Weekend Open Forum: Do you overclock?

Yes I overclock I7-930 to 4.2Ghz.
But I tend to buy a PC fairly high end at first then overtime increase the overclock. I would like to upgrade some of the maincomponants, ie Processor as things get cheaper, but INTEL keep changing the ruddy sockets... I went from Q6600 skt 775 standard at first purchase to in the end 3.2Ghz. My next move was having to change the entire barebone system. I should have gone AMD as at least they have the forthought to try and keep same sockets for ages.

I have slight overclocks on GPUs but only software and light tweaks in crossfire, luckily most games have yet to catch up.
 
I used to overclock hard core - and just like you the golden days for me was back in the Celeron 300A era. Had mine running at a smooth 504 MHz with an overclocked ASUS TNT video card and even overclocked my PS2 port to get a higher polling rate from my mouse. The last serious overclocking I did was with my Dual 733 Mhz which I only gave a slight bump up to the 800+ range - from that point I started getting into SMP machines and my job turned more toward dealing with servers and the like so stability became much more important to me. I simply upgraded parts when I needed something faster. These days I refuse to overclock anything unless I purchased it overclocked from the manufacturer - though I am considering overclocking stuff on my new rig just because it's so easy and some of the parts seem to be designed to be overclocked (I.E. 5970 and 930).
 
I overclock an I7 960 3.2GHz to 4.05GHZ just to make the 4.0 club on an ASUS PT6D Deluxe Mobo with basic water cooling (bus clock 166x25)! I overclock my Radeon 5870 to GPU 890MHz and memory clock 1290MHz! My ram is overclocked at 1866MHz I believe but I'd have to leave this post and go into my bios to recall! I've been overclocking for years, it's fun and widely acceptable now! I never fried any components although some memory has failed along the way! I dont really like playing with voltage but I never really pushed past total stability! My system has a 7.6 Windows Experience Index! It runs like greased lightning! Instantainous!
 
Only time I ever OCed was with P4 Pressler (don't remember the part name I think it was 940, correct me if I am wrong, though it ran at stock speed of 3.2 Ghz) anyway I didn't push it too aggressively for the little period I OCed it I think it was something like 3.32 Ghz; that's about it, I am not really crazy about 'few' %age of performance gain I'll have because of OCing, I rather like to have a stable and reliable system at my disposal.
 
Too bad dell PC's come with a locked BIOS that lets you change your boot drive but barely anything else. Planning to buy a new mobo and cpu heatsink to overclock my i7-920.
 
Just bought a Hyper 212+. Works like a dream even if it was a ***** to install. Got my E7500 from 2.93 to 3.85, AND my temps are lower than the stock heatsink on stock clocks. No harm in overclocking IMO. Your cpu will be outdated before it burns out in most cases.
 
I still have a Dell XPS 420... no overclocking options in the BIOS. However, I did pull out the CPU and did a "tape mod" on it sticking a tiny piece of tape on one of the pads on the CPU. I went from 2.4 Ghz with 1066 Mhz FSB to 3.0 Ghz with 1333 FSB. I never bothered monitoring my temps before I overclocked, but now they're at ~32c idle and go up to ~55c under full load. System runs 100% stable.
 
My first CPU I was able to overclock was my P4 630, had it up to 3.4 from 3.0, nothing special mainly because the motherboard just wasn't up to spec to handle anything more. After that I had the same CPU on a newer board but being nVidia based that was not happening. Next was my Q6600 that I got up to 3.6 from 2.4 again this was done on a nVidia board but this time a much higher end one, never got stability at that speed and had to settle for 24/7 use at 3.0 which was still a nice boost in speed. After that I had enough with boards that could OC and when the i series came out and everyone was having such great success overclocking I got my current setup, i7 920 on an EVGA X58 SLI board, within the first three days of owning it I had it running stable at 4.0 GHz which was all I wanted and has been stable and 24/7 running since last august now. I'll admit the occasional crash but its only certain games not stress test which is just odd, and the game that seems to get my PC is Starcraft 2 all of a sudden... But I'm starting to think its not my CPU OC and just the game not liking something in my system.
 
I overclocked my desktop. i7 920 d0 revision. I OC'd it to 4.2Ghz completely on air. I use the IC Diamond Thermal Paste and Thermalright Ultra Extreme HSF.

Idle is 32c and full load is roughly 50c. Granted, when I do p95, it can go up to 65 or so. :p
 
overclocked when its not enough juice. P4 Northwood 2.4ghz to 3.0ghz. Not much improve gaming performance...for application it did a boost.
 
