Oc'ing Question

[BobtheCkroach]

Alright. I've got an X2 4800 system coming soon, and I'm wondering about overclocking, if it's a safe option. I believe I remember Jim and Bigg talking extensively about overclocking a 3800, so I guess I assume that I could safely do some to the 4800 as well.

I've never OC'ed anything before, so I definitely need some help/advice before I go about it.

I'd appreciate anything that anyone has to offer.

Here are links for the different hardware parts:

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131568

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103544

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440

Vid card (if that's needed): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143049

If details on other parts are needed, let me know.

[Die Hard]

Good luck Bob ;)

[JIMINATOR]

the subject has been reviewed pretty thoroughly...

sort of a history here....

http://gamemecca.net/forums/showthread.php?t=68247&highlight=overclock
http://gamemecca.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76493&highlight=overclock
http://gamemecca.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76536&highlight=overclock

if you have specific questions on what you attempted that didn't work,
feel free to ask. overclocking help though, that is somewhat of a broad topic.
You are going to have to do some research for your system.

[BobtheCkroach]

the subject has been reviewed pretty thoroughly...

sort of a history here....

http://gamemecca.net/forums/showthread.php?t=68247&highlight=overclock
http://gamemecca.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76493&highlight=overclock
http://gamemecca.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76536&highlight=overclock

if you have specific questions on what you attempted that didn't work,
feel free to ask. overclocking help though, that is somewhat of a broad topic.
You are going to have to do some research for your system.

Thanks jim. I'll look through those and see what I can gleen from them, then ask questions as necessary. That'll be a great start.

I'm just nervous as heck that I'll change some number and everything will fry.

[ME BIGGD01]

After all the tinkering and messing around you will notice it really is not worth the bother. You will already have a fst and powerful pc that will run any app on the market with no problem.

At this time I find nothing exciting in the market. I think that AMD is really not a the company to be building a high end system with today unless you are building a budget unit. Yes I said it and I will say that the core 2 duo chip is pretty much the leader right now in the desktop space. Wait, do not take these asci characters to tell you to go and buy a Intel product. Right now or I should say the market is just getting rid of old stock. That means build budget. The reason I would not build a high end system from AMD right now is that AMD will be releasing new chips and then new chips again next year. This is not saying AMD does not have fast chips but to spend too much on hardware that will not make up for the investment or give you a future with your investment it does not pay to buy high end. A low end Core 2 form Intel will go much further at this point.

Now that I said that I will say that although many are counting AMD out or to have dropped the ball, this is not the case. We have a new OS and much new software going to hit the market next year afterthe second qtr. New games to utilize the power of such machine along with a new OS (not crazy about Vista). To me I thing buying a single core fx 55 chip will be a much better gaming chip than most dual core chips. This all depends what you are doing or planning to do with your system. Hell I would say a low end amd 64 bit chip is a great chip for anything because nothing really uses the pwer enough. Dual core? I say look for the best price and buy if need be. Overall AMD today will get you a pretty good unit for under 500 bucks that will run any game with no problem.

Now they are talking about Quad cores. Intel will have them out this month and they are not showing that much of a performance boost over the dual core. Ahhhh, this is where I get to don't buy Intel either. There is no words in my mouth that will tell you the core 2 is bad. It's a great chip and is a very powerful chip. The problem is the entire platform will cost you biggie bucks. Still if you bought this you would have a fast computer. Big deal though right? Well lets go back to quad cores and the time Intel is going to release it. At the same time AMD will release a platform called the quad father or better known as 4x4. 4 vga's, 4 cpu cores. This is not a quad core cpu though but a 2 x dual core system which hey can have been bought for a year now using dual core Opterons. Her is the thing though..... Since I have been testing these dual core Opteron units already which is technically quad cores just not on one die (neither is Intels really regardless of them calling it a quad core), I will tell you that these Opteron Units are the fastest system I have used to date. To be more specific they are HP 9300 and now the newer model HP 9400 which uses DDR2 and uses the new socket f. Socket F seems to be the future as it will be used in this 4x4 quad father system. Yes they are said to be rebadged Opterons but they will utilize regular DDR2 instead of ecc registerd dimms which will allow for lower latency and higher memory clocks. Now if you compare the platforms this is where Intel gets killed. First of all AMD still to this day has the best platform. It is getting a bit out dated now but it is being updated with HT 3.0. Along with the new AMD chips coming next year that will have an L3 cache and double of the pipelines and instruction sets, Intel will find itself short because they have kept to their old way of thinking such as fsb. The problem and bottleneck with Intel is the more cores you put there, the highway to memory gets clogged. This is why you see so much cache on Intel chips which makes up for lots of lost latency. Among other thing also but no matter what Intels platform will hit a brick wall unless or until they take the same approach AMD has with it's integrated memory controller and direct connect architecture---yes Hyper transport. Rumor has it Intel is actually going to copy AMD but like AMD's AMD64 which Intel is now using (not as good or fully put together as AMD's) they will rename it as to make people think they designed it. Like EMT64 is really AMD64, Intel has got to copy AMD because it is the better solution.

