Why overclock, the answer is simple to make your computer run faster but theres a bit more to it than that, a standard q6600 core2 quad go stepping runs at 2.4ghz and sells in the uk for around £150, a qx6800 core2 quad runs at 2.93ghz and sells for £562, its a big difference considering they are basically the same chip, the qx extreme's are easier to overclock because the multiplier is unlocked and the chips are generally better quality but both have been overclocked to well over 4ghz how much would Intel charge for one of them, some people have a problem with the ethics of overclocking as if your doing something wrong, bottom line is you bought it you can do whatever the hell you like with it, Intel and AMD use the overclockability of their chips as a sales tool so nobody is getting cheated, you have every right to overclock your chip but you also have the responsibility, overclocking your CPU, motherboard and ram shouldn't do any damage to your components as long as the pci-e is locked at 100mhz, but overvolting can and will do damage, either be sensible with voltages or be prepared to pay for your mistakes, this is just a guide nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you, i take no responsibility for any damage caused to your computer and neither does BYOIT, the responsibility is yours and yours alone.

Theres more than one way to skin a cat the easiest way to overclock is in windows, Asus, MSI and most other gaming motherboard manufacturers have overclocking apps that either come on the motherboard installation disc or can be downloaded from their sites, if you want a half decent overclock with the minimum amount of effort use these, also try clockgen, some of the best overclockers out there will still use these types of tools to fine tune their setups so dont think your above using them, but if you want to seriously get into overclocking you will need to get into the bios but I'm not going to tell you how, if you haven't figured out how to do that your not ready to be messing round in there.

As i said earlier a q6600 and a qx6800 are basically the same kentsfield chip, the better quality chips that are capable of the highest overclocks are left unlocked and their multipliers can be increased or decreased and Intel charge a premium for them, the lesser chips are semi locked you can change the multiplier but only downwards, to overclock an extreme chip simply increase the multiplier and its overclocked no need to mess around with the fsb, or straps etc, and it wont alter the pci-e settings, if your multi is locked and even if it isn't theres still lots of room for improvement, the first thing you've got to realise is the overall clock speed isn't everything, If your multi is 9 and your fsb is 300 thats 9 x 300mhz = 2700mhz, if you drop the multi to 8 and increase the fsb to 337mhz = 2696mhz its actually slower but put it on a benchmark and i know one my money would be on, if you dont believe me try it for yourself and it will show you the overall clock speed isn't the be all and end all.

In your bios set C1E or Smart step to disabled, when your computer is at idle the multi will reduce to 6 to save energy, run CPU-z on a computer with a std q6600 and instead of showing 2400mhz it will be showing 1600mhz, c1e speed step wont effect your overclocking its just easier to check your settings when its not running.

Go to advanced settings and set the jumper free settings or overclocking settings to manual, this will open up lots of options, the first one you should change is the pci-e, all the setting are linked if you raise the fsb without locking the pci-e you should start looking for a new graphics card now, it is designed to run at 100mhz, a lot of overclockers believe slightly increasing the pci-e helps with stability so you will see many set at 101mhz but if you want to play safe set it at 100mhz and leave it alone, never forget and run it in auto you have been warned.

Also you should check the memory timings are correct, spd setting are often set wrong to ensure stability correct them before going any further the correct setting will be available from the ram manufacturers website, and use memtest if you have any worries about the stability of your ram.

Disable any spread spectrum options.

