wasn’t where to put this so if its in the wrong place, please move it 
i’ve heard alot about overclocking, questions are
what is it?
what does it do?
what a the cons of doing it?
how is it done?
is there any point in me doing it to my AMD Sempron?
I surpose I better put my 2 euro’s in here :chuckle:
Don’t believe em honest I know nothing <cough> <cough>
Overclocking in its simplist form is just increasing the processor frequency to gain additonal speed.
I.e. If your Sempron ran at 2ghz at say 10x multipler by 200mhz bus speed then for example increasing the bus speed to 210 would give a 5+% increase with your processor running at 2.1ghz
Many here have and still do, therefore many here can guide in the black art of overclocking.
Pro’s… Additional performace gains depending on what you do or require your pc to do… if you run one of our distributed computing projects than speed tweaking is going to help your crunching times.
Cons… If pushed to far you’ll make the system unstable, and again if cruching projects will result in invalid work units being returned.
Processor will run at higher temps which needs to be monitored a temp greater than 60deg C using a motherboard temp sensor is considered generally an upper limit or 75deg C if reading the built in Thermal diode.
Max temp if I remember correct is something like 85-90 degc for the core temp.
I think most people see temps in the high 30’s to mid 50’s all depends on processor configurations, heatsinks in use, CPU voltage and how much extra overclocking is taken on.
TBH its all quite easy when you understand the basics.
I’d think long and hard about what you do with your PC and give us a insight to your PC usage… Crunching / Gaming Rig or general word processing/ internet use for example.
Then we can all take it from there, but basically all adjustments are done though the computers bios that steps through the initial routines while 1st starting the computer, you will see at some point a message e.g Hit F12 for bios or Hit Delete or insert or whatever.
i overclocked my AMD 2500xp+ from running at 1836mhz to little under 3000mhz
i have no idea what the AMD to Pentium conversion of that would be, but i like to think its a nice 4000xp+ Give or take [if they was to make one]
it lasted about 15 minutes until it showed it was unstabled, so i brought it back down… that lasted for abuot 3 weeks til that acted up, so i brought it down… then that acted up, so i brought it down to 2200mhz making it a 3200xp+ that lasted about 2 months, then started going wrong…
so brought it down, and down and down… now im back and STOCK SPEED, and my CPU runs very very hot… massivly hoter than it used to before i started messing with it… and wont even boot windows if i take it any higher by even the smallest amount…
so, my advice, if u do go overclocking… Dont go crazy… unless u got the ££ to spend buying a new Chip First… [which i didnt - or still dont]
in my next post, i will show u a small picTurial of how to overclock the simplist way.
Then I’ll post to show you the right way :chuckle:
@ Worms… Heatsink off… Clean CPU and Heatsink… Apply Small pea size drop of Arctic Silver paste in middle of CPU (2mm size pea;))…Reapply Heatink…Bios… make sure Voltage is 1.65v… check temps at 1833mhz leave to bed 2 day’s recheck temp
report back in new thread.
One thing about overclocking to high speeds is the cost of running it compared to buying the faster chip.
Faster CPU uses less power to acheive those speeds therefore cheaper to run.
Oh lord ofthe OC…(pmm)
Iwashaving some troubleswith my pc and it died…
soi rebuilt everything withnew mobo and hard drive but everything else was the same.
the chip is a Barton 2.8…or atleast i think it is…
thats what it was running at in my last PC.
but in this setup its running at 1.2ghz rather that 2.8ghz…
the bios says 100mhz… i changed it to 120 wich madethe chip run at 1.9ghz…
but i changed it back becuase i dont havea clue what im doing tbh.
any tips oh guru?
[QUOTE=andylamb;364871]Oh lord ofthe OC…(pmm)
Iwashaving some troubleswith my pc and it died…
soi rebuilt everything withnew mobo and hard drive but everything else was the same.
the chip is a Barton 2.8…or atleast i think it is…
thats what it was running at in my last PC.
but in this setup its running at 1.2ghz rather that 2.8ghz…
the bios says 100mhz… i changed it to 120 wich madethe chip run at 1.9ghz…
but i changed it back becuase i dont havea clue what im doing tbh.
any tips oh guru?[/QUOTE]
Try setting to Optimised Defaults in the Bios.
tryed that and nothing.
if i recalli hadasimilar problem with another board wichwas agigabyte board andit was markone that fixed it by removing jumper thing from the board.
this oneis an asus board of some kind think it could be that?
Aah yes, set the jumper from 100 to 133 or something like that.
What model board is it?
Knowing the board would help but a Barton 2800 runs at 2083mhz on a 166 bus
Therefore your bios needs to be setup for a frontside bus of 166 with a multiplier of 12.5x again if you have any volatge adjustments make sure its 1.65v for that chip.
Some boards did have an onboard jumper for setting the default base speed i.e. 100/133/166/200 I’d suggest having a gander in the manual if you have it.
You must have ram capable of running the 166mhz speed else you will also need to set the divider on the ram to get it at an exceptable speed.
End of day nothing to hard to sort… Better sorted in a new thread though as to not distract from the 1st post.
ok, all that went through one ear and out the other
i’ve got a sempron 2800 btw, i just realy need a slight speed increase, it currently runsa t around 1.6ghz, if i could get it to 1.7 ish (give or take 500mhz) that would be fine for me 
Give us more details of the ram / motherboard in use.
There is plenty of headroom in that chip you could see a 50% increase.
But small tiny steps 1st
1GB of ram
no idea on the motherboard unfortunatly, any way i can find out without taking the pc cover off? as its a pain to do with the unit it is in
Download cpu-z its not alway’s perfect but should give all the relevant needed details.
http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-138.zip
Post back what details it gives inc the ram / ram settings
Will be usefull but is not essential but the more useful info the better the guideance
as it will help give an insight to what available options we have to tweak.
used screen print, sorry if it a little problematic
any other info you would like/need mate?
That should do me I think give’s me an overview of chipset & ram
I think the ram is a limiting factor for overall performance but still
we can get you a decent overclock.
P.s. ickle tip If you hold the ‘Alt’ key while hitting the Prtscn key
it will grab just the active window rather than the full screen.
It will be tomorrow evening now when I get to post back but I’ll try
to cobble together as much usefull information in a easy step by step
way so you get as much benefit as possible within the limitations of that Ram.
thanks mate (wish i knew that tip bofore, i use print screen quite alot atm)
i have more ram laying around somewhere so that needs to be put in will post another pic when (if) i do add it on
Just be prepared to dig into the PC internals to use a jumper and reset the BIOS.
My first (and currently only) overclocking resulted in my PC nopt booting. Turns out I’d exceeded the RAM timings or something IIRC.
I managed to find the jumper and reset. Then overclocked it by about 66Mhz lol. (Increased FSB by 6Mhz on x11 multiplier). No noticeable difference, just gave me a slighlty higher BOINC benchmark and a sense of some achievement that I’d overclocked.
Quick post from work…
<Insert> is your friend, holding insert on the keyboard while booting
has a sim. effect as using the Cmos clear jumper.
The Cmos option is when things get really messed up.
Equally you may find 3 presses of the reset button on boot up in succession will trip a reset.
And if you need an emergency shutdown on a PC with no power switch on the back of the PSU and the power plug is out of reach… Hold the On button in for 3 seconds… It will then just shut stright down.
i had to use the power option all the time with my mums pc until she fried the CPU, which i why mine is now being used.
didn’t know about the insert though wich is nice
i’ve got to take the cover off anyways to sort a little problem anyway, so i’ll use the jumper then.