Post by Renown on Mar 15, 2006 23:00:42 GMT -5
I've posted this because...well, I wanted to - and there might be some of you who come to this forum and may be interested in the manner, but you just don't wanna risk it. Here's an easy guide to overclocking.
First of all, overclocking isn't something you can just up and do. If you have a consumer desktop (IBM, Dell, Sony, etc) you won't even be able to overclock, unless they've given you an OC-capable motherboard.
Overclocking is very much a dark art and to master it is tedious, bar none. There's no exact way to overclock being with different combinations of CPU, RAM, etc will give you different results every time. This "How-to" will be broken up into three parts, each done at a different time. But, before we get into the sections...I bet many of you are wondering how overclocking is possible? Is the grace of the computer gods? The answer to that question unfortunately is no.
The first is the quality of the manufacturing process, while the second is related to economic forces. CPUs generally are manufactured in high-tech factories called "Fabs" or Fabrication Plants. Different plants produce different types and speed grades of CPUs. Er...let me use an example, the current flagship processor in the Pentium 4e family is the Pentium 4 670, which has a clock speed of 3.8 GHz. This is probably the most challenging Pentium 4e CPU to manufacture, so the yield - the number of CPU cores or dies that are qualified at this speed are relatively low compared to the Pentium 4 630, which only runs at 3 GHz. This explains the reason why our beloved Pentium 4 670 is more expensive than it's 630 counterpart.
To make a very, very long story short...these plants eventually are able to perfect producing certain CPU cores. The Pentium 4 670 is a premium product used in high-end, high-margin PCs...the 670's price should drop considerably over time, but there's a limit as to how much Intel can drop it.
Now for the main attraction [ If you've read this post up until this point, congratulations you're a geek. ] there is a side effect of keeping the cost of high-end CPU cores well, high because the greatest demand is still for slower, cheaper models. By this point the plants are experts in terms of knocking out fast cores, so the only way to meet this higher demand is to classify some fast CPU cores as slower models. This means you could buy a 3 GHz Pentium 4 630 that in fact came from a batch of cores capable of, for example, 3.6 GHz or more, meaning it has masses of headroom for overclocking.
The only problem with this is there's no real way to find a good overclocker because it's not like Intel writes on the box Pentium 4 630 - 3 GHz (but it'll do 3.6 GHz easy-peasy.) no, just no. There are ways to find this out, however...I'll get into that next time. I expect to see some feedback on this particular topic if none other.
First of all, overclocking isn't something you can just up and do. If you have a consumer desktop (IBM, Dell, Sony, etc) you won't even be able to overclock, unless they've given you an OC-capable motherboard.
Overclocking is very much a dark art and to master it is tedious, bar none. There's no exact way to overclock being with different combinations of CPU, RAM, etc will give you different results every time. This "How-to" will be broken up into three parts, each done at a different time. But, before we get into the sections...I bet many of you are wondering how overclocking is possible? Is the grace of the computer gods? The answer to that question unfortunately is no.
The first is the quality of the manufacturing process, while the second is related to economic forces. CPUs generally are manufactured in high-tech factories called "Fabs" or Fabrication Plants. Different plants produce different types and speed grades of CPUs. Er...let me use an example, the current flagship processor in the Pentium 4e family is the Pentium 4 670, which has a clock speed of 3.8 GHz. This is probably the most challenging Pentium 4e CPU to manufacture, so the yield - the number of CPU cores or dies that are qualified at this speed are relatively low compared to the Pentium 4 630, which only runs at 3 GHz. This explains the reason why our beloved Pentium 4 670 is more expensive than it's 630 counterpart.
To make a very, very long story short...these plants eventually are able to perfect producing certain CPU cores. The Pentium 4 670 is a premium product used in high-end, high-margin PCs...the 670's price should drop considerably over time, but there's a limit as to how much Intel can drop it.
Now for the main attraction [ If you've read this post up until this point, congratulations you're a geek. ] there is a side effect of keeping the cost of high-end CPU cores well, high because the greatest demand is still for slower, cheaper models. By this point the plants are experts in terms of knocking out fast cores, so the only way to meet this higher demand is to classify some fast CPU cores as slower models. This means you could buy a 3 GHz Pentium 4 630 that in fact came from a batch of cores capable of, for example, 3.6 GHz or more, meaning it has masses of headroom for overclocking.
The only problem with this is there's no real way to find a good overclocker because it's not like Intel writes on the box Pentium 4 630 - 3 GHz (but it'll do 3.6 GHz easy-peasy.) no, just no. There are ways to find this out, however...I'll get into that next time. I expect to see some feedback on this particular topic if none other.