Vista - To Overclock or Not Overclock?

To Overclock or Not Overclock? That is the question!
Well some people say Yes some people say No.
What's your opinion?
What are the benefits?
What are the risks\disadvantages?

I have a Q6600 running at 3.4ghz , stock is 2.4 , all it cost me was 20 quid for an Arctic Freezer 7 pro cooler and a fiver for some silver heatsink paste and a bit of my time (actually alot of my time )

the benifits are a 3.4ghz cpu for the cost of a 2.4

the risks are minimal IF you know what your doing , and you can keep the temperatures down , i assume it reduces the life of your CPU but im a gamer as are most who overclock so ive never kept any hardware for long anyway

I OVERCLOCK.....

but i built this rig specifically for it, so its equipped to do it properly....

if you OC you have to be prepared for problems, running H/W above stock frequencies can cause a mountain of different issues, or it can be effortless, all H/W has varying stress factors regardless of what it says on paper...

2 matching CPUs for instance may have different voltage needs, or simply 1 will run far hotter than the other, its the luck of the draw...

you must also be prepared for your H/W to die, from time to time...... RAM is especially vulnerable (i went through 3 sets last year alone )

but the benefit of a good OC can do wonders for overall performance at a great price, but its not for everyone, 100 BSOD's to get it stable is not some ppl's cup of tea...lol




SK

only 100 bsod's , your lucky....... I got loads more , but finally getting it all right , all voltages and timings sweet , and waking up and checking your Prime 95 thats been running 8 hours and seeing NO errors on all 4 worker threads.........priceless

and running 10 passes if intel burn test on maximum stress and passing , but wondering if your cpu will stand 75 degrees c for much longer!!

I'd second what everyone else says about getting a faster CPU for the price of a lower one.

However I should note that it's possible to overclock without really doing much of anything, or worrying about frying your components. Hell I even have an old Athlon XP box still running that was overclocked, and it's a good 8 years old now. Overclocking doesn't necessarily mean you're running the equipment faster than it can handle.

For example, my Q9450 went from 2.6 to 3.4 at first try. My voltages are stock for everything. The only thing I had to do was set the FSB to 425. That's it, and honestly I could have stuck with the stock cooler probably. Faster than 425 it starts to get unstable, but it could go faster if I played with voltages, but I don't want to as I want this to last a few years as it will be handed down when I build an i7 box later this year.

Where you risk frying components is when you start increasing voltages. I even have some room to play with voltage if I want before I have to worry, but it's plenty fast enough until I get an i7, and it will be around plenty of years after I do.

Sure, I played with some RAM timings and such but that was for tinkering and fun mostly. I bought faster 1066 RAM as it's spec'd to run at 2.1V. I don't have any concerns about it burning out.

whats the advantages of over clocking? how can we do it?

Overclocking is all about getting more out of your hardware. Like when I built my PC, I was originally wanting to get an E8400 CPU at 3GHz, but found an E8200 on sale for £40 less at just 2.66GHz. I easily overclocked this to 3GHz, so it more or less runs as an E8400 now, and it benches the same as an E8400 at 3GHz too.

It's best to overclock CPUs/RAM in the BIOS and graphic cards in something like riva tuner. Best to read a few guides on how to overclock first as the more you overclock, the harder it gets with finding the best voltages and trying to stick to a 1:1 with your CPU:RAM ratio.

So my processor is Intel Core 2 Duo T 5550 (laptop) @ 1.83 GHZ. Can i over clock it to run @ 2 GHz? Please Please Please Please help me out how can i over clock it?
i m running windows 7 32-bit but i always wanted to go for a 2 GHz processor. Moreover i have 2 GB RAM 667 MHz. i have a multipage BIOS with the following options: Main, Advanced, Power, Boot, Security and Exit.
How can i overclock my processor?
Please Advise!!!

Try thinking you've nailed it when P95 passes 8hrs and then app crashes at 9hours... or passing IBT with 15 runs and then failing one residual-norm with 20... not so priceless

But since I paid for a 2.8ghz chip and am currently getting 3.6Ghz out of it (with room for more) I can't complain

@dinesh

Even if you could BIOS based OC a laptop, it's not a good idea. Heat would be a killer in a laptop.

i wouldn't bother dinesh......

laptops get very hot by default, increasing voltages or FSB would only make it hotter, which WILL lead to all sorts of S/W issues before it decides to die.....





SK