The first step in overclocking is to understand what it means.
The term overclocking means to raise the default clocks of a given component such as a cpu, motherboard , ram or even graphics cards. nearly all modern components can benefit from increasing the speed they operate at. The downside is the possibility of making the system unstable, so along with explaining the process of overclocking i will be explaining how to ensure that your system remains stable, reliable and definitely faster.Today i am going to show the results of taking my E6600 Core 2 Duo from a stock speed of 2.4ghz up by 50% to 3.6ghz. Using the DFI LP UT P35 T2R motherboard.First up we see a popular benchmark called ” Super PI/mod 1.5 XS” it’s purpose is to calculate the decimal places of PI and has an online validator to ensure that your results are accurate. a link will be provided at the bottom of the article so you can download it and try it yourself.Here is my “stock” or baseline run. at 2.4 GHz with default settings in bios.
Below is a run at 3.6 GHz a 50% increase in CPU speed.
As you can see the time it took to calculate the first 1 million decimal places of pi was 21.093 seconds with a stock processor and my DFI LP UT P35-T2R motherboard. Then I raised the front side bus from 266 MHz to 400 MHz, which gives me a CPU speed of 3.6 GHz. Then I re-ran the same benchmark again and the result was 14.078 seconds. a seven second improvement! not bad, but since i am never satisfied i decided to see if i could do better so after a few dozen attempts and plenty of adjustments i was able to get my 2.4 GHz CPU up to 4.7 GHz and had a go at the same bench again.
10.875 seconds with CPU at 4.7 GHz . Running on my DFI LP UT P35 T2R motherboard and using Crucial Ballistix Tracer ddr2 800 ram running at ddr2 1050.
As you can see from the above results raising the CPU’s operating speed can dramatically increase your pc’s performance. keep in mind the more you increase the speed of a CPU the more heat it will put out. most new Core 2 Duo processors can get to 3.0 GHz without much effort and usually with the stock Intel heat-sink-fan combo. above 3.0 GHz you will need to use an aftermarket solution such as a high performance air-cooler ( with much more capacity than stock) or a water-cooling solution. with good cooling and a proper motherboard and ram you can get about 3.4 - 4+ GHz. Not to bad considering the current top bin Intel sells for around a thousand dollars and runs at 3.0 GHz. For my tests I use a custom vapor phase change cooling system which lowers my CPU temperature to -45 celsius to reach 4.7 GHz.
I need to stress how important the motherboard is in overclocking. without a board that allows you to adjust the settings in bios you are very limited in what you can expect. The best boards are going to give you the ability to adjust almost every setting related to getting your board cranked up. But as with anything else you need to use common sense, go slow and test stability with each small increment.
Here is the super Pi Link
And for testing stability:http://www.ocbase.com/download/OCCTPT1.1.0.zip This test needs to run 30 min. I recommend using it every 100 MHz increase in CPU speed. As i’m sure you noticed i haven’t mentioned the voltage settings or memory settings as they will vary from one peice of equipment to another. Auto settings will only go so far. If you would like to see more in depth information just ask. And check Motherboardpro often for updates and new product reveiws.
