Are you an overclocking guru?

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pwaddles

113 posts

Master Geek

# 17641 5-Dec-2007 14:23

Cause Im not :(

Just built a new pc, core 2 duo e6850 (3GHz), gigabyte mobo with p35 chipset, 4gb 800mhz ddr ram, gigabyte nvidia 8800gt 512mb and a 500gb hard disk and want to really crank it up.

I've played with gigabytes software "easy tune" and can get it to go at 3.6Ghz but my results arent constant, sometimes I'll give it my settings commit the changes and all will be fine, I can run 3d mark 06 and get a good score (about 15500), but other times I make my changes, hit the button to commit them and the machine freezes all together.

Both situations have nothing running other than the easytune software itself, coretemp and speedfan. So Im confused as to why it works sometimes and not others.

The reason I'm using the easytune software and not doing it through the bios is that its 'easier' to fix a problem this way by simply resetting my PC.

Had a look at overclocking my graphics card yesterday, added 10% to both speeds (i think ones gpu speed and the other is ram speed) and that made a little difference to my 3d mark score, think i will try it at 20 or 30% and see what happens.

If Im playing with fire here please let me know, but any thoughts would help. I really want to see a chart of speeds vs required cpu voltages for my processor but cant seem to find it.

Yikes what a long post, thanks for reading it all.

pwaddles

113 posts

Master Geek

# 98324 5-Dec-2007 14:25

also I should mention my cooling

I have a 12cm case fan as well as two 8cm fans at the front of the case drawing air in.

as well as graphics card fan, standard intel fan and heatsink and psu fan.

pando

235 posts

Master Geek

# 98341 5-Dec-2007 15:44

Gigabyte mobos tend to have poor southbridges and overheat quite easily, I have the same problem, and their placement makes them hard to cool.

My current board has the heatsink right under the GFX card so very hard to cool.

Fraktul

836 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

# 98407 5-Dec-2007 19:23

As long as your temps are kept below reasonable levels and you are not bumping up voltages over 10% then its pretty much not possible to break anything.

The problem would appear to be that you are running one application and this is not stressing all subsystems - ideally you want to stress test all bus's, memory, CPU (and how you test this is critical since some tests may only use the FPU but not be interger intensive for example), GPU etc.

Also you really need to test for at least 24-48 hours to ensure your system is going to be pretty rock solid for home use and longer for anything commercial (debatable as it if you would overclock in the first instance).

lurker

695 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

# 98439 5-Dec-2007 22:19

Sorry, I'm not an overclocking guru but here's my 10 cents anyway. Regarding Easytune, are you getting it to automatically determine the overclock or do you put in your own parameters? I'm wary of automated overclocking applications, you will get the best results by manually doing this yourself. I'm sure the application won't adjust voltages for you, something you need to take care with. But generally the idea is to go up in small increments and test for stability at each stage, as opposed to whacking the speed up and reducing it until your applications stop crashing. As Fraktul said, you need to have a variety of applications to test your system and it certainly sounds like Easytune doesn't do a comprehensive job that you can rely on. You would also do well to do some Google searches using a model name/number plus the keyword "overclock" on each of your components to see how each component has fared for others, this can sometimes provide you with useful information regarding BIOS settings people have used successfully etc. My personal feeling is that you are better off with using the BIOS, it does take time to find the right overclock but once you're there you shouldn't need to go back into the BIOS again.

Also, trying to get 20-30% more out of an 8800GT (or most GPUs) is wishful thinking, if you search around you'll see that your 10% is not a bad result. Watch the temperatures closely as this card gets hot enough already under full load.

If you're new to this I'd follow someone else's example so keep Googling. http://www.overclockers.com/ has a CPU database much like what you're looking for, it used to be freely accessible but you now need to register. Give it a try maybe.

lurker

695 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

# 98440 5-Dec-2007 22:24

MrPink: Gigabyte mobos tend to have poor southbridges and overheat quite easily, I have the same problem, and their placement makes them hard to cool.

My current board has the heatsink right under the GFX card so very hard to cool.

I have a K8NPRO-SLI with the same problem, I am using an old Vantec Iceberg VGA cooler (not sure now exactly which model). It needs the pretty cover removed but the mounting holes were in the same position and the heatsink is big, fan-cooled and fits with a few millimetres clearance of the graphics card. I'm not sure what kind of improvement it is but I'd like to think it's better than stock.