Well would you believe it? CPU speed for free!

[Got Gear?]

TweetI 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!

[O2BESOHUGE]

TweetCOMPUTER NERD!! .....JUST KIDDIN, I WISH I KNEW ABOUT THAT STUFF!!

O2

[armani1072]

Tweetdamn GG thats pretty good i am in the middle of building a machine for myself. i ordered a pentium 4, 3.0GHz motherboard combo with powersupply. i also ordered a 300 GB hard drive for it. all in all the whole will cost about 700 bones.

[Got Gear?]

Tweet

Originally posted by O2BESOHUGE
COMPUTER NERD!! .....JUST KIDDIN, I WISH I KNEW ABOUT THAT STUFF!!

O2

Lol... It's really not all that hard. I can help you if you want to give it a try.

I guess it helps that I went to college for Electronics, then got a career in the Computers field, so I happen to know alot about HOW they work along with knowing how to MAKE them work.

This is about the 3rd PC I've overclocked... it's really easy. Especially if you have an overclocking friendly motherboard.

The next step is to get out the soldering iron and make physical changes to the board. Mainly adding a couple of adjustable resistors so I can adjust the RAM voltage. I've already added heat sinks to the videocard RAM. So the next thing to do is up the RAM voltage. The extra heat will be handled by the heat sinks and it should allow me to squeeze a few extra Mhz out of it.

Good thing I've got a few more fans on order!

[Kitten]

Tweet*scratches head*

HUH? :withstupi


I just know how to turn it on.





THE COMPUTER......YOU SICKOS!

[Got Gear?]

Tweet

Originally posted by Kitten
*scratches head*

HUH? :withstupi


I just know how to turn it on.





THE COMPUTER......YOU SICKOS!

Lol.. I kinda figured I'd loose some of you with this one.

Basically all you need to know is: I made my computer noticeably faster and it didn't cost me a penny.

[majorguns]

TweetIs it not bad to overclock a cpu??

[Kitten]

Tweet

Originally posted by Got Gear?
Lol.. I kinda figured I'd loose some of you with this one.

Basically all you need to know is: I made my computer noticeably faster and it didn't cost me a penny.

oh, well, now that you put it that way.

WOOHOO!!!!!

[jipped genes]

Tweetthat sounds really cool and techy but its greek to me.

[LOCO]

Tweetsweet GG... i have an old puter and the most i could do mine was from 400 to 450..... at 500 it would become unstable and crash every time.... it's an acer mobo...
i did my roommates amd from 1.8 to 2.5... still stable...
the only thing u gotta worry about now is the heat!! get a really fancy cooling system (water would be ideal) and make sure to put lots of the trhermopaste between the cpu and the heatsink... keep checking the temp... if it starts overheating downclock it a bit... overclocking will shorten the life of ur cpu... but in couple of years ur most likely gonna get a new one anyways.....

[DOUBLE J]

TweetGot Gear

[Cipher]

TweetCelerons are very overclockable.....AMD's are not so OC friendly. Thats not to say that you cant OC an AMD a great deal (I OC mine 500MHZ) but the majority are ponly capable of speeds much closer to their specs. I did see a 2.6 P4 OC to over 5.0GHz with a water cooler. OC everything I own but I only suggest it if you have deep pockets.

Ciph

[Got Gear?]

Tweet

Originally posted by LOCO
the only thing u gotta worry about now is the heat!! get a really fancy cooling system (water would be ideal) and make sure to put lots of the trhermopaste between the cpu and the heatsink... keep checking the temp... if it starts overheating downclock it a bit... overclocking will shorten the life of ur cpu... but in couple of years ur most likely gonna get a new one anyways.....

Lol, yeah I know heat is going to be a problem. Especially since I managed to Squeeze a bit more out of the ViD card last night with a different overclocking utility. From 500 to 607Mhz Baby!
Right now the cover is off my case. I've got a new case along with 6 blue LED case fans on order. I also bought a 4 channel fan speed controller. With 6 fans your PC can get quite noisy, it's nice to be able to turn them down when your not gaming.

[Got Gear?]

TweetSo I did some benchmarking tests to see what kind of performance gains my overclocking has gotten me.

I used 2 different benchmarking utilities both of which are focused on real world videogame performace. The programs I used were aquamark3 and 3Dmark2001SE. These programs basically just use clips from videogames and measures how manyFPS (frames per second) the display is able to maintain.

SO... here are the Results:

Scores as stock out of the box:
Aquamark3: 20,978 With an average frames per second of 20.3
3Dmark2001SE: 8110

Scores with Video Card overclocked only
Aquamark3: 21653 With an average FPS of 21.7 3.2% increase over stock
3Dmark2001SE: 8396 3.5% Increase over stock

Scores with PC overclocked only
Aquamark3: 24007 With an average FPS of 24.0 14.4% increase over stock
3Dmark2001SE: 9186 13.3% increase over stock

Scores with PC and videocard overclocked
Aquamark3: 25226 With an average FPS of 25.2 20.2% increase over stock
3Dmark2001SE: 9537 17.6% increase over stock


Not too bad... almost a 20% gain in performance.

[DrtyJrzyGuy]

Tweetso is this a program i download or shoudl i not bother. . this is interesting me because i was about to invest in a new processor, but i have the same one as you. . . do you have time to somewhat explain this to me either on teh board or pm me? thanks bro.