Help with overclocking

Luck

But how do I overclock?

Dom

Moved to correct forum.

Edit: Changed thread title to a more informative one.

Luck

Thanks

craig588

I'll start the ball rolling with the theory of overclocking. I hope someone else can pick up where I leave off.

By overclocking you make hardware run at a higher frequency than it was originally disigned to. The reason people can be so successful in overclocking is because many times chips are all made on the same production line and sometimes a company will sell those chips at multiple speeds instead of making 3 different lines of chips. The lower end chips can then be manually told to run at a higher speed. The side effect of running a chip at a higher speed will cause it to prodice more heat. You need to have good cooling for the chip to run at a high speed because chips can produce errors and crash your system when they get too hot. That is why people buy/build those very exspensive/elaborate cooling systems, to reduce the heat and enable the chip to go even faster. If you have the stock cooling that came with your proccessor you probably won't be able to overclock very far.

Luck

I have the regular fan that came with my card (Radeon 9700 Pro) Pentium 4 Processor 2.40 Ghz. 512 RDRAM.

Also, I was told to raise the AGP voltage to around 1.7-1.8..but it doesn't have that option on my Bios Screen (I have a Dell) so I was wondering if someone can also help me out with that?

craig588

ooo, thats not good. The AGP volting isn't important for most overclocking. The bad part is that your using RDram. Most mobos that supported RDram still used the old willamante style of P4. (They were bad for overclocking) The other bad thing is that you have a pre-built computer. Many companies will intentionally lock out the overclocking options in your bios just so they can sell you a more exspensive chip when you could have overclocked yours to the same speed of the more expensive one. Do you know if you have a willimante or northwoodA/B core? Do you know the ratings of your ram? Do you know what brand/model your mobo is?


The card is a good card for overclocking though. If you want to get some pretty decent overclocks you should remove the shim on the card and replace the thermal gunk they used with some artic silver.

Does anyone else want to help me out with finding some guides on shim removal and possibly some guides on P4 OCing? I don't have a P4 computer so I don't know all of the exact details.

Luck

I know my mother board is an intel..but I don't know anything else..I'm sure I can find out if you tell me how.

craig588

Do you have the model number of you PC so I could look it up on Dells website? I'm not sure how helpful they will be, but it might have the information we need.

Luck

8250 Dimension also, I have the service tag if you need it.

craig588

Ok, I think I found everything I need. Heres all the specs of your computer: http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems...cs.htm#1084976 (Directly from dells website)

I think you are going too need to upgrade your power supply if you want to get good OCs. 350watts is the minimum you want, but you can still try with the 250watt one. Is your bios screen blue with a series of menu selections thaty you need to push enter on to get access to your settings, or is it gray with a series of menubars at the top where you can choose a section of the bios to go to?

Heres what a blue bios looks like: http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?im...RfMl8xX2wuZ2lm (link to [H]ardOCP)

I couldn't find one of the gray bios, but if its not the blue one its the gray one.

Luck

It's gray, and how much to upgrade my Bios? How do I even overclock it?

Sourcer_2002

I dont think that you will be able to oc very much with that board as it is an Intel / Dell OEM board....you may be able to oc in bios i doubt that the option exists....you may be able to OC within windows useing specail programs.

Luck

Any places where I can get it? And how would I over clock in the Bios Screen?

craig588

Bios upgrades are free, but with a prebuilt computer you are highly unlikely to get one. Normally with all of the better companies you can just go to their site and download the bios flashing software and the new bios. You could check arond Dells site, but I'm not sure if you'll find one. To change your bios you need to change your mobo.

For the acctuall overclocking, you should go the the advanced tab and it should have a setting for FSB, clock rate, frequency or front side bus. Try looking for one (or more) of those settings and tell me what it says. If you have a setting that says multiplier tell me what its set at as well. I think it should be at 20x. You should also check to see if you bios supports changing voltages to the ram/CPU/northbridge. You also need to see if you can change the timings of your ram. Check to see if you have the option to set CAS, RAS, and a few other values. They should all be right next to each other in the menu. They will be at values ranging from 2 to 7, depending on how Dell configured your computer. If you have any settings for dividers please report those to me too.


Video card overclocking is much easier, but I figure that I'll get the hard part out of the way first.

Luck

This is in my bios, correct? And I think they have a flash for my bios..another thing, they have a flash bios for my Omega driver, should I install that?

Ok, it had no Advanced tab..was I even in the BIOS? It had very little options..I had to hit F2 to access it after restarting. I think I should take a digital picture of it..or something.

craig588

The bioses on Omegas page are bioses for video cards, they do not need to be flashed, as usually nothing important has changed in different revisions of videocard bioses.

Luck

I'm getting 80 FPS in Raven Shield, any way I can fix it?

Luck

Oh, I see. Instead of making a new thread, do you think you can help me out with finding the cheapest place to buy two RDRAM 256 Chips?

Luck

Here is my Bios BIOS Vendor Dell Computer Corporation
BIOS Version A04
BIOS Date 04-22-03

And here is my mother board IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers Intel(r) 82801BA Bus Master IDE Controller
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel I think that's it..hmmm..

Luck

Since it wouldn't let me edit my post to save posts..I'll post it on a new post..(if you understood that, you're the man)

And here is my mother board IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers Intel(r) 82801BA Bus Master IDE Controller
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel I think that's it..hmmm..


ALSO, you asked me about my RAM? Here...Memory

Memory Slot 1 Description [RIMM1]: 256Mb
Memory Slot 2 Description [RIMM2]: 256Mb
Available Memory 64.65 %
Page File Size 994.00Mb
Available Page File 85.80 %
Virtual Memory 1504.9Mb
Available Virtual Memory 78.62 %

craig588

If you don't have an advaced section to your bios you have pretty much no chance of overclocking you CPU. For the video card you can download the newest Omega drivers because he includes a great OCing tool with them called Radclocker. You should raise the ram first and try do do it in 5MHz incriments. After each overclock run like 5 loops of 3dmark. If you don't see any artifacts then keep going, but if you do then drop it down to the the last stable setting and that will essentailly be your max. Then you want to work on the core, follow the same steps as you did with the ram. You should be able to take the core much higher than the ram.

Luck

I tried this once..however, my card messed up..and gave me some weird screen...like totally disconfigured. Like static sort of. What's 3DMark and 5 loops? Sorry for not knowthing this stuff, I'm new to it.

P.S. I imed you thanking you for your time.

Luck

When should I increase the core? Just leave it with the ram?

tek

3dmark is a benching tool, people use it to show off how good their cpu/video card is and its also used to see if your systems stable, if you've OCed too much, you can download it at www.futuremark.com.

And that staticy you were seeing, that probably means you OCed TOO MUCH, you've gotta start slow.. by lets stay 5 point increments.
Start at 290/290 or something, and raise them both by one bar, run 3dmark01, repeat this until you see artifacts in 3dmark01, if you've gotten quite far without artifacts in 3dmark01, I suggest you go GAMING... that's the only way I found out I had artifacts.

Hope this helped you.

Luck

Yeah, I was using Pimpblood's Artifact's tester..but his came with Omega drivers...and personally, it's old..it still tests the Direct X 7.

The_Neon_Cowboy

WARNING: dell power supplys tend to be propritary in some cases haveing a seprate lead for +5/-5 or +3.3/-3.3 make sure you check .. if so youl have to buy a dell barded power supply for 4-5X the price of a generic


also, the bios options that dell hides can be RE-ENABLED useing a bios editor .. if you can find one that will read it ok.................

Luck