So now you have Itels quad core that will have a slower bus because of the bottle neck and you have AMD's premature or only soultion right now 4x4. It remains to be seen today but knowing what I have dealt with with these Opteron systems, I will have to put my money on the 4x4 and skip the core 2 quad chips. The advantages of the AMD solution on paper far exceed those of the Intel platform. Things such as better or higher scaling, NUMA support (amazing stuff I have run with the Opteron units) and hyper transport. AMD's solution just makes more sense to me and since the 4x4 will be using the socket f it should be able to run AMD's quad core chips when they are released next year. I guess you could call it 8x4 at that point.

So with all that babbling, I just meant to say that you have a fast system and you will not need to overclock it to make it fast. Keep it stable and cool and you will enjoy it far better than having a couple of extra mhz that show you nothing more than a better benchmark. No matter what you will not see any difference on your monitor.

[JIMINATOR]

nice review. true also that the amd memory controller is superior, they get much more throughput than the intel solution, (although they are getting pwned in most other aspects). that being said, todays chips are not powerful enough to drive the soon to be released gpus. The core 2s are currently the fastest, and they have found that the only way to get the maximum performance from the 8800 gtx is to overclock by 1000 mhz. so that is a lot to think about. it will be interesting to see if the next ati card has the same limitations. another issue is that people are saying that computers are going to be reaching the wattage limits available through typical home wiring. there are already 1000W PSUs available. Things like a overclocked Q4 and dual 8800 gtxs will probably use all of that. then the only way to get more watts will be via a 240v line. (like a dryer). Of course the power usage gets decreased everytime they move to smaller dies, but the issue at that point is when they 'double' the cores or the processing unit. which also points out that fan cooling isn't going to cut it soon...

[BobtheCkroach]

Thanks, guys! :thumbs:

That was all pretty helpful.

Frankly, I knew that the Core 2's were better chips overall. And the first 4mb C2D chip (I think it's the 6600) is roughly the same price as the 4800 that I bought. However, I already had to buy a new cpu, a new video card (i'm finally on a PCIe) and a new mobo. I didn't have enough cash to the do the rest, so I decided to stay w/ a 939 so I could keep using my DDR ram. If I had been going all out, I probably would have gone the C2D route, but I rationalized that

a) my chip will easily handle everything that's coming in the next couple years. Heck, until this moment, I've been running things on a Socket A 3200+, which is 2 generations old now.

and

b) If I'm not gonna go all out and get a geforce 7900, then I'm not gaming at the top anyways, and the lower vid card will show its limits before the CPU, at least I think?

In any case, yeah, I know that I didn't get the best chip on the market. But I do know that I got a card that will hold it's own for quite a while to come.

Also, after having read what you guys have said, I don't think I'll bother with overclocking. I was thinking there'd actually be a noticeable difference, but if it only goes as far as benchmarks, then I won't bother.

Thanks much!

[ME BIGGD01]

I think you made a wise choice kepping with S939 and using existing hardware that you already own. You will probably get a good 2 years with that kit and be happy as well.

[BobtheCkroach]

I think you made a wise choice kepping with S939 and using existing hardware that you already own. You will probably get a good 2 years with that kit and be happy as well.

That was my goal. I had a couple people try and convince me that my hardware will not last as long as the C2D and that spending an extra hundred now will save me having to buy a new system as soon, but I replied that I doubted that it would save me very longer...maybe 6 months longer than just keeping what I decided on.