Need Help Overclocking CPU / GPU
 

I need help OCing my rig. I r sofa king dumb when it comes to this part of IT and computers.

AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2GHz

MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

HIS HD 6950 2GB (Unlocked to 6970)

ZALMAN CNPS10X Performa 120mm CPU Cooler

Some one help me OC this mofo.

I'm still rockin an old school Core 2 Quad which lacks the onboard memory controller of newer chips, so I can't provide much firsthand info on how that'll affect things but...

1. Get Prime95 for stress testing
2. Start increasing the FSB/Multiplier in smallish (equiv to 100Mhz increments)
3. Stress test
4. Increase Vcc when instability is reached
5. Repeat 2 - 4

That's the very basic gist of it. It will help you to read reviews on your board and CPU to give you an idea of what others have done to achieve a decent OC. Memory speeds/timing/voltage will also play into it. There are also plenty of OC databases out there so you can see others' results.

For the 6950, you may not have much you can do. I did the same thing (well, just unlocked the extra shaders, didn't increase clockspeed with BIOS flash) and even with the Catalyst power slider set to +20% I couldn't get much of an OC over the stock 6950 speeds. I suspect a lack of power is the reason behind it but I didn't work too hard on it. Also, it's my understanding that these and other newer GDDR5 cards have memory that is essentially error correcting on its own and therefore you can increase clockspeed while losing performance because the card will not render artifacts; it'll correct them before outputting, eating up extra cycles. In short, run FurMark or another benchmark after memory speed increases to verify performance changes.

your auto OC Genie is a pretty good simple program, use it.

I can't figure it out, i r stupid =(

I understand i just turn the nob but everything I read on the system leave me with more questions.

Jeff, do you know how to change the FSB speed and multiplier in the BIOS? Steve is correct, it's basically just incrementally increasing the speed until you get glitches/crashes/instability/excessive heat during stress tests and then backing off a step or two.

Overclocking is so 1999. I can't believe people still do this.

That is a fair point, really. It was one thing when I, as a poor college student, was overclocking an AMD Duron in order to gain an extra 5-6 fps in Unreal Tourny.

Its not even about performance per dollar anymore. If you are number crunching and time is critical you wont be doing it on an OC'd machine. If you are playing video games and want performance, the bottleneck isnt the CPU anymore, its the GPU. I haven't had a reason to upgrade my machine in 5 years, still using a Q6600 Quad Core which was 2 years old when I got it, the only thing that was current for the year I put it together was the video card and I havent touched that since.

Nowadays I feel security and redundancy is the priority. I know my next machine is going to have a hardware Raid 5 or 6 a 1 - 2 yr old cpu and again a current video card. Proven hardware with cheap cost and performance where it matters.

We live in a completely different world today.

I know how to change it but there is some math to do, it's like add FSB, then multiplier and volts to match.

I am only looking at OC to extend the life of the desktop and yes i'm looking to OC my gpu more then anything as i have already don't the 6970 unlock.

FSB X multiplier = clockspeed. Voltage adjustment may be needed for stability purposes.

Like I said in my first post, I doubt you'll see much more with the GPU, but if you still want to, it's really simple to start out.

Open catalyst control center, go to the Performance Tab, and start moving the sliders right. Set the power one to max first. Then keep bumping up GPU 10Mhz at a time and stability testing with FurMark. Find peak stable performance, then drop it back down and do the same for memory. Once you've figured it out for both, set them both to highest stable speed and see what happens. You'll probably have to tweak them down a little bit.

It's utterly pointless but fun. Kind of driving a turbo miata on a track :fawk: