on air..." :rolleyes:
 
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thanks guys for the heads up, yea iv made up my mind was so close to overclock, but alot of my friends were telling me it
shortens the life of the cpu

Only if your throwing mad voltages at your processor then your gonna shorten the life of your processor, overclocking will not shorten the
life of your processor, 20 to 30% overclock is good with a few changes to your memory timings as well will increase alot of performance as well.

Throwing very high voltages to your processor or ram will shorten the life span, overclocking will not.


On the topic itself :- The gains from overclocking a decent rig is bordering on pointless in my view since would you honestly notice the
extra 5-10fps it would give? I doubt it. These days its cheaper to buy faster gear than to overclock and toast the gear prematurely,
in my own studies at overclocking I ran my CPU at 3.6ghz (a huge jump from stock 2.4) and guess what the framerates bearly changed, so
looks like in my example I'd need a very high end GPU to make it worth the effort anyway. The moral? GPU is more important than a fast
CPU these days.

How is overclocking bordering pointless? For one, the 5-10 fps in your terms would actually be a good 30 fps jump which is signaficantly very
great advantage.

Overclocking will not toast anything unless you throw very unnecessary high voltage to your processor or ram.

Too push now a days high end gpu's to "it's" maximum you need a high end processor to push it.

CPU and GPU both reside together now a days for both to work greatly, if you have a crap processor & high end gpu, that processor will not
push that gpu so how is the gpu more important than the processor? It's not, they both take a very important role of the pc environment.

--------------------



hi,

just wondering if i could overclock my computer, like is it safe, can my computer do it etc...


Yes you may, you will see a very signafigant increase of performance all around & it is safe until you go to the kill zone of caking on
overvoltaging to you processor & ram.

-------------------

You might also want to take a look at :

PC Perspective - To Overclock or Not To Overclock, That is the Question
Link Removed due to 404 Error


Overclocking guide:


Link Removed due to 404 Error
Link Removed - Invalid URL



Risks:



Risks of Overclocking the Processor



My humble opinion is that you shouldn't, especially that your hardware is all modern and hi-end. How comfortable do you feel with your system, do you experience any serious bottleneckings? If you really want to overclock, study what it can give you and search for hardware cases close to yours.

Link Removed - Invalid URL
Overclocking C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - A Guide - Overclocking Wiki

Overclock.net - Overclocking.net
 
overclocking will not shorten the life of your processor,

Why do you need an expensive high quality heatsink and fan when you Overclock? Why is the cpu heat carefully monitored on all critical computers in the world?

Let me share a secret ... if you increase the HEAT of any kind of electronic device... circuit boards, hard drives and ESPECIALLY processors.... it stresses the circuitry and causes a failure or shorter lifespan - every time.

Every processor, since the 386, will literally FRY before you can turn on and off the power - if it doesn't have a heatsink.
 
Only if your throwing mad voltages at your processor then your gonna shorten the life of your processor, overclocking will not shorten the life of your processor

Prehaps you should have also mentioned when overclocking IF you don't up the game in regards to high performance cooling you will hit a big fat dead end real soon, as for a 20-30% overclock which certainly IS in the realms of a safe-ish overclock I very much doubt it would add 30fps on games that are running under 100fps BEFORE overclocking.

The main scenario for such 30fps gains to happen when a rig has a seriously slow cpu bottlenecking a vastly superior GPU (likelyhood of that? very low chance, usually other it's the other way around) it just wouldn't work out in the maths otherwise, it soon becomes obvious that if the games at suddenly increased by 30fps and it was say 50fps already when most monitors are 60fps would feel that gain at all?? only on benchmark scores it would seem.

The games not gonna play any faster than the 60fps monitor can show, so faced with a game now at 80fps being viewed on a 60 frame monitor whats changed apart from the extra heat the rigs chucking out? cos realistically your gonna have to lash out even more cash to see the difference buy getting a 100fps or higher monitor so is that really cost effective?

Anyway this brings me back to my statement of 5-10fps boost being realistic on a modern game when overclocking, hell my own experiments showed that 66.6% overclock gained virtually nothing on GTA4 (The game never even uses 50% CPU before the overclocking) for example, now had I a better GPU it may have certianly jumped up 30fps but a better GPU would have similar effect without overclocking. Therefore to overclock you need a rig thats ALREADY of decent spec to make it worth the hassles or the gains will be poor, as more and more games rely on the GPU to do much of the hard work, sure without a juicy CPU it will bottleneck, but it's important not to give people false hope of huge gains if they have an average GPU & CPU Combo.

