New one to help

[Thizzle]

I am currently looking to overclock my computer, but not sure how far I should push it. The current specs on my system can be seen here.

I am told that I should increase the multiple because my mobo does not lock pci/agp. Which way would be the best? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks everyone!

[nukes]

The short answer to your question is: As far as it will go, without boosting the voltage too much.
Is the barton unlocked?
They did start locking them again, so you may not be able to increase the multiplier (or alter it at all)
If you can't up the multiplier, try the FSB. PCI devices will normally still work until you get beyond 40mhz. You may be able to alter the dividers for it manually, resulting in a lower PCI clock, but stability.
Finally, I don't think you'll get far on one of those chips. They're pretty close to the end of the line, and I'd be surprised if you could get it past 2.2/2.3GHz stably with the cache enabled.
Ignore the people who say to increase the multiplier because you can't lock the PCI/AGP. There is truth in what they say, but you can still overclock with the FSB. The PCI/AGP clock locks were a new feature to the NForce2. The same people would probably have told you to overclock with the FSB before everyone went out and bought NForce2 boards.
It overclocks the whole system (PCI/AGP/RAM/CPU) so you get better performance out of running, say 200*7.5 than you would 100*13.
It also depends on the RAM you have in the system. Is it a proper brand or cheap stuff? What speed is it rated toż
It would have been better just to post the specs than the output of CPU-Z, then you could tell us the brands etc of hardware in it, and cooling solutions etc.

[MitaDC]

Nukes if u looked it showed ram speed at I think 165.7 mhz....so PC2700

[Thizzle]

Yea, the ram is 2700. I was able to up the multiplyer to 14, but at 15 Windows would not load, so I lowered it. Would I be able to get any more out of it if I went to FSB now, even though my ram is 2700? I am very new to all this so I don't know anything about altering dividers or what you mean when you say they will still work until I go beyong 40mhz. Thanks for the help so far, and any more would be great!

[John Prophet]

If the multiplier is unlocked then you have more options.

If it is locked you ONLY have the fsb.

Normally you bump up the fsb one click at a time....BUT when you do that you also are bumping up the pci speed and agp speed.

Lets say you have an XP2000 running at 1.66mhz and 133fsb...and a 12.5 muliplier well at that speed the pci clock is running at the stock speed of 33mhz. . so the pci clock is 133/4=33.

Soooooooo, lets say you bump the fsb to 138

that gives a speed of 1725mhz (138x12.5)....

BUT it also speeds up the pci clock to 138/4=34.4

So in addition to overclocking the cpu you have overclocked the nic, modem, maybe the sound card etc etc.

The same thing holds true for the agp video clock but Im toolazy to do the math. Thats one of the main reason the 440bx chipset had limitations..cuz when you overclocked you were overclocking the agp video and there was no way around it with dividers etc.

ok, all is well, so you go alittle more

you go to 141mhz

141x12.5=1762mhz

pci = 141/4=35.25 still not too high

then you get greedy, lol

155mhz

155x12.5=1937

but 155/4=38.75...that MAY be pushing it on the pci overclock...thats why he said "keep it below 40" he meant 40mhz on the pci bus clock.

Thats where multipliers come in

instead of now trying to go to a 160fsb which would be

166x12.5=200=
but with a pci clock of 40 160/4=40

instead you might go UP on the cpu multiplier and DOWN on the fsb

so you might go to a 13.5 multiplier

you could get your same 2000cpu speed with a 148mhz fsb x 13.5 = 2000

and that would keep the pci clock to within reason

148/4=37

As far as dividers it is a similar principle but Im not REAL familiar with them, not enough to explain them, lol.

The new bioses have many many oc options....they are much better than older equipment because the older boards often only had fsb selections that jumped by 5's or 10's. Now of course it is in 1's so you can really tune it in plus you have dividers and locks etc etc.

(plus of course voltage control, but that is another story, lol)


JP

[Thizzle]

See below

[Thizzle]

I did a little playing with it, and I got it up to 16 X 152, running it at 2.4319. Would I see a decrease in performance in my RAM, vid card, etc running the FSB lower than before? I want to make sure I am not going to damage anything with this current setup. Here is a link to the current CPU-z output: here Take a look and let me know if you see any problems with that setup. The voltage was increased to 1.7, I don't think that would be too much

[John Prophet]

'Would I see a decrease in performance in my RAM, vid card, etc running the FSB lower than before?"

Well, yes...you have to sort of balance off some areas of performance for other areas maybe....

Like, you may be able to get more cpu speed by lowering the fsb slightly and increasing the mulitplier.....so you get more cpu speed, BUT you do lose a slight bit of ram performance.

The same thing comes into play with memory "timings"...you may be able to get a faster fsb with a "less aggressive" memory timing...so there is a trade off.

I am sure the overclocking sites would know the different ways to get the most OVERALL performance.

JP

[Thizzle]

OK, thanks a lot for your help. I will do a little more searching, but again, thanks for the nice base to start from!

[nukes]

Nukes if u looked it showed ram speed at I think 165.7 mhz....so PC2700

I did look. However, for all I (or you) knew it could be anything between Generic CAS3 PC2700 and Corsair XMS PC3500.
That's why I asked. I'm not stupid. Just because the ram's running at 166 doesn't mean that's the max rated speed, and doesn't tell me the brand.
Thizzle: You seem to be making a good start. I wouldn't worry too much about damaging stuff. The main thing that kills kit is high temps and high voltages.
It is possible to get data corruption on hard disks if you run the PCI bus too far out of spec, but you're not in danger of that yet.
As to losing performance, you will loose out a little, but for the sake of 10mhz RAM speed decrease, you might get an extra 100mhz out of the CPU, which would balance it out quite well, as modern CPUs will prefetch most of the stuff they need anyway. Plus the chipset does its own optimisations. JP raises a good point with the memory timings, worth taking note of.