Have just put together a new system (ABit kx7333R, AMD Athlon XP 2100, 512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM (DDR333)) and have herd a lot about overclocking. I have never ventured into the world of overclocking before and just wondered if it would be worth doing on this system, i.e. would i see any noticeable increase in performance ??

Thanks

Er....... simple answer NO.

People who overclock are either those who have an old CPU, and don't care about its longevity cause it is near worthless to them, and they want to get a bit of extra power out of it, or they are CARAZYYYY thrill seekers, wishing to push their new equipent as hard as possible, cause it is fun to see your machine do more than it is sold as being able to do.

Mate. You have a superb system. Overclocking it will do absolutley nothing for you, unless you work with PIXAR and you're working on Toy Story 3!!!

And overclocking is really something you shouldn't meddle with if you never did it before and you are running a brand new top-of-the-line system! Get an old machine and play with that if yo uwant to learn about overclocking. People on here will give you advice on how to do it, but they won't give you a refund on your computer parts when you blow them up!

dont bother, your system is plenty fast and if it is configured properly, you probably will not even notice any increases from OC'ing

Give me stability every time! For most of us an extra second wait doesn't make much difference let alone a few micro seconds.

Steve, Don't listen to them. OC if you want to. True you won't notice much difference in most day to day applications, (Word, Spreadsheets, etc.) but in some games and other intense computing applications you will. Even a 10% increase is noticable in something like 3D CAD.

Besides you will learn something about computers. One of the first things you will learn is that overclocking doesn't distroy your computer. It won't "blow up", "go up in smoke" or any of those things.

Do a little research, pay attention, and put some thought into what you are doing as you OC. It may shorten the life of you computer by 10% to 20%, but as the life time of your computer is about 50,000+ hours (5.7years) of continous use, you will junk it long before then. I have never lost a CPU, motherboard, memory stick, or other major component, and I have been doing this a long, long time.

In fact a Packard Bell Computer that I bought new in 1994 is still being used today by a six year old. I overclocked it when the 1 year warrenty ran out, and it has bee running overclocked since then. The hard drives have been replaced as has the power supply. (The cooling fan on the power supply quit, and it was easier to replace the power supply). Memory was added, CD-ROM was added, an upgrede to a 56K modem, a 4MB video card, and a CPU cooling fan added. Not a fast system but still going strong.

Steve, don't listen to us. After all, you use CAD on a daily basis! and WHAT??? game is gonna improve over an Athlon 2000???????

Er..... NONE. Even the "MIGHTY" XBOX uses only a 733 Pentium processor. But it does have custom Geforce 3 GPU, which is what you should be worrying about getting if you want faster games (Geforce Ti 3 or 4).

And as the other guy said, you will notice, next to NO difference, for a risk that is just not worth the effort.

WHy even bother overclocking it? Just wait a month and ebay your chip, get most of your money back, (possibly even make a profit as some ebay auctions are CRAZILY overpriced), and buy the Athlon 2200 as they drop in price bit by bit almost on a daily basis!

You wanna learn about overclocking computer's?

Would a mechanic learn about cars by "tinkering" with a new Ferrari? Buy a p2 200 or something like that for like, $80 and overclock it!

And as for shortening the life by 10%. Well thats true if you know what your doing. But as you don't and have never done it before, you could just make a mistake and "blow up" your board. "Blow up! meaning, chips overheat and fail. In the worst case, the motherboard chips may crack (*as has happened to me before) and the processor may fail also.

Oh, and I hope I am ok in saying, DON'T listen to the post above, because you asked "Is it worth it" not "can it be done".

The answer is NO.

Actually, please *DO* listen to what most of the people have had to say, because they're probably just as experienced as Jim. I know for sure that I am . . .

What Jim failed to mention, and where XxxFrancisxxxUSA is 100% correct, is that overclocking, in this day and age of incredibly fast computers, is strictly an ego thing, or something to do on a machine that you have little to no use for - for yourself.

Also, back in Jim's Hayday (I'm guessing of course) with that 1994 system, overclocking did indeed make a big difference on some machines because just a jump from 120 Mhz. to 150 Mhz. back then could save you the cost of a new processor. But to overclock an XP2100 chip for no *GOOD* reason, is simply madness.

If you really want to tweak your system that badly, while enjoying a definitive, noticeable increase in performance, simply go to my website (www.abp1.com/index2.html) and download yourself the XSETUP program from the FREEWARE for WINDOWS section. It's been proven time and again to be the best tweaker in the World, easy enough to use for most people, with absolutely guranteed performance increases. With XSETUP, I'll put any 750 - 850 Mhz. computer that I've built and stack it up next to *ANY* standard retail system up to 1 or even 1.2 Ghz. speed - and show that my safely tweaked system performs just as well. I recommend the program to all of my clients, and I install it on all of the computers that I build. Check it out.

As far as video performance is concerned, XSETUP has several tweaks for that too - for some of the major graphics cards. BUT, you'd have to be a serious hardcore gaming freak, to be desperate enough to even want to make a high performance video card - perform even better - with the memory and chip power that you already have with your nice, shiny, new XP2100 system.

;)

Hey Intel, AMD rulez!

Hey, I bet you guys complain about turning your clocks forward for daylight savings time.

YOU DO IT BECAUSE YOU CAN!

IF YOU CAN'T DO IT, THEN *YOU* TRY TO STOP OTHERS FROM DOING WHAT *YOU* CAN'T DO!

Overclocking an AMD XP 2100 CPU is well, simply another spike in its coffin. The core dissipates so much energy (approx twice of P4 at 2Ghz), and thus, runs so hot (approx 60 degrees celsius, 65 at most), i woudn't recomment overclocking it. The running temperature limit on AMD cpus is approx. 75 degrees, which is just a slice above its running temperature. Overclocking will give you experience, but i strongly advise you to let be. You dont want to waste a 150$ cpu just because you wanted some extra 100 mhz ?(less than 5 percent).

I repeat, my primary reason not to do it is already higly tuned CPU. AMD is having trouble keeping them cool at .13 micron, so overclocking this beast might simply throw it off limit.

Amn.

Hey, Jim:

>YOU DO IT BECAUSE YOU CAN! ???

No, only people with money to burn have that kind of attitude. I know plenty of people that can - AND WON'T - because the risk factor is either too great - or because their knowledge is not sufficient - or because they don't have the TIME to get the proper knowledge.

That's like telling a cop, "Oh, yeah, I was doing 120 mph. because my car could - and never thought that my engine would blow!"

Doing something just because you CAN, sound pretty darn asinine to me. Being able to do something, and doing something because it's the right thing to do, are two completely separate issues.

And yeah, I hate that daylight savings issue so much, that I can't tell you how pleased I am, that our computers do that automtically. What are you using? DOS?
(grin)

Hey Intel, AMD rulez!

I'm running two computers (not counting my laptop) right now. One of them is overclocked - and the other one isn't, because I'm very happy with its performance. So, I have NO REASON to overclock that one, even though I can.

A lot of the people who wrote to these posts, are newbies who are trying to learn something, or people looking for good, sound advice.

Telling someone to overclock for the sheer heck of it, is pretty silly. Unless you do some serious homework and really know what you're doing, MOST overclocked systems will only get an average of 10 - 15 percent more juice out of the processor. And you know what? There's no way in the world that you're going to convince me, that you type or perform tasks on your computer at such blinding speed - that you would be able to notice the difference. Not with most properly configured systems that are running processors at 1.2 Ghz. or better speed.

Distribute power evenly . . .
Keep it clean,
Keep it cool,
Run the PC 24 X 7,
Restart every 2 - 3 days,
Scandisk weekly,
Defrag every 3 months,
Don't download crap all of the time . . .

And your PC will run nice and smooth, and pretty darn quick - quick enough for most people anyway.

Hey Intel, AMD rulez!

See the new thread, titled "The Flat Earth Socity".

Now I am off, to other places to annoy other people.

You are one of those flat earth guys?

(abundance of sarcasm here).

Nope. We try advise people not to listen to what is ultimately bad advice, from people who don't give a sh*t what will happen to their machine if it goes wrong.

leembo - I can't see that prog (XSETUP) on this website. Am I blind?

I know it's there . . .
It's my website . . .

Go here:
http://www.abp1.com/2freewar/thelist.html

Choose the section for hardware utilities.
Be nice - bookmark the page and tell everyone about it. I want more than my current 325,000 hit count per month.

;D

Hey Intel, AMD rulez!

