Overclocking (Main Thread)

I’ve actually never owned a Dell motherboard myself, so I can't say I'm intimately familiar with every single little setting in the BIOS... But generally speaking, everything ought to run smoothly on the defaults if you just tweak the CPU voltage to match what you’ve physically set—you know, that 1.4V mark. Set the frequency to 400 and then look at the DRAM Voltage, which should be around 2.1V or maybe +0.3V depending on how the BIOS displays it. Those "Auto" settings aren't always the brightest idea, so you really want to stick to the defaults (the lowest values) for everything except for the CPU, obviously... 😁

Why not play around with it a bit? Maybe try setting the GTL Reference to something just a hair higher than the minimum value. And regarding that frequency adjustment... you might want to try dropping it down to 333MHz...

I wish I could give you some more concrete advice, but honestly, I'm far from being an expert, and since I haven't worked with a board like yours before, my hands are somewhat tied... 🙂

Edit: Oh, I see you managed to pull it off! Slow and steady wins the race, right? Those G0 chips don't require a massive amount of voltage, so please, don't go overboard unless it's absolutely necessary... 🙂

If you're running a setup with 4x1GB sticks, just be careful that the memory speed doesn't climb too high—we're talking 850MHz or more—because, as most people know, running four 1GB sticks is much harder to overclock than just using two 1GB sticks. Feel free to bump the RAM voltage up to somewhere between 2.1V and 2.2V if needed. Also, try switching the ratio to synchronous so it runs at a lower clock speed; that way, you can be sure the memory isn't the thing holding the whole system back...

There's an option on this board... Auto It’s just the default option. 😁

If I try to change things, it just asks me to enter the values manually, and I have zero clue what numbers I'm supposed to be plugging in for some of those options. 🤣

They say messing with the N/A causes board issues, so I stayed away. But when I actually tried to tweak it, my memory speed options just vanished. I gave up on it.

The worst part is I actually found some solid tutorials online for overclocking a few different CPUs on this board. They had everything—step-by-step breakdowns, BIOS screenshots, the whole nine yards. And yet, I'm still sitting here staring at a screen, having no clue why this isn't working. 😬

I'll give it a shot. There’s gotta be a catch somewhere... though honestly, even at 3 GHz, I'm perfectly happy. 🙂

wiredmarlin5 said:I can't really give you any solid advice here. I'm no expert, and I've never even worked with a board like that. 🙂

Thanks anyway. 👍

I'll check back in if I can figure something out. I'll only dive back into it once I have more time and patience—I really hate rebooting my PC. 😁

Give it everything you've got. I use an MSI board myself, so I know exactly how much of a headache difficult overclocking can be. I spent about two weeks just hunting for stable settings. 😁Maybe try loosening the latencies—set them to auto if you can—and play around with the memory multipliers. Personally, I get a BSOD whenever my latencies are off, so I just leave them on auto.

Looks like I’ll have to mess around with it. From what I can tell, the RAM is likely my bottleneck.

For now, I'm just going to leave it running 24/7. It’s working fine, and I don't see much point in pushing it further.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/8212/hzz.jpg

I mostly just wanted to overclock it a bit to run some benchmarks and see what happens. Just for the hell of it. 😁

Just grab two cookies and set aside 2x1GB for yourself so we can actually see what happens... 🙂

Or, if you want to make things even simpler, just finally track down that perfect 1:1 ratio... 😁

Wait, can memory actually limit how much I overclock my processor? If I push the memory clock up a bit, will that let me squeeze more Hz out of the CPU?

Taylor Campbell4 said:Wait, can memory actually limit how much I can overclock my CPU? Like, if I push the memory clock just a little bit higher, will that let me squeeze more MHz out of the processor?

Well, you see, on Intel chipsets, the memory speed scales up automatically alongside the system bus... it's all proportional, really! You have different dividers to play with—for instance, a 1:1 ratio where the system bus and the DIMM run in sync. If you're running something like a Q6600 at the default settings with a 266MHz bus, the memory ends up at 533MHz because of that 2x multiplier... but here is where things get tricky! When you start chasing those high speeds with something like an E8500—say, hitting 4500MHz by running a 500MHz bus times a 9.5 multiplier—the minimum frequency the memory needs to hit is 1000MHz, and honestly, not every single stick of DDR2 out there is going to handle that gracefully... plus, once you go and fill up every single memory slot on the motherboard, trying to overclock the RAM becomes a much bigger headache, which in turn makes overclocking any part of the processor itself way more difficult...

Think of it this way:

A single 1GB stick of Kingmax might hit 1020MHz at 2.2V...
But if you plug in two 1GB Kingmax sticks, you might only reach 960MHz at 2.2V...
And if you go ahead and fill all four slots with 1GB Kingmax sticks, you might find yourself stuck at 850MHz even at 2.2V... well, that's probably the simplest way to wrap my head around it...

Jeffrey Hill5 said:Hey! I want to overclock my Intel Celeron 2.53 GHz up to 2.9, so I'm wondering how to pull that off. The frequency is 133 and the multiplier is 19. The motherboard is an ASRock 775VM800.

Look, just crank up the N/A. Honestly, whether this Celeron runs at 2.5 or 3.5, you aren't going to see much of a difference. I personally clocked my P4 from 2.4 to 3.4 and only gained about 1000 points in 3DMark 03. Total waste of time if you ask me.

Taylor Campbell4 said:Can memory actually limit CPU overclocking? Like, if I bump up the memory clock slightly, will I be able to push the processor higher?

On older boards—like my old Abit ones—you could either underclock the RAM or set a specific ratio between the system clock and the DRAM so the memory wouldn't exceed its factory speed.

That way, I could hunt for a stable CPU overclock knowing the memory wasn't going to be the bottleneck.
That’s how it should work, really. If you try to crank both at once, you end up guessing whether it's the CPU or the RAM causing the instability.

But this current board won't let me underclock. If I try to run it below 800 MHz, I just get an "overclock failed" error and it kicks me straight back to the BIOS.

There has to be a trick. I tried what wiredmarlin5 suggested regarding adjusting settings, but that didn't quite do the trick either. 🤣

The only options left are what wiredmarlin5 mentioned: stick with 2 gigs, or maybe bump the voltage to 2.2V and set latencies to auto to see what happens.

The board doesn't give you much room to play around; if things go wrong, it just fails to boot and resets everything to defaults. Hopefully, I can get it working again. 😳 😁

Honestly, I have a feeling overclocking this board is actually pretty straightforward and I'm just overcomplicating it. 😁

It makes sense that bumping up the voltage leads to higher temperatures—that’s just physics. But I was wondering, does simply overclocking the CPU itself drive up the heat even if I don't touch the voltage? If it does, how much of an impact are we talking about? Would it be something significant, maybe upwards of 5 degrees?

James Morris4 said:I totally get that cranking up the voltage brings higher temps—that's just common sense. But does simply bumping up the CPU clock speed also drive up temperatures even if I don't touch the voltage? If it does, how much of a jump are we talking about? Is it significant, like more than 5 degrees?

Yeah, pushing the frequency definitely spikes the heat. When you're overclocking, temp is everything. You really don't want to see anything creeping past the 75-degree mark if you want to keep that processor healthy.

James Morris4 said:I get the logic—higher voltage means higher temps. But does just bumping up the CPU clock speed raise temperatures on its own, without touching the voltage? If so, how much? Are we talking a significant jump, say more than 5 degrees?

There isn't a set formula... but generally, you see a smaller temperature spike if you only increase the frequency rather than the voltage.

Why am I seeing different temps between my CPU cores?
Like, one core is sitting at 35C while the other is hitting 42C?

BTW, I'm running an AMD Athlon 5200 dual core with a stock cooler. No overclocking here.

I’m pretty sure this was already mentioned, but I must have missed it. Is cranking up the voltage on the PCIe slot just as risky as bumping up the CPU voltage? Does it actually lead to better GPU overclocking? Also, are the consequences of undervolting a processor the same as overvolting it—assuming we're talking about extreme levels of overvoltage?

You aren't going to see any meaningful performance gains just by cranking up the voltage or messing with the bus frequency. That’s only worth it if you're chasing extreme overclocking territory—trying to squeeze every last drop of power out of the machine.

Hey everyone!
I’m currently running an Intel Pentium D 915 (2.8 GHz), and I’ve managed to push the overclock up to about 3.9 or 4.0 GHz—hitting maybe slightly higher at 1.5V😢—but I honestly can't figure out what's holding me back... I've been bumping up the voltage and the speed just for the CPU, but should I be looking at adjusting the voltage on the chipset instead?
At 4.0 GHz, things stay relatively stable enough for me to get some gaming in
Has anyone else here managed to squeeze more performance out of this specific processor?

My current setup
CPU: Intel Pentium D 915 2.8 GHz @ 3.9 GHz - TtSonic tower rev2
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS (256 MB)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3
RAM: 2 GB total (1GB Kingmax (600MHz) + 512MB Kingmax (500MHz) + 512MB Transcend (500MHz))
PSU: Codegen 400W (Could this be part of the problem?)

post this screenshot

That CPU pulls a massive amount of power, and using that specific codegen isn't exactly a stroke of genius.

By the way, obviously it's overclocked... the record sits at 7GHz.

http://www.ripping.org/database.php?cpuid=513

Here is the link
If you can't see the quote properly, please just let me know—I'll be more than happy to snap another photo for you!
Regarding the power supply, I'm planning on picking up this one link

How does one exit the BIOS?
Thanks—I’m a total newbie, so deal with it.

Exit and save, or just exit without saving?