Sloth_Boy

There are many things that can help improve your overclocking results and stability. Here is a list of all the things you can do to help your system while overclocking:

1.
Cooling: Good cooling is a must when/before overclocking. It extends the life of your CPU and improves performance. Cooling is the 1 of the biggest factors than can influence how far your CPU can be pushed. There are many good cooling solutions out there. there are about 4 different types of cooling. There is air cooling, water cooling, chemical cooling and phase cooling (phase cooling can be used for any of the previous types).

2.
Hardware: Good hardware is crucial for good overclocking or any overclocking at all. You need a motherboard that supports overclocking and can handle large increases in speed/performance. Boards above $200aus or $150us bring the best results but some cheaper boards can do the trick if you don’t have the money. CPU's vary when manufactured since it is impossible at the moment to make 2 CPU's identical. Since your dealing with over 100,000,000 different transistors, wires and other parts, you can imagine what I mean. So overclocking results vary between CPU's and the heat they dissipate. Some of the exact same models of CPU can run hotter than others that are the same model, same principal as why CPU overclocking potential can vary (millions of little parts).

3.
To help improve overclocking and how far you can go with overclocking, it helps to adjust/change the following:

*FSB Frequency - measured in MHz, this is the bus you adjust to make your CPU/Memory run faster (be overclocked)

*Vcore - the voltage at which the CPU runs at, increasing this makes the currents flow easier but heat rises as a side effect and the parts in the CPU can only handle Voltages up to a certain point (usually 0.3V-0.7V above default depending on cooling and CPU)

*AGP/PCI/PCIe Bus Locking: This can be displayed as many different things in the bios, here are some examples: PCI/AGP Bus, PCI/PCIe Bus, PCI Frequency, AGP Frequency, PCIe frequency and others. You must lock these buses at there default frequency (33Mhz PCI, 66Mhz AGP and 100Mhz PCI Express) or choose a different locked frequency to prevent them from being overclocked when overclocking the FSB.

* RAM: CPU ratio: This can be displayed as either CPU ratio, RAM ratio, RAM: CPU, RAM: CPU Ratio, RAM Divider and some others. The options are either in a multiply form (x2.00, x1.66, x1.33.etc) or actual speed form (333, 366, 400, 533, 600.etc). Reducing this to start with can rule it out as being memory that’s holding you back from overclocking further.

* Chipset Vcore: The chipset can sometimes hold you back form OCing further so by increasing this either 0.1V or 0.2V may help further OCing.

* FSB Termination Voltage: This is (I'm pretty sure) what voltage the FSB runs at, really not a large factor but you may find increasing it helps. It's only found on 925X chipsets and later

* Hyper Transport Voltage: Increase the Voltage of hyper transport in recent AMD CPU's, can help overclocking depending on how large your overclock is.

* CPU Multiplier: This can be changed to 14x on certain Intel P4 CPU's and a lot of A64 CPU's including the FX series of AMD 64 CPU.

I think that’s all you need to know. If anyone wants to see something added, either PM me, comment or email me.

xms

Good job. Check for spelling tho, its riddled with mistakes.

RunningRioT

you forgot to talk about memory, or am i blind? memory plays a big role in fsb overclocking.

indepthanalysis

What happens if my PCI or AGP bus speed does get overclocked?

Mr. Mumbles

why was slothboy banned?

adas

dunno, dont care...he got annoying :P