2 overclock or not to?

[68DevilM]

is it easy and should i bother?

[humble]

It'll depend on your MB. Many newer ones are made to overclock. It lierally is either bios controllable...or even has a utility like gigabyte thats slider controlled.

My DFI lanparty is OCable from bois on MB. My X800pro (gigabyte) has a utility that lets me OC it right up to blowing it out.

Its not at all hard to overclock moderately....going beyond that takes siginificant skill and understanding. Managing heat is the biggest issue...the more you OC the hotter everything runs...

[68DevilM]

would that just be upping your front side bus?

btw nice fighting ya today

[Overlag]

you've already got the fastest cpu.... most clawhammer cores wont do much more than 2500-2600 without modding/extra cooling or extreme cooling

if you had a 3200 (2200mhz) core id say go for it, an extra 200-400mhz would be nice. however i dont see you getting to much out of your core. though i could be wrong......

edit: you have got a nice MB for overclocking though, you could always try running at higher memory speed with a lower multiplyer...depends on how good your ram is though

[humble]

Originally posted by 68DevilM
would that just be upping your front side bus?

btw nice fighting ya today

cc were some fun fights ....

Upping your FSB is easiest...but mem OCing also...+ video card

With your system you really dont have the need. You could bump your FSB to 210 pretty easily...might need to tweak voltage a bit but not sure. I had mine a 220 but it was too hot under load in AH....if your curious bumb your FSB to 205 or so and play for 30 min or so....see if you get instsbility or heat issues....

[Overlag]

Originally posted by humble
cc were some fun fights ....

Upping your FSB is easiest...but mem OCing also...+ video card

With your system you really dont have the need. You could bump your FSB to 210 pretty easily...might need to tweak voltage a bit but not sure. I had mine a 220 but it was too hot under load in AH....if your curious bumb your FSB to 205 or so and play for 30 min or so....see if you get instsbility or heat issues....

that board should support AGP/PCI lock. However i seem to remember issues with SATA over 220-230 on Nforce3 boards...not sure what controler though.

as humble says, raise it by 3-5mhz, test for a day or two in AHII then raise again.... untill you hit problems.

I also recommend using Memtest+ which uses a floppy disk to run some memory tests on your ram. This will be a good thing to check FIRST, running at least 1 test each time you up the FSB. The test takes 15-20minutes for 1gig ram. Any errors that show up, you either need to back down your fsb alittle, or increase timing on the memory. If its Ballistix crucial you have, you need to be using 2.8volts as standard, and it should be good for 2.5-3-3-8 @ 250mhz 1t.

Next tool i recommend is Prime95 and run the torture tests, with small FTT's. This will stress the FPU units in the cpu, which are normaly one of the first things to fail when running faster than they can handle. This tests is "endless" though. I normaly run it 8hours or so, ie during work or sleeping. If memtest fails, Prime will fail too. But sometimes Memtest will pass (ie good memory speed) but prime will fail. That means memory is fine, cpu is too fast.

[OOZ662]

Heya guys. I've heard about "unlocking pipes" on a video card. What is a pipe, what are the ups/downs of doing it?

[Overlag]

yes, there is a slight possibility of unlocking "pipes" on that card.

Pipes are, kinda like paths data takes to get proccessed. the more pipes the card has the more work it can do per mhz.

Disabling undamaged pipes (or selling slightly damaged cores) at lower grades makes it cheaper for the gfx chip maker.

ALL 6800s are the same core. theres 4x4 setup in 6800s. IE if they disable 1 batch of pipes they are disabling 4....

6800ultra and 6800gt have 4x4 = 16
6800 has 3x4 = 12
6800le has 2x4 = 8

the Pipes are still there, they are just disabled. Maybe because they are damaged, or maybe (and more likely) because Nvidia sell alot more of the lower end cards they they do top end. The main problem with enabing pipes on that 6800 is the memory bandwidth doesnt match. the ultra and gts have much faster memory onboard, and its needed to take advantage of the extra pipelines. Without that bandwidth, the 6800, with 16 pipes probably wont get much improvement, so you will need to overclock the ram also.......

