Conclusion
In this piece, we pointed you to some of the most useful overclocking applications available—most of which are freely available (so long as you’ve purchased the requisite hardware, in the case of vendor-specific programs). Of course, it’s entirely possible that we’ve left out your personal favorite—if so, let us know in this story’s comments section and we’ll be sure to check out some of the other options out there.
We also wanted to show you that the image of the overclocker armed with a soldering iron and jumpers is now a thing of the past (Ed—at least the jumpers part. We’re going to have some overclocking coverage in the next few days to show you that soldering irons, liquid nitrogen, and custom engineering are still hallmarks of the most aggressive overclockers). Even the top overclockers use software overclocking; it’s much more convenient than having to tweak the BIOS (even if the Extensible Firmware Interface specification has improved the situation—for more on EFI, check out this Intel page on the technology).
Finally, remember that this is a constantly changing field. All of the programs we’ve presented generally evolve very quickly, since processors and graphics cards are the sorts of components that are often updated by their manufacturers. In fact, the launch of the Core i7 is likely to spark the arrival of a new generation of programs, since the new processor is very different from the current Core 2 in the way it manages frequencies.
We’ll end with a recommendation: it’s sometimes better to overclock via the BIOS setup program. This is true both because of effectiveness (some programs don’t display the frequencies well, for example) and because of operating system choice (the majority of the programs we’ve mentioned are only for Windows).
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My favourite overclocking "software" is the BIOS...
I've always built my own systems; but I've never gone with a pimped out case.
Fear of melting my newly made system stops me from overclocking?
Every post on this site leads me to think that everyone is overclocking everything all day long.
Is it that big of a deal?
/On the outside looking in.
Not a big fan of O/C either myself - everything I've clocked the past (5700ultra w/Zalman flower cooler, 7900GT GPU, various CPUS) has suffered reduced life expectancy - even with extensive temperature monitoring. I'm sure there's something I probably did wrong, but I like my stuff to last more than warranty perdiod + 2 days
I just don't believe you get something for nothing. I realise that for some it's pushing the boundaries of what is possible and that is interesting to read about - but for the average punter, why spend say £60 on a CPU and £45 on a cooler so it can be clocked? I'd rather just spend the £105 on a faster CPU and stick to stock
But then I'm an IT manager so stability > everything else and I guess that position has leaked through to my home machines as well.
kind of true, but there are plenty of over-clocks that are safe, and wont deteriote your system life a perfect example of this was the X2 939 series of CPUs from AMD, each one could be over clocked a small amount of 200fsb to make it as fast as the next model up. there are also revisions of graphics cards that can be overclocked safely simply because they were underclocked in the first place.
I've always built my own systems; but I've never gone with a pimped out case.Fear of melting my newly made system stops me from overclocking?Every post on this site leads me to think that everyone is overclocking everything all day long.Is it that big of a deal?/On the outside looking in.
Head yourself on over to overclock.net, any time of day avg 1000+ people online on the forum.
S939 Athlon64 3200+ 'Venice' Core. Stock voltage and retail cooler. 1 year clocked from 2.0GHz to 2.6GHz with no stability or cooling issues. Gained extra fps in games, as well as lower transcoding times.
It is if you can't afford faster processors, and you actually put the extra speed to good use rather than use it as bragging rights. I have been clocking chips since the days of the Socket 7 Cyrix processors, mainly for gaming and video transcoding. One of the best experiences I had was being able to get the AMD K6-III+ CPU and clock it from 450 to 600MHz..yes I know it's not great today, but then the fastest Intel one you could get for Socket 7 was a 266MHz Pentium MMX. I do use the extra speed gained, and if the process of overclocking reduces the life of a component well then it's generally not going to reduce it to the point where it dies before the socket technology is made redundent. Only really stupid overlocks can permanently damage a CPU.
For AMD rigs I always use ClockGent to alter the base frequency, and CrystalCPUID to alter the Vcore and multiplier. Works a treat on older, cheaper boards like the one's with the Geforce 6100 IGP chipset that have no such option in the BIOS. You can be clocking the CPU up in a matter of seconds..a world away from the old days where you'd have to get under the hood and alter jumper settings, each time having to power the machine down.
QUOTE:
kind of true, but there are plenty of over-clocks that are safe, and wont deteriote your system life a perfect example of this was the X2 939 series of CPUs from AMD, each one could be over clocked a small amount of 200fsb to make it as fast as the next model up. there are also revisions of graphics cards that can be overclocked safely simply because they were underclocked in the first place.
end quote
are you saying a an overclock of 200mhz in the fbs... are u crazy?
the x2 939 already is at 200mhz (400mhz DDR 1=200x2)
what type of ram do you have? 800mhz DDR 1? what the heck?
on top of that not all boards have asynchronous ram speed and fbs speed.
i dont recommend frying your ram to find out if your board can support asynchronous speeds.
i once had a sempron 3000 (socket A). it only supported DDR at 333mhz.
but i knew my MoBo was asyncronous so it was safe running ram at 400mhz and it did not overclocking the cpu at all.
YOU NEED TO BE 100% SURE YOU WONT FRY ANYTHING WITH YOUR OVERCLOCK.
anywayz amd says there is a degraded preformance with non sync. fbs and ram speeds but oh well.
I think you took that way to literally, he means a little over the normal 200mhz lol