How do I go about overclocking my CPU and GPU

[britishbane]

Well I've had my computer for almost 5 years now. Its a 3Ghz Pentium 4 w/HT and the GPU is a Radeon 9800Pro, both have served valiantly up until recently as I've noticed a bit of a slow down. BTW its got 1Gb of memory, so maybe thats the problem? The computer is very well cooled so I'm not really worried about it overheating, though I dont plan on going nuts with overclocking, just a little increase.

 

[roastpuff]

More memory will do you more good than overclocking. That, and a new GPU. the 9800 was a good card in it's day, but it needs to be retired and replaced. Upgrade to 2GB as soon as you can.

Pick up a Nvidia 7600-series card, or an ATI X1700-series card for a relatively cheap replacement.

Reinstalling WinXP also really helps with speeding up the computer, as it washes away accumulated crud after 5 years of use.

 

[britishbane]

Thanks for the tips. In the five years I've had it XP has been reinstalled a few times.

 

[FallenAngel]

Reformat, clean up your junk, instant improvement.

 

[srozzman]

you can overclock the cpu through your bios, and the gpu through catalyst control center or the omega drivers

 

[terrymx]

defrag harddrive, disk clean harddrive. use softwares that allow you to disable unnecessary start up applications, like 'hijackthis', but this one is not for beginner.

buy another stick of ram is an excellent improvement. rams are very very cheap these days. i assume that your mobo use ddr rams, you can get a pc6400 (800mhz) 1gb one.

i think your mobo use agp slot for graphic cards. so you can't buy any newer pci-express cards. you have to find some good deals on the agp and not spend too much, although the 7600 is good. if you do not play video game or do some intense 3d work, i don't think newer video card is necesary.

 

[roastpuff]

I think he's running DDR400, not pc6400 (aka DDR2-800).

Nevertheless, RAM increase is always welcome.

 

[chesebert]

if you have to ask how, don't do it

 

[Honken]

To become good at it you gotta start somewhere though.

Anyways, 1gb of RAM should work just fine in a rig like that? I mean, what is it that use more than 1gb of RAM? Games don't count because he can't play on the highest texture settings anyways because of his GPU and CPU. I'd save the money and then spend them on some RAM in a NEW PC instead.

As for overclocking the GPU I use ATT, ATi Tray Tools, instead of the Catalyst Control Center. You can easily set the MHz there, increase the MHz by a few and then start a 3d heavy application (a game maybe) and check for artefacts (kinda like extreme JPEG compression in most cases). Repeat 'till you see artefacts , then lower the MHz and you're done.

As for overclocking the CPU, you gotta do that from the BIOS. Also, you may have to fiddle with the voltages for it to be stable. Increasing the voltage means that it'll run a lot hotter though, so make sure you got adequate cooling. Increasing the MHz isn't to hard, should be easy to find the settings, increase in small steps like with the GPU, then go download a stability test program like Orthos. Continue raising the MHz 'till you get an error. Oh and, make sure you let the program run for A LONG TIME, basically as long as you normally leave your PCon/use it.

P4's are known to run really hot though, so I dunno how much you can OC it.

 

[chesebert]

If the OP had a core2 I would say go ahead learn, but with his P4, which is already overheating in its stock form, I recommend just stick with stock.

 

[Zorander]

If you game and/or use heavy 3D apps, an ATI x1950Pro AGP will go a looong way from your current 9800Pro. Upping the memory to 2GB will be of great benefit too.

If you use desktop apps more, increasing your memory is the logical first step. A bigger, faster harddisk could be a good idea too especially if your old one is comparatively sluggish.

Also, regularly check for virus and malwares. Often these things install themselves on your PC without your knowledge and they slow things down inexorably.

Cheers!

 

[Honken]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chesebert /img/forum/go_quote.gif If the OP had a core2 I would say go ahead learn, but with his P4, which is already overheating in its stock form, I recommend just stick with stock.

He never said that it was overheating, did he? Well, they do run hot but that doesn't mean that you can't OC them. The C2D however, is just an awesome overclocker. I run my E4300 at 3.1GHz with the stock HSF.

But really, what do you need more than one GB of RAM for ESPECIALLY if he wouldn't play games? I've never gotten over 500MB of RAM use in Windows, and that's with Firefox, Foxit Reader, Foobar, WinRar and Miranda running at the same time. :/

 

[Seaside]

It depends on what you do with the computer.

Backup your data, format, reinstall XP. apply all patches, reinstall applications. This will refresh your computer like new.

Then...

If you use it for office machine, internet or other relatively light job. Stop there and start saving for next major upgrade.

If you use it for heavy job like game or graphic, new video card, faster HDD and more memory will help. Your CPU is the last thing to consider upgrading since it is ok for most jobs you throw in to your computer. If you want better CPU, then you may need to buy different board and memory, which is a major upgrade. So, let's put that idea aside for a while unless you want to rebuild your computer. 9800 was nice card back then, but not powerful enough for recent 3D games. HDD is the slowest parts in your computer, which means old HDD could be the one that is holding the performance back. Faster HDD will help gain some speed boost. And, regardng memory, the more the better, 1G with XP is ok, but 2G would be better. 4G is little bit of waste for XP since XP can not fully utilize 4G. (3.6GB limit with XP). Some recent games take a lot of memory space by itself, and 1G is not enough for those games. Then the game will be sluggish.

 

[bellsprout]

some people say if u don't know how to overclock, don't do it. but then, how will anyone start? overclocking is relatively safe, in the way that i reckon u gotta actually try to cause permanent damage to ur computer

gpu:
overclocking gpu is easy - cuz ur computer doesn't come up with a blue screen of death the second u overclock too much. there are software tools which overclocks ur gpu automatically and finds the point at which artifacts begin. it's always better to do it manually tho, but software tools do it admirably

cpu:
cpu overclocking has to be done manually thru the bios. some motherboards don't have overclocking features in the bios, especially oem ones. commercial (enthusiast) mobos have a ton of features. there's no quick guide in 1 post so u can go off and do it, but i'll try to give an overview:

the trickiest thing about overclocking the cpu is that the cpu is sync'd with ur memory. so if u overclock your cpu, ur also overclocking your memory. nowadays, most cpu's have a lot of headroom to overclock, but most memory (generic brand ram) has hardly any overclocking potential. so an overclock on an overclockable cpu will fail cuz the memory is holding it back.

the cpu clock speed is the fsb (front side bus) * multiplier. fsb is 200mhz by default, so if u have 200fsb*10 multiplier, u have a 2ghz cpu. multipliers are locked, so overclocking is done by increasing fsb.

memory is also 200mhz default, and increasing fsb also increases memory speed. lets not get into memory overclocking, because that's a whole different beast - much harder than cpu overclocking, and ur ram's probably generic. u want to keep your ram at 200mhz or lower while increasing fsb, and that's done by running a divider. that means if ur running a 4:5 divider, ur memory will be running at roughly 4/5 ur cpu speed (but it's not simple arithmetic). also, there's only a few dividers available (4:5, 2:3 - too few)

to overclock, u want to keep bumping up cpu fsb speed, while keeping ur memory as close as possible to 200mhz. then u boot into windows and run stability tests. stop at the first sign of instability.

cpu overclocking is easy once u know the theory, but the theory is a pain to learn. the upside is that nowadays, cpu's can be overclocked +1ghz on air, and that makes it worth learning

 

[AuroraProject]

The Prescotts run hot, but there was one Northwood core at 3.06ghz with Hyper Threading, maybe he has that one. Northwoods run nice and cool.