ATI do the same,
X800XTPE/X850XT and X800XT/X850XT have 4x4 = 16
X800pro/X850pro has 3x4 = 12
X800 has 2x4 = 8
X800XL is a different core design and has the full 16, but at a much lower mhz.

[OOZ662]

Thanks for the reply. One last question for furture refernce, will unlocking the pipes create more heat on the card?

[Overlag]

yes.

[redviper]

A very wise man once said, "if u want everything to run right, than don't overclock."  It is a good way to get more performance but i don't think that the risks are worth it.  I almost screwed up my whole comp just loweing the latancies on my ram.  It seems as if u already have a good system and that u don't need it.  The only people who should realy need it are the people who have nothing to loose and have realy bad comps:)

[38ruk]

i have a 3400+(newcastle) and ive pushed it from 2400mhz to 2808mhz on air with a volcano 12 venus, it would run 3dmark03 fine, but AH2 wasnt so stable.  i gained in the area of 8-10 fps in high traffic areas. with an x800 pro. i had a 9800 pro and when i was clocked at 2.8ghz i noticed maybe 3-5 fps difference . Im not sure but with the 9800 pro i figured it was the bottle neck in my system at that point . But in order to get the 234 fsb out of the memory i had to back the memory timings off to 3-3-3-11 to mantain a stable overclock. most 64's like the lower latency ram , so it was kind of a trade off to clock that high . what i settled on  was a front side bus of 220 which = 2640 mhz so i could run at cas CL 2.5, and get AH2 stable  .   watch your temps , i wouldnt run a cpu over 55c under load , mine runs at 41c idle 52c load.

 If your happy with what you have , leave it . If not do small increments at a time and see how it goes , just try not to cook eggs off it hehe 38

Edit:  I had a evga 6800 it was simple to unlock the pipes and vertex shaders with rivatuner, but mine had bad pipes on the last set , tons of artifacts. I was simple enuff to set back, so no harm was done. here is a link to a step by step guide to do it.  GL .. 38
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1500237&enterthread=y

[eagl]

I've had really bad luck with AH and overclocking.

I bought all the "right" parts, read all the FAQs, downloaded a half dozen stress testers, and at the end of the week I had my computer sitting on what was otherwise a rock-solid 15% overclock.  I could run prime95 stress test for days, memcheck86 for days, rithdrbl and prime95 system stress for days, 3dmark2001 and 3dmark2005 endless loops, and not a single glitch or error.  Ran doom3 for a few hours with no problems either.

Run AH2, and it crashed within an hour.  Crap.

The best I can get out of the system with AH2 stable is a crummy 5% overclock, so I brought it all down to stock and that's where it is now.  Granted I never did take the time to isolate whether it was a memory or cpu glitch, but my point is that AH2 brought down my computer where no other stress test would.  That sorta sucks.  Maybe I'll try a new cpu heatsink and see if lower temps will help, but as skuzzy will tell you, AH2 doesn't really run all that reliably on overclocked systems for some reason.  "stable" overclocked systems end up crashing when running AH2, and it's not really obvious if the problem is in the cpu, memory, video card, or mobo chipset.

Feel free to experiment with overclocking but realize you may get a handful of disco deaths on your stats.

[humble]

eagl....

You hit it right on the nose...in fact you posted a couple of helpful things back when I was messing with it. No matter how solid rig was AH stressed it out...even at moderate OC the heat issue made it impractical for the minimal FR gain...beyond the 5-6% range it would throw anomilies after less than an hour....or lock up.

[LePaul]

I cranked my system up back when it was new and watched the heat level get a little too high for comfort, despite all the top-notch cooling fans, yada yada

I've had some friends get great results pumping it up...and others fizzle, dry or get damaged doing so.

So, for me...I leave it alone.