DXdiag:

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 9/18/2010, 14:29:15
Machine name: JOANNE-PC
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 3072MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3072MB RAM
Page File: 2520MB used, 3621MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 64bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
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Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

Problem:

Hello guys. Sorry if im posting this in the wrong place but this site doesn't show you where you can post new posts. I've looked for ages aswell.

When i was using my much smaller harddrive (74.3gb)with the same components i am now, i could run graphics settings on the highest settings in game and get about 60fps but now, and seeing as my small harddrive is blown due to my brother so i can't revert back to it...I'm using this bigger harddrive as stated about in dxdiag. But with this one i get really low fps in games and its very jerky and i can't run games in high settings. A friend of mine thinks its might be to do with my cpu or my gfx fan but i really would like some more opinions on what the problem is and how to fix it. Advice would be greatly appreciated. x
 
Yes Overclock my Athlon II x3 2.9 to 3.6, DDR2 800 to 1066. and i go to this butget CPU to get the last juice of it jus as i did it... i have little overclock on my HD 4850, now im after a "Butget" SSD my las purchase for this year.
 
I've been overclocking since the 386 days when you had to physically swap clock crystals. I remember getting a 25MHz 386 to run at 40MHz I moved on the 486's, Celerons, and the Athlons with similar results.

Today my dual core E8400 runs at 4GHz and is absolutely stable. Idle temperature is 41C and gets to about 50 under load.
 
i have amd dual core am3 550 black unlocked to quad core and over clocked from 3.1ghz to 4.25ghz on all four cores not bad on $99 cpu stable temp on stock with quad core enabled is 40c and after overclocking temp only 60c siting in a room that's 80f funny i have ati amd 4830 with overclocked as well if case temp drop below 40c it makes noise because it's to cool i have overclock the video card gpu to 650mhz from 575.
and memory from 450 to 1000 all running stable and video card max temp so far at full load is only been 70c playing battlefield bad company 2 for 4 hours.
 
I overclock because I can and because every bit of performance counts. And you need an aftermarket cooler for the epeen, so why not use it. :p

I have my Phenom II x3 @3.5GHz and I plan on OCing my GTX 480 from 700mhz to about 800MHz
 
I keep my video card overclocked significantly(around 100 mhz more on core clock and memory) my processor tend to keep towards stock but will mess with the multiplier from time to time for short periods.
cpu: phenom ii 940
video card: ATI sapphire 4830
 
I have been overclocking since I was 12 years old on my socket 754 Sempron 64 2800+ that I managed to get to 2800mhz killing MANY IDE HDD's. when i was 16 i bought an Asus M2N32-SLIDeluxe (590SLi) with an AMD athlon X2 4200+ that i could again, only get to 2600mhz. A year later i picked up the 5000+ BE with a Zalman 9700LED and got 3.5ghz on my ASUS M2N. This past year my M2N died, but i was lucky enough to put a Phenom II X3 720BE in it and I got 3.7ghz on it. My MOBO died in a power surge >.> Im sure i would still be overclocking on it now if it didn't die then.

I have also overclocked all of my videocards starting with a 256mb MX5200. It has been too long for me to remember any of the clock speeds, It wasn't something i did all the time since I didn't want to kill them like my HDD's. My next video card was a 128mb n6600. When i picked up my AM2 system i purchased a 256mb X1900XT. The only video card I can be certain of is my 8800GT SLI I bought in 07 IIRC. I managed a core/shader/memory clock of 900/1800/2000 from the stock 750/1750/1800. Needless to say, I owned crysis @ 1440X900 lol. I got about 50 FPS max settings with 4X AA. Anymore than that and it would drop to about 15-20.

I'm 20 years old now and have been overclocking for 8 years.
 
I sometimes bought for overclock. I bought that Celeron 300A, and the 700MHz Pentium 3 with the 100MHz bus, so it'll overclock easily. However, I found that in practice these systems didn't feel significantly faster when overclocked, and that when I had an application that was too slow for my need (typically after I owned the system for a while) the overclock didn't help make it really faster, while buying a new system did.

Couple that with the extra heat, higher chance of malfunction, the effort of tweaking, and it just didn't feel worth it. I still tried to see if I could get any overclock with my current CPU on stock cooling and settings (Phenom II 710; I couldn't). I also enjoy trying to overclock my graphics cards, but I usually run them at stock.

My current graphics card, a Radeon 5850 (which I won here) is underclocked to the minimum the control panel allows since I started folding. My system became very hot in the already sweltering summer heat, and the fan noise was annoying. Underclocking helped somewhat, and I don't feel any effect of the lower speed in the games I'm playing, so I keep it underclocked even when I turn folding off to play a game.
 
My MSI motherboard and OCZ memory are up to the task, but I never have actually overclocked since my performance is fine for what I do (gaming at 1280x1024).
 
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