Also Fight2Fights rig is 2.8ghz Quad CPU which is more than fast enough to cope with his SLI 9800's so he wont really gain much at all unless he ditched the 9800s and got a 285/295 or 5870.
 
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Too push now a days high end gpu's to "it's" maximum you need a high end processor to push it.


That's just the problem twin 9800's AINT high end...they get pawned by a midrange 260 card, so like he said himself a 295 card would be a good starting point before that CPU of his even strains its muscles...and by then he's already be getting a huge gain...thus pointless to overclock really, until the said rig is beyond upgrade paths, and don't even get me started on the pros & cons of SLI/Crossfire vs simply buying a better GPu in the first place.
 
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Why do you need an expensive high quality heatsink and fan when you Overclock? Why is the cpu heat carefully monitored on all critical computers in the world?

Let me share a secret ... if you increase the HEAT of any kind of electronic device... circuit boards, hard drives and ESPECIALLY processors.... it stresses the circuitry and causes a failure or shorter lifespan - every time.

Every processor, since the 386, will literally FRY before you can turn on and off the power - if it doesn't have a heatsink.

A aftermarket heatsink is mostly recommended/required in overclocking and that common sense, that is why i left it out"meaning "sorry I left it out" it was thoughtless of my part because with my knowledge that is BASIC". With your quoute
before you can turn on and off the power - if it doesn't have a heatsink.
a processor will fry period injunction without a
heatsink without overclocks period -.- ...



Prehaps you should have also mentioned when overclocking IF you don't up the game in regards to high performance cooling you will hit a big fat dead end real soon, as for a 20-30% overclock which certainly IS in the realms of a safe-ish overclock I very much doubt it would add 30fps on games that are running under 100fps BEFORE overclocking.

The only scenario for 30fps gains to happen would be a rig where it has a seriously slow cpu running (say dual core 2ghz) on a mid to high end motherboard with a gpu like a nvidia 280gtx or Ati 5870 (likelyhood of that? very low chance) it just wouldn't work out in the maths otherwise, then it soon becomes obvious that is there a point if the games at 100fps when most monitors are 60fps capped?

Anyway this brings me back to my statement of 5-10fps boost being realistic on a modern game when overclocking, hell my own experiments showed that 66.6% overclock gained virtually nothing on GTA4 (The game never even uses 50% CPU before the overclocking) for example, now had I a better GPU it may have certianly jumped up 30fps but a better GPU would have similar effect without overclocking. Therefore to overclock you need a rig thats ALREADY of decent spec to make it worth the hassles or the gains will be poor, as more and more games rely on the GPU to do much of the hard work, sure without a juicy CPU it will bottleneck, but it's important not to give people false hope of huge gains if they have an average GPU & CPU Combo.


As mentioned above about the heatsink explained to tblount...

OK for the fps, without overclocks, Example of my setup as of right now, ddr2, 2 or 3 year old dual core processor, overclocked from 3.4ghz 800mhz rated FSB to 4.4ghz at a 1036mhz FSB with my ram at deafault it sits at 400mhz But I have it clocked too 460mhz with very tight ram timings, Now with my 4890 overclocked from [default]900/975 to [oced]1020/1150 with my above stated oc with processor&ram I gained a full 31-40 fps, so without overclocks on cod4 I get 60 fps, Now with all overclocked like stated above I get a full even 100-105 fps on cod4mp, and this is with ddr2 with an old 2-3 year old processor on a 17" 1280x1024res which is cpu bound, so if you have ddr3 with a I7 or new phenom "specially if it was overclocked" with the same 4890 or any other nice gfx card you would not gain any more frames per second?
 
That's just the problem twin 9800's AINT high end...they get pawned by a midrange 260 card, so like he said himself a 295 card would be a good starting point before that CPU of his even strains its muscles...and by then he's already be getting a huge gain...thus pointless to overclock really, until the said rig is beyond upgrade paths, and don't even get me started on the pros & cons of SLI/Crossfire vs simply buying a better GPu in the first place.

ok I see, well above was posted just a sec after you edited this.
 
so if you have ddr3 with a I7 or new phenom "specially if it was overclocked" with the same 4890 or any other nice gfx card you would not gain any more frames per second?

with a mid-to-high GPU such as a 4890 yes its worth the gamble but i doubt replacing your overclocked 4.4ghz cpu really would see much real world improvement by swapping to the new cpus that are of lower speed unless similar pumped up to 4.4ghz, and then it's still falling back to the what you actually see on normal 60hz monitors vs benchmark as any benchmark fails to take that into account, your still gonna need a new monitor that displays that refresh rate to see the difference.
 
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