How exactly do you over clock a PC?


I don't need to over clock mine, no need to with a 2 ghz and 1 gb of ram...But never understood how to do it. I guess it'* just a random question.

in my best wording....a setting within in the bios that speeds up chips

Well I think that HP/Compaq locked me out of those settings....prolly a good thing.

Increasing the cpu frequency, bus frequency, or both. Total frequency is essentially the product of bus frequency and cpu frequency.

Often a CPU is rated to run at a certain frequency but can actually run higher. If you think about it, a CPU has to meet the minimum spec and it does so within a tolerance. So by overclocking you are taking advantage of that tolerance.

Often if you increase the voltage you can more easily overclock a CPU. I'm not 100% why (any EE'* out there?) Guessing it has something to do with minimizing propogation delay, perhaps takes care of some parasitic effects.

Edit: and yes, you can do this in the BIOS, or on some machines by moving jumpers. Probably would have better luck changing the multiplier than the bus speed, because if you change the multiplier, that will put tighter requirements on your RAM as well.

Anybody ever done it on a Presario SR1500NX?

You probably can't do it on a prebuilt PC such as a Compaq, HP, or other. If your computer was custom built, you should have BIOS settings

To your edit....

I just put in 1 gb of RAM last night....and barely using 200 of it....so I don't think the tighter requirements would bother it too much.

I should clarify... by tighter requirements, I mean that you are requiring the memory to run faster. So if the memory is rated at 166Mhz and you change the bus speed to 200Mhz, this would put a demand on both the memory and the processor.

It wouldn't take up "more RAM" to run it faster. It'* purely a change in hardware functionality, not software. A software change would require "more memory"

Ahhhhhhhhhh


That makes sense then.

In the "old days", cpu manufactures would run their dies at clock speed higher than their rating. If they worked reliably, they would get stamped at the higher speed and sold for more money. Ones that had to run slower were stamped at a slower speed and discounted. Same core, but some could handle to increased clock speed. They pretty much don't do that anymore.

My old 1.6A P4 has been running at 2.13Gz for 3 years and hasn't skipped a beat. After the 1.6 and 1.8A'*, Intel locked the multiplier internally so this trick didn't work anymore. The fastest way is just bump up the FSB to whatever they system will handle reliably.

You can't on the Compaq, they don't put the adjustments in the bios, and there are no jumpers on the boards