Overclocking?

[antc101]

Overclocking? I have no idea what to do to make it happen.
I know what overclocking is (breifly ) but I have NO idea how to go about it.

What does it involve? Is it an easy task? Anyone prepared to give me a step by step guide in the process?

If anyone would like to help me, I have an Athlon K7 500MHz, 64MB RAM.

Any help please? I've read some guides to overclocking Athlons but at the end of it, I was just like this - " "

Thanks in advance

Antony

[Greebe]

That's simple enough...

But I need to know what you skill level is first... ie do you want to hardwire your cpu which requres soldering or would you prefer attaching a GFD (Golden Finger Device)... here's a list of the later...

http://www.top.or.jp/~yuyu/finger.htm

[antc101]

erm, i see the "$" symbol on there. I'm cheap so I guess I'ma have to do that soldering thingy-majig thing.

My skill level is * makes fart noise * when it comes to over clocking. I have a reasonable knowledge when it comes to hardware though

[Tempest]

Overclocking is not going to do you much good if the rest of your system is inadequate. So if there's any chance that you could afford to buy more memory (it's cheap now), please do. It will make your system fly. Also consider forgetting the damn overclocking thing. There's always a risk that you'll damage your system.

With that said, here follows the Tempest Overclocking Epic for the Athlon Classic processor.

There are 2 basic things that affect the MHz speed of your processor: The CPU (Central Processing Unit) bus, and the CPU multiplier. The bus in Athlon "Classic" (non-Thunderbird) processors is 100 MHz DDR (Double Data Rate), therefore you can sometimes see it referred to as a 200 MHz bus.

The basic equation is this:
CPU_Speed = CPU_Multiplier * CPU_Bus_Speed

For example, your Athlon uses the multiplier 5 and the bus speed 100 MHz, which equals 500 MHz.

Let's first discuss system bus overclocking. Bus speed adjustment is not possible on all motherboards. On motherboards that allow you to change the system bus, it can be implemented in 2 ways: Bus speeds are either changed with small DIP switches on the mainboard, or changed using your computer's BIOS. I recall (?) that CPU soldering can also be used to change the bus speed on Athlon CPUs but that can be considered a little too "extreme" for most people.
The problem with bus overclocking is that it changes more than just your CPU bus speed: Raising the bus speed also affects the rest of the system, including system memory and components that control the input/output for disk controllers and speeds with which the motherboard and different expansion cards communicate with each other. So, how much your bus speed can be upped is not only dependant on your processor, it is also dependant on how well the rest of your components tolerate this.
What's worse, the consequences are not always immediately apparent - your computer's hard disk could corrupt data little by little without you knowing it, or the computer could start locking up randomly because your graphics card is not able to handle the data at the new rate under certain conditions.

Then there is the CPU multiplier. This is locked on all newer Intel CPUs, and AMD has also tried to make multiplier changing more difficult. On older Athlon CPUs such as your Athlon, multiplier changing is possible in two ways: Soldering (also here considered a little "extreme"), or using a GFD (Golden Fingers Device). Both of these methods require you to remove the plastic casing on top of the CPU (BEWARE: people have managed to destroy their Athlons with being too eager in this process). Instructions for removing the casing on your Athlon CPU can be found on the net.
GFD:s can be bought (although they can be hard to find), or - if you're handy - you can make one yourself (instructions for this are floating 'round the net). The GFD is then connected to the top of your Athlon CPU. Small swithes on the GFD can be used to adjust the CPU multiplier as well as the operation voltage of the CPU.

Operation voltage? What has this got to do with overclocking? Well, to understand this, we've better think about how the microprocessors are made: All Athlon processors, independent of the MHz speed they were sold at in shops, were made on the same manufacturing line. After they were ready, they were tested for the speed they could run. Due to differences in the manufacturing process, some were able to do 900 MHz stably, while others could only manage a puny 500 MHz (sorry ). Some were not even able to do that, these were "thrown away", discarded. The processors were then arranged on the shelves according to their testing speeds. The processors sat in the shelf, waiting for someone to order them. When an order came, the processors were assembled into their cute little plastic cases and the speed was marked on top of the casing.
But sometimes it could happen that 550 MHz Athlons were ordered, but due to the excellent manufacturing process they did not have enough processors that could only do 550 MHz. So they took, for example, 600 MHz Athlon processors, changed their multiplier to 5.5 and downmarked their casings to 550 MHz.
So, especially when considering the early Athlons, it was very possible that a person who cracked open the case of his/her Athlon found a faster core than what was marked on the casing. This is why early Athlons were the favourites of overclockers: You bought an 550 MHz Athlon, found it was equipped with an 650 MHz core and could thus easily overclock to speeds excelling 800 MHz. Call that value for your money!
Oh yes, the voltage thing. Let's just say that even a processor that's real core speed is 550 MHz might be able do 800 MHz. The problem with this is that due to the impurities that got into it in the manufacturing phase, it conducts electricity worse than it's 800 MHz counterpart. So with the same operation voltage, some electric signals might be too weak or distorted to operate the processor at 800 MHz. This can be solved by amplifying the signals in the processor by using a stronger voltage for the impulses. The problem with this is that more electricity means more heat, and when there's too much heat the processor can't operate. Conclusion: Heat is the overclocker's worst enemy, so (not speaking of peltiers, watercooling etc) at least a good heatsink/fan combo is needed. Not to mention that early Athlon processors were pretty hungry about power even without overclocking, so another conclusion would have to be that to successfully overclock an Athlon system, a good power supply is needed.

Moving into more advanced subjects, another thing that could stop you from overclocking the early Athlon might be the speed of your L2 cache chips. The later Thunderbird Athlons have an internal 256 KB L2 cache that runs at the same speed as the processor itself, but the first Athlons had two external L2 cache chips totalling 512 KB. Depending on the speed at which the Athlon was sold, these chips' speed (cache divider) was either 1/2, 2/5 or 1/3 times the speed of the core itself. So, for example, the 500 MHz Athlon's L2 cache speed was 250 MHz (1/2*500), the 750 MHz Athlons had a 300 MHz L2 (2/5*750) and the 1000 MHz Athlon has 333 MHz cache chips (1/3*1000).
This leads to trouble when overclocking, and just overclocking the 500 MHz Athlon to 800 MHz would be nearly impossible since the cache chips on slower Athlons are usually not the best one can find. The overclocking would require cache chips that can take 1/2*800 = 400 MHz, which is way too much for most chips. To solve the problem, some later motherboard BIOSes sport an option to change the L2 cache divider. For other motherboards, there have been different kinds of BIOS hacks as well as utilities that can run on system startup to change the divider of the L2 chips.

Both the speed of the cache chips and the real speed of the core can be seen after the plastic casing of the Athlon has been removed. If you wish to try the soldering, sorry - I can't help you with that because I'm not much of a solderer myself.

-Tempest

System 1:
Athlon Classic 850 @ 9*113 = 1017 MHz, NinjaMicros FreeSpeed Pro GFD
System 2:
Athlon Classic 500 with 600 core @ 7*105 = 735 MHz, NinjaMicros FreeSpeed Pro GFD

[cbman]

What He Said

[Technoid]

If you only have 64MB overclocking wont help much speed wise.

[antc101]

er yeah great. i just went out and bought a new 1.2GHz proccessor, 512MB ram along with a new motherboard. After I read what you said, I thought screw it.

Thanks anyway

Antony

[Tempest]

[Greebe]

Well when you want to OC that one we'll be waiting

(sure glad I didn't bother posting all the details on howto now!

[antc101]

er yeah, i wanna overclock this bitch... only joking, i'm not blowing up my proccessor

Antony

[Maggi]

chicken ...

[Greebe]

Blow it up! LOL now there's a laugh Aye Maggi!

Dude your talking directly to the guy who can tell you how to do it all to an Athlon without risk if you're careful and follow the advise verbatim.

If your squeemish in the slightest or have no experience with OCing a cpu, then your best bet is to do exactly what you have done... buy a faster cpu/system.

[The PIT]

Overclocking frying your cpu .

The only way you'll fry your cpu is by jumping in to deap. For example overclocking a 600mhz cpu to 900mhz with a standard heatsink.

The ways to ensure good overclocking.

1) Buy a good big heatsink and check that it fits with your motherboard before buying. Check out reviews first to get the best one around. Also get good quality heat paste.

2) Make sure your case is well ventilated.

3) Get good quality memory

4) Make sure you've got a motherboard monitor software installed so you can watch the temps of your cpu.

5) Make sure you got a good powersupply.

6) Make sure you've got a good motherboard for overclocking some are better than others. Forums are good places to look they'll tell you things that reviewers don't or can't be bothered to tell you.

7) Once installed make sure theres no wires that block the air access to the cpu.

8) Check everything runs properly before you start. It's no good overclocking a unstable system as you'll only make it worse. Yes we've had plonkers on here that overclocked a crashing system.

9) Venture nervously into your Bios and depending on your cpu adjust the clock mulitpliers and fsb or clock mulipliers only for athlon/duron or fsb for PIII/celerys. Don't go for the high numbers striaght away. Check you cpu temps and stability all the way.

After that it's down to voltages and memory timings to fine tune your system.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by The PIT
Overclocking frying your cpu .

The only way you'll fry your cpu is by jumping in to deap. For example overclocking a 600mhz cpu to 900mhz with a standard heatsink.
...

But I use a standard HS on my Celery ...
(I just added a 2nd fan)

Anyways, of course The PIT is right in general, but I found out that it is really hard to physically damage your CPU and I'm OCing mine like crazy, thus there's no real need to worry.

If the machine doesn't boot at a certain setting, just lower the clocks back and try again, but sometimes this procedure is really adrenalin pumping and thus nothing for the weak hearted, literally spoken ...

[The PIT]

Come on Maggi I can't catering for all cases. Next someone will come in and say stick it in a fridge.
It's fun getting a 200 mhz or more just for the cost a good heatsink though.