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Well would you believe it? CPU speed for free!
I managed to overclock my Celeron 2.4Ghz processor all the way up to 3.0Ghz! A 25% increase in processor speed! My benchmarking programs show a speed increase of 22-23%.
That's a pretty hefty overclock. Usually you only get about 10%. Luckily, my ASUS mother board is VERY overclocker friendly. Letting my adjust my FSB speed and my AGP/PCI buss speed independantly from each other. Without this feature, I wouldn't have been able to get nearly the results. When I overclocked the AGP/PCI bus, I was only able to squeeze and additional 10% out of it before I started having audio problems (runs off the PCI bus).
I made it to 2.9Ghz with stock settings but anything more and it would get unstable. So I upped the CPU core voltage by 1/10th of a volt. This really heats up the processor, but I was able to get 3Ghz this way, and still keep CPU temps reasonable with stock cooling. If I bought a big ole aftermarket cooler, I bet I could get 3.1 or 3.2 Ghz out of this thing.
The 2.4Ghz Celeron cost me $98 Cdn. The fastest Celeron processor I see for sale is a 2.8GHz model for $220Cdn. I'm glad I bought the slower processor! I could have paid alot more money for the same performance!
While I was at it I decided to try overclocking my new Video Card and again had great results! The video card is a Sapphire Atlantis videocard built on the ATI Radeon 9600xt chipset. Originally I wanted the "built by ati" version of this videocard, but my store was backordered so I bought the cheaper "Powered by ATI" saphire version. This actually turned out to be better! Not only did I save $50, but Saphire uses better quality RAM than the ATI version. Same manufacturer, just better access time (2.7ns vrs 3.3) This change in RAM resulted in some fantastic overclocking!
I was able to overclock the Video card graphics processor from 500Mhz to 576Mhz. The only reason I didn't go higher is because the overclocking utility I'm using doesn't go any higher. The RAM I was able to overclock from running at DDR 300Mhz, to DDR 350Mhz(for an effective speed of 700Mhz). Anything more than this and I'd see display errors (artifacts in the graphics world). I havn't gotten a chance to do any video benchmarking but by the numbers, this is over a 15% increase in speed.
Summary:
CPU before overclocking 2.4Ghx - After 3.0Ghz = 25% increase
AGP/PCI Buss speed before overclocking 66/33Mhz - After 73/36.5 = 10.6% increase (everything on this Buss runs 10.6% faster)
Graphics Processor before overclocking 500Mhz - After 576(limited by OC utility) = 15.2% increase
Graphics card RAM before overclocking 300Mhz - after 350Mhz = 16.6% increase.
Hopefully I was able to keep things simple enough that most of you will understand. Question away!
That's a pretty hefty overclock. Usually you only get about 10%. Luckily, my ASUS mother board is VERY overclocker friendly. Letting my adjust my FSB speed and my AGP/PCI buss speed independantly from each other. Without this feature, I wouldn't have been able to get nearly the results. When I overclocked the AGP/PCI bus, I was only able to squeeze and additional 10% out of it before I started having audio problems (runs off the PCI bus).
I made it to 2.9Ghz with stock settings but anything more and it would get unstable. So I upped the CPU core voltage by 1/10th of a volt. This really heats up the processor, but I was able to get 3Ghz this way, and still keep CPU temps reasonable with stock cooling. If I bought a big ole aftermarket cooler, I bet I could get 3.1 or 3.2 Ghz out of this thing.
The 2.4Ghz Celeron cost me $98 Cdn. The fastest Celeron processor I see for sale is a 2.8GHz model for $220Cdn. I'm glad I bought the slower processor! I could have paid alot more money for the same performance!
While I was at it I decided to try overclocking my new Video Card and again had great results! The video card is a Sapphire Atlantis videocard built on the ATI Radeon 9600xt chipset. Originally I wanted the "built by ati" version of this videocard, but my store was backordered so I bought the cheaper "Powered by ATI" saphire version. This actually turned out to be better! Not only did I save $50, but Saphire uses better quality RAM than the ATI version. Same manufacturer, just better access time (2.7ns vrs 3.3) This change in RAM resulted in some fantastic overclocking!
I was able to overclock the Video card graphics processor from 500Mhz to 576Mhz. The only reason I didn't go higher is because the overclocking utility I'm using doesn't go any higher. The RAM I was able to overclock from running at DDR 300Mhz, to DDR 350Mhz(for an effective speed of 700Mhz). Anything more than this and I'd see display errors (artifacts in the graphics world). I havn't gotten a chance to do any video benchmarking but by the numbers, this is over a 15% increase in speed.
Summary:
CPU before overclocking 2.4Ghx - After 3.0Ghz = 25% increase
AGP/PCI Buss speed before overclocking 66/33Mhz - After 73/36.5 = 10.6% increase (everything on this Buss runs 10.6% faster)
Graphics Processor before overclocking 500Mhz - After 576(limited by OC utility) = 15.2% increase
Graphics card RAM before overclocking 300Mhz - after 350Mhz = 16.6% increase.
Hopefully I was able to keep things simple enough that most of you will understand. Question away!
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