Start raising the fsb say 10mhz at a time, each time you will have to save the settings reboot into windows and run a stress test, if prime95 runs for twenty minutes go back into the bios and increase the fsb again, raise it by 10mhz two or three times then drop down to 5 mhz steps, save the setting each time and run a stress test, if nothing else you will learn patience, if you raise it by too much and it errors in prime95 go back to the bios, or if it wont boot most modern motherboards have crash free bios's, normally you will be informed the overclock failed and given the option to enter bios setting or load defaults, if on the other hand this doesn't fix it there will be a jumper on the motherboard to clear the cmos or remove the battery for a minute to reset it, Ive only ever had to reset mine once and that wasn't overclocking related, if an overclock fails you can decrease the fsb until you find a stable setting or you can increase the voltages, increasing voltages is when you can start doing damage to your components so if you want to ere on the side of caution stop now, if not raising the v-core will allow you to raise the fsb further, 10-15 percent is a sensible limit, on my Asus p5k it starts turning red at 1.6v and its been over 1.8v but i wouldn't advise anyone to follow suit, i wouldn't actually advise you going anywhere near those voltages unless your prepared to break something, these voltages apply to a p5k your board will be different, so find out the std CPU voltage stick to the 10-15 percent rule.

when you have found your maximum stable overclock and you've run benchmarks drop the multi and do it all over again find your maximum benchmark and drop the multi again, each different CPU and board will overclock differently, you need to find the best setting for yours, and the highest overclock you achieve wont necessarily be the fastest in a benchmark.

Always run a temperature monitoring program like coretemp while you are stress testing, Intel dual and quad cores will tolerate a fair amount of heat but its advisable to keep below 65c, good aftermarket air coolers will show a decent improvment over the stock cooler at a reasonable price, water cooling and more extreme forms of cooling will have a dramatic effect, mainly on your wallet not your benchmark scores.

Dram frequencies and memory dividers can be used to retune your memory back into sync with the rest of the system, in an ideal world memory will run 1:1, but in an ideal world we wouldn't have to overclock so you may have to, better to tweak the memory later, for now just try and keep the memory in sync the best you can, will post more on this when i have read up on it a bit more, till then it will have to be trial and error.

Latency, right i think ive got my head round this, the ram timing 4 - 4 - 4 -12 etc are the number of clocks the memory takes before it can move on to the next task, therefore the timing numbers should be looked on more as a delay, the shorter the delay the quicker the memory can work, try reducing the timing one at a time and one number at a time, run memtest and benchmark, it wont improve your overclock but it will improve your score in benchmarks.

This is meant as a rough guide for more detailed information your best bet is type the words overclock and guide into google and you will find hundreds, add the model number of your chip for guides on your particular chip, overclocking AMD chips with hyper transport technology is a bit of an art form in itself, you need to keep them in a zone for them to work well, few years back everybody and his dog were overclocking athlons, now everyone seems to have moved on, its a while since Ive tried so I'm not going to brush up on it just to write this, and there are plenty of overclocking guides for athlons out there on the internet just google it.

Give us a shout if you want to add something, or if you think i need to go into more detail.

pops i think i dont need to add anything.. this is pretty much it.. oh a simple one.. overclocking does need a better cooling system for it to work properly.. because you wont be able to find a higher stable settings if your cpu is overheating.. better performance is equal to higher cpu/gpu temperature.. so i suggest getting a non-stock heatsink or a liquid cooling system if you really want to push it to the limits.. you can overclock it with the stock fan but i dont think that you can go more than 3.3ghz if you are using q9650..

Keep em coming, get a few sugestions tomorrow after people have read it and make some changes, going to add a bit about checking the spd setting, just noticed the timing on my rams out.

cool, thanks mate

Is there any point to overclocking if you aren't a gamer? What does it ultimately Accomplish other than a dead PC if you aren't extremely careful?

Thats like looking at a formul one car and saying whats the point of that why didnt they just buy a prius, and what about that leonado da vinci painting that ceiling over in the cisteen chapel, couple of coats of pure brilliant white emulsion would have brightened the place up a little, but oh no leonardo has to start showing off.

YouTube - AMD Phenom II Overclocked to 6.5GHz - New World Record for 3DMark

What happens when you start overclocking at such speeds? Time Travel or Building the Starship Enterprise for Warp 9 and space travel (only for the filthy stinkin' rich of course.) We get lousy mass market garbage while they get to have all the fun with future tech.

No relation to the real world unless you happen to have big tanks of nitrogen and helium knocking about the place.