Overclocking (Main Thread)

I’ve decided to try my hand at overclocking, though I’ve never done this before, so I would appreciate some guidance...

To start, here is my current setup:

CPU: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz (hyperthreading) (FSB 800)
Motherboard: Abit IS7 series
RAM: 1x512MB generic
GPU: ATI Radeon 9200, 128MB (garbage)
And most importantly, the cooler: Zalman 7000, installed yesterday🙂

I assume that's enough information for now... what's next...?

Oh, I forgot to mention how much I want to overclock it; just a tiny bit to start with.

Look, if you're too chicken to mess with the voltage, then don't touch it. Period. Just bump up the Front Side Bus by maybe 2 or 3 MHz at a time, reboot the damn thing, and run a benchmark—PCMark 04, for example. Just keep cycling through tests until everything goes to hell or Windows refuses to even boot. That's how you do it.
Then you just dial it back by like 2 or 3 MHz and boom—everything’s fine. Problem solved.
You really ought to set that memory to 2-2-2-6 or something close to it. Trust me on this one.👍

Look, from what I know about the Pentium 4, it should easily hit 3GHz. I even have a buddy who’s pushing his up to 3.6GHz—he says it's all about cranking that voltage.

By the way, anyway... PC Expert US I've got a few articles on overclocking scattered around—go check out their forum—plus I’ve put together some stuff over in the tutorials section.👍

Good luck!

I can't even deal with this right now. Absolute garbage. Total waste of my damn time!
Mr. ex President😁

Hey, Mr. ex President:
That link you shared isn't working right... you might want to take another look at it.😁
And hey, feel free to just delete my post later if you need to... no big deal.👋

It's fixed.. 😉

So.. if you actually want to play games, then 😬
just bump up the Front Side Bus slowly, kind of like how Mr. ex President says, just a little bit at a time.. I don't think anything bad will happen..

You definitely need to wait until Windows fully loads (it's a drag, but you really have to)

If there comes a point where Windows won't boot up, just dial the speed back by 4 or 5 MHz... and that should do it..

I'm not sure what memory you're running, but since the PC is already working fine on an FSB 800, I'm guessing it probably won't perform any better than 2.5-3-3-10 🤔

Tyler Lee57 said:I'm itching to overclock my system. Never done it before, so I could really use some guidance...

Here’s the starting lineup:

CPU: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz (hyperthreading) (FSB 800)
Mobo: Abit IS7 series
RAM: 1x512 generic
GPU: ATI Radeon 9200, 128mb (total junk)
And most importantly, the cooler: Zalman 7000, just installed yesterday 🙂

That should be enough info for now... So, what's next?

Oh, forgot to mention—I don't want to go crazy right away. Just a little bit at first.

Alright.

If you see the option, disable Spread Spectrum in your BIOS.
Keep the memory locked at 400 MHz.
Set AGP to 66 MHz.
Set PCI to 33 MHz.

Your CPU should handle up to an FSB of 250 without bumping the voltage—meaning 1.525V. That gets you to 3 GHz.

Personally, I’d suggest jumping straight to a 266 MHz FSB and bumping the voltage to 1.5625V. That puts you at 3.2 GHz.
If that runs stable without Windows crashing on you, try dropping the voltage back down to 1.5V.

Anything beyond that requires more voltage.

To hit 3.42 GHz (FSB 285), you’re looking at at least 1.575 V.

For 3.6 GHz (FSB 300), you’ll need 1.6 V (though it was unstable for me).

I haven't pushed past that, and I'm not going any further without water cooling.

If you have questions, just shoot me a PM.

So, if you're looking for a way to check if your system can actually handle the heat, this stability testing tool might just be the gold standard; I've always felt that if you can get through a solid 15 minutes of testing without a hiccup, you can rest easy knowing your CPU overclock won't suddenly pull the rug out from under you right when you need it most. 🙂

Prime95
Just head over to options->torture test->and then select the second option there.

http://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v238.exe

I'm running a Pentium 4 2.6 and an ATI Radeon 9200
Is there any way to overclock this setup, and if so, what's the process?

Yeah, and the motherboard is an Asus P4S800

Alex Palmer66 said:I've got a Pentium 4 2.6 and an ATI Radeon 9200
Can I overclock this setup? If so, how do I actually do it?

Check the other thread where everything is laid out in detail.👍
The GPU doesn't matter when you're talking about the CPU overclock.🙂 The card has its own specific overclocking process, but honestly, don't even bother—that card is garbage when it comes to overclocking.

WTF.
Mr.Ex.President😁

If anyone’s looking to overclock their Intel chips, hit me up in the DMs. I’m happy to walk you through the process and help you squeeze some extra speed out of your rig. 👍

I haven't messed around much with AMD stuff, though.😢

Hey guys, what’s considered a normal temperature for an Athlon 2500 when I've got it overclocked to 3000?

So, looking at my CoreCP temps, if I’m really pushing it and hitting that 100% utilization, it climbs up to about 65°C, but when I'm just idling, it sits somewhere around 49-50°C.

The overall CPU temp stays right around 40°C, while the system stays at 33°C and my hard drive usually hangs out at about 23°C.

I’m a little confused by the difference between the CoreCP reading and the standard CPU reading, though. Okay, I get that the first one measures the actual core—basically where the heat hits the cooler—but what exactly is the second one picking up?

just look at the core...that peak temperature right there...
you're pushing it a bit too far....it’s probably just a bad seating job with the heatsink or maybe it's just struggling to keep up...if it's some cheap junk, swap it out now—summer's coming and you don't want this thing hitting 90 degrees when things heat up.

also...your CPU acts like a 3000+ even on stock settings, but you'd be better off bumping it up a notch...maybe try 1.675-1.7

The voltage bump isn't even massive—we're talking less than 1% here. It won't kill your CPU, though it does run a little warmer. But honestly? The stability you get in return is well worth it.

Raymond Rodriguez40 said:just look at the core temperature... that peak number...
honestly, I think you're running a bit too hot... it’s probably just that your heatsink isn't seated perfectly or maybe the thermal paste isn't spreading quite right... if it's some cheap off-brand thing, I'd say just swap it out now because once those summer heatwaves hit, you'll be sweating bullets seeing temps hit 90!!

also... even though it's an Athlon 2500, it should run fine on stock settings, but you might get a little more out of it if you bump it up slightly... maybe try something like 1.675-1.7

The cooler is some random unbranded one—it's definitely not a Zalman or anything recognizable—but it does have a copper base and aluminum fins.

Anyway, I just ran some tests after spending about two hours absolutely tearing through Far Cry 😁 and the temp was sitting at 54C. I got pretty much the same result after playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, too. I actually tried bumping up the voltage a bit to see what would happen, but honestly, it didn't make any difference to the stability at all, and the only downside was that the temperature climbed a little higher, so I just dialed it back down to the default settings.

goldenowl73 said:The cooler is some off-brand thing, I don't think it's Zalman or anything recognizable, but it does have a copper base and aluminum fins.

So, I just checked my temps after grinding Far Cry for about two hours 😁 and it's sitting at 54C. Same thing happened after playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. I tried messing around with the voltage to see if I could bump things up, but I guess it didn't really change the stability much, though the temps did climb a little bit, so I probably should've just left it at the defaults.

Honestly, that sounds pretty okay to me, like everything is running fine... I mean, you aren't exactly expecting miracles from a random cooler, but if everything stays stable, then it's all good I guess. 😉

I forgot to mention what happened when I tried to overclock my rig. I bumped it up to 3.0 GHz, hit save and exit, and while the PC was still running, I lost the video signal completely. After rebooting, I was just stuck staring at a black screen with a BIOS failure error, telling me to insert a system floppy disk...
WELL, I NEARLY HAD A HEART ATTACK, man. I kept cycling the power a few times until I finally managed to get back into the BIOS, reset everything to the default 2.4 GHz, and successfully booted back into Windows.....

Tyler Lee57 said:I totally forgot to mention what happened when I tried overclocking my rig. I bumped it up to 3.0 GHz and hit save and exit, and the PC actually stayed running, but then the signal to my monitor just cut out completely. So I shut it down and rebooted, but all I got was a black screen with some BIOS failure message telling me to insert a system floppy disk... (you know, one of those old floppies)
Man, I almost had a heart attack, Tyler Lee57, seriously. I ended up power cycling it a few times until I finally managed to get back into the BIOS, reset everything back to the default 2.4 GHz, and eventually made it back into Windows.....

..but honestly, that's not really a disaster at all 😉

you just go ahead and reset the CMOS—there's usually a jumper on the motherboard—and pretty much just like that, everything is back to factory defaults 😉

dustypilot23 said:..it’s really not that big of a deal.😉

Just hit that CMOS reset jumper on the motherboard and boom—everything's back to factory defaults.😉

Honestly, most decent boards just reset the BIOS settings themselves if you push things too far (at least my MSI board does).

And if you don't feel like poking around the hardware, just pull the plug from the wall for a minute, plug it back in, and the PC should boot right up using the default BIOS settings.

Tyler Lee57 said:I forgot to mention what happened when I tried to overclock my rig. I bumped it up to 3.0, hit save and exit, and the PC kept running, but then I lost the video signal. After a reboot, I just got a black screen saying "BIOS failure" and asking for a system floppy disk... (yeah, a literal floppy)
MAN, YOU ALMOST GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK, Tyler Lee57. I was sweating bullets there. I ended up power cycling it a few times until I finally reached the BIOS, reset everything back to 2.4, and managed to boot into Windows.....

That’s pretty standard when you start messing with overclocking.
It basically means you either didn't bump the voltage high enough, or you let the memory clock scale right along with the CPU.
You pushed the FSB to 250, which puts the RAM at 500 MHz, and clearly your sticks can't handle that speed. Maybe increasing the voltage would help.
Your best bet is probably just locking it at 400 MHz in the BIOS.

Then again, looking back at your old posts, maybe you should just leave the hardware alone and save the heart attacks for when you're older.

So, here’s the situation.....

I just picked up:

Intel Pentium 4 (333 MHz)
an epox 8rda3i board with an nForce 2 chipset
512 MB of DDR SuperRAM from Kingmax (400 MHz)

What is the best way to tweak my BIOS settings to squeeze out every last drop of performance? I want maximum output, but please—no soldering involved. I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing with a soldering iron, nor do I own the tools for such madness. I'm strictly talking about software adjustments within the BIOS... oh, and by the way, the heatsink came with the processor; I just bought the retail box version.

Thanks,