Hey, I don't want to sound like I have a huge tumor in my skull affecting my ability to think, but I agree with Jim. I overclock. Do I really and truly need to overclock? No, I do not. Do I have money to blow if I mess up and smell something funny coming out of the tower? No, I do not. Which also brings me to agree with the other side. Overclocking can't be hurtful if you have a good idea on what you are doing.

The comp I am writing this post on is an overclocked XP1700+, running somewhere between the specs of an 1800+ and a 1900+. It would be higher if I could afford better memory. This comp idles at around 37°C. That's less than 100°F for those that don't know. In fact, it's the average human body temperature. Under full load, it doesn't surpass 50°C. I overclock, I know what I'm doing. Main use of this computer, play games.

For my situation, overclocking is worth it. For yours, it might not be. Before you ask if it's worth it, ask if you even need more performance. If all you do is see how many times you can type your name in Word during a 8 hour work day, then a faster computer won't help you. Consider the circumstances.

leembo, You wrote:
"With XSETUP, I'll put any 750 - 850 Mhz. computer that I've built and stack it up next to *ANY* standard retail system up to 1 or even 1.2 Ghz. speed - and show that my safely tweaked system performs just as well. I recommend the program to all of my clients, and I install it on all of the computers that I build. Check it out."
ok
I have Duron850 256DDR shuttle ak31 gforce2mx 40GB barracuda IV. How can I exactly improve that system with this prog?

Download the programm, silly.

Install it . . .
Reboot (even though you don't have to)
Get into the main XSETUP screen
Wait a few secs for all to be recognized

And then prepare to have your mind boggled, as you are confronted with over 400 individually customizable options. XSETUP has won every imaginable tweaker award on earth, and has won, hands down, in *ANY* contest with other tweaker software - year after year since 1997 or so.

Remember though . . .
1. I said standard retail machine
(untampered or mucked with)
2. Never mix tweaking software - EVER.
Too many tweaks with different programs
that are all trying to achieve the same
thing, can actually cause you problems
down the road. As long as you stick
strictly with XSETUP, you'll be fine.

If you have a working virus checker, you might want to turn that off, just during the intial install of xsetup.

Hey Intel, AMD rulez!

I've thought You have some kind of special set of settings. And yes, actually I use TweakUI for WinXP, Powertoys. Maybe I'm a newbie, but You really think, You can improve system, with this prog, from 850MHz to ~1GHz....?

PS I've downloaded this prog from X-teq site...

I have used this program before. I didn't really get the kind of performance boost that leembo described, but it did help somewhat. A more important factor in being able to beat a standard retail PC as described by leembo will be your graphics card. The fastest retail PC's of today tend to come with really bad graphics cards. Imagine what the 1.2 Ghz comps came with, probably TNT 2's. I saw one of those shipping in a 2.0A Ghz P4 comp in a Best Buy ad or some other computer store ad. Using tweaking programs only help so much, but any boost to performance is a good thing. And unless a lot has been changed, TweakUI isn't really much of a tweaking program. At least not a hardware tweaking program, which is XSETUP's strong points, so you should be fine with both running.

Well, I don't know how much of a difference xsetup will make with WinXP since WinXP also has its own performance enhancements, that you can adjust for yourself. But I've seen xsetup do things on Win98 and WinME systems, leaving me literally speechless afterwards.

There have been a LOT of comparisons between tweakUI and xsetup. Xsetup won each and every time - by a mile. Once you install it, you'll see what I mean. It's about as comprehensive as it gets - and then some. Just the menu reaction speed alone, that one single adjustment, will boggle your mind when everything on your screen reacts in as little as 25 ms. And that particular tweak is simply awesome on even slower computers . . .

But Froggx is right too. A killer graphics card can boggle your mind too. I'm not a gamer and was always pretty pleased with my 32 MB Savage2000 card - until I recently installed a card with the new SiS315 chipset. Holy Toledo, Batman - that left me speechless too! What an improvement in performance! WOW

(it's not easy to make a big performance difference on a 19 in. monitor with 16.7 mil. colors and 1024 X 768 with small fonts. But THAT definitely made an immediate difference)

Hey Intel, AMD rulez!

My mistake. I have only worked with Win2000 and WinXP systems recently. leembo is right, very good program to be using if you are using Win9x. And it is so much better than TweakUI as well.