Overclocking and Diag tools....

[Looney]

Ok here goes, I have never been one to overclock my stuff. It can shorten the life of hardware and void warranties. Now that hardware is being made with overclocking in mind I would like to try a few things but have no Idea where to start.

Undertaker suggested:
Motherboard Monitor MBM (http://mbm.livewiredev.com/)
My board is not in the list, but it seems to be working. There are no Help files with this and the FAQ and Forums don't work at the site so it's a little useless to a beginer.

I emailed the maker about using MBM on a board not on his list. He said to send him a MB Report....Ok thats all fine and dandy, except there is nothing in the program to create such a report. :p

CPU-Z (http://www.cpuid.com/)
This seems to be working as well, but without a monitor I undersatd, I'm not changing anything. :p

Anyway, Post the tools you use and reasons why you use it over others.

[The Undertaker]

If your overclocking your videocard use Power Strip (http://www.entechtaiwan.net) and if your using an nForce motherboard the nVidia System Utility (http://www.nvidia.com/object/sysutility_1.08.5.html).
Overclocking processors doesn't shorten the life if given proper cooling, its overvolting that'll kill it. And for proper video overclocking, increase 5mhz at a time. If you see snow (white dots) RAM's the problem, if polygon's start disappearing its the core.

[Looney]

Thanks Undertaker. :D

The Motherboard maker added the nVidia Utility in the bunduled software. Added a few more too but the damn disk cracked on me, so I'm waiting on a replacement.

[Doom_Dude]

ahhh the smell of nVidia in the morning. :p

[Looney]

You know that Smell....

That High Voltage Smell.....

Smells like..... Toast. ;)

[Doom_Dude]

LOL@Toast.

My monitor burned up once. That was enough of that electronical-toast smell for me. :p

I'm not a buyer of this whole Overclocking business. I always thought the risks of frying ones MB or other bits wasn't worth taking the chance.

[Looney]

Yeah I understand that Doom_Dude and would not recommend doing it without asking those that know. But, now manufacturers are really building hardware to allow for overclocking. Granted, it can be argued that they always have. Manufacturers like NVIDIA, AMD and others are now making the tools to do this. I just feel a little less concerned about it, so long as I can keep the temps in a safe range.

[Doom_Dude]

So are you gonna go for it and overclock your stuff?

[Looney]

I'm looking into it and studying it a bit. I did buy the parts I did with overclocking it in the back of my mind. Although, I must admit, that I am nervous about it. I would really hate to fuck this comp up trough some dumb error out of ignorance for what I changed. ;)

[Doom_Dude]

Yeah I must admit that I not only know nothing about doing it to being too paranoid to even want to try.

[Looney]

I've been following it for while. Talk to a few people that have success with it. Some that didn't recommend it a few years ago, and now do. It's a personal thing I think. The A+ instructor (He is also the head of the IT dept) I had last year was big on over clocking and kinda changed my mind about it.

[Doom_Dude]

Ahh I see. ;)

I know I could've overclocked my olde P166 to 200 by moving a jumper but I figured the xtra 34mhz wasn't worth it. :p

With my 850 T-Bird everything is running good so I don't feel any Overclocking coming on. Anyways luck with that if you do it. Would be cool if you could use a test machine just for overclocking. :p

[Looney]

hehehehehehehe Yeah 34 mhz wouldn't have moved me to overclock it either. I am one of those people that feel that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

With the exception of this new Chaintech MB, I have 2 other comps, all ASUS AMD an GeForce hardware, so I may use one of them as a testing zone. :D

[Doom2Hell]

Well, it IS relative in that case, NOW adays, 34mhz is a drop in the bucket, but THEN 34MHz was like a 17% increase in performance, now we all know its like 2% NOW or soemthing crazy, but then it was worth the trouble, when youve got a 166, and the next best thing came out for $300 is a 200Mhz, and you can achieve that with a jumper, youd think more than twice, lol. think about a 17% increase now, thats 340MHz added to your processor speed, ROCK! if you have the rig to do it safely, id say go for it (liquid cooling, 3,456,732 fans in your case, a freion canister mounted to the side, or encasing it in a block of ice, whatever works)

[Looney]

That is very true indeed. :D But even at that time, I wouldn't do it, I was just too chicken. ;) I did have a DX50 that screammed in it's day. It would run some pentium 100 games. ;) I still have the board and hardware here somewhere..... wonder if it would still boot up... *crazy* hahahahahahahahahahahah

[The Undertaker]

Most mobo's rarely follow the 133.33 bus (I think Intel's are the only ones that do) and usually around 134 and I think Asus runs there's around 135 by default. Add that to a 20x multiplier these systems are overclocked by way more than 34mhz by default. But 34mhz on the 5 stage pipeline on the Pentium gives more power than 34mhz would be on the P4's was 20 now 31 stage pipeline.
With even numbers like the current 200 I don't this applies though.

[Tyberious]

(off subject)
the reason why prescott sucks is because its running a hell of a lot bigger pipeline at the same speed of current pentium 4's. More info later, basically the pentium 4 didn't overshadow the pentium 3 untill way into the 2.4Ghz range, once you introduce more pipelines you need to keep them filled at higher speeds.

[Doom_Dude]

Hell if I still had the P166 id overclock it for a laugh. ;)

[Looney]

Hell if I still had the P166 id overclock it for a laugh. ;) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
How would like to get this, and over clock it? :D

http://www.tyan.com/products/assets/images/s4880.gif

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8qs.html

[Doom2Hell]

hahaha, yeah, but, tyan sucks though... those 50 some dual 1800+ machines i was talking about in a thread before at the graphic school use Tyan boards, and weve replace probably 15 of them already, thats a 30% failure rate. Well now that i think about it, the people who made those server cases probably helped that failure rate, they mad power supplies that suck in, in the front of the unit, then in the middle there are 2 center mounted fans blowing back toward the front, and a fan in the rear sucking in as well, so we had to go and flip a butt load of fans just to get them all blowing front to back like they should have from the factory, so posibly HALF of those 15 were due to heat before we discovered the crappy cases. but still having another 6 or 7 fail under proper conditions is still a 12% or 14% fail rate, bleck

[Looney]

Thanks for the heads up on Tyan Doom2Hell, sounds like they should change their name to Tryan (Try-en) :) hahahahahahahahahaa I personaly prefer an ASUS board anyday. Soltrex is good, I like this Chaintech so far.

I was just looking at the 4 64 bit sockets and the shock blinded me. ;) hahahahahhahahahahahahahaha

[Planky]

My gigabyte motherboard came with a utility to overclock the motherboard. At the moment it will only overclock the FSB (I haven't unlocked my Athlon) - so not only my cpu speeds up, but so does the ram, pci cards and the agp - too much risk for me.

The only thing I really have overclocked was my Voodoo3 2000. Holy cow that made a difference. I had Quake3 arena running at 100fps - about 30fps increase if I remember correctly. I had to mount a fan onto the gpu though, it got hot enough when it wasn't overclocked.

[Tyberious]

Asus is a solid brand, if you want something rock stable for an intel playform, choose intel boards. Those things take the logo from chevy trucks (like a rock), asus is a good all around company for stability and features, it depends on what you are looking for. Also thanks for the update Doom2Hell, I didn't think tyan was that bad!

[Looney]

I prefer a non Intel chip set because I use AMD CPU's mostly, But yes, I would much rather have Intel chips than those crap VIA chips anyday. :D