Overclocking

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MacGregor

#1 Overclocking

Post by MacGregor »

Ok, I said I would not overclock my new M.B, but I am getting the itch and I am willing to try again as there is a new dual 930 on the horizon for me and ScotlandSeti.

I see people like Misfit getting much higher R.A.C. on a machine that is very close to my P-4 machine.

What are some safe steps to take to get quicker turnaround on my crunches?

I am running a MSI 865PE neo 2-V motherboard. 3.0 gig 478 chip, 512 meg(x2) memory and an 80 gig ata 5,600 HD. My laptop and old celeron machine are doing all they can. I want to concentrate on my heavy hitter desktop.

Thanks for any input.

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#2

Post by Megacruncher »

3 Questions first:

What OS are you using?
What projects are you running.
What sort of RAC are you getting at present?
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#3

Post by Snowdog »

As with any overclocking do it a step at a time no point rushing to overclock by say 10% right away when it might not be stable.
Increase your performance by a percent at a time and keep an eye on the core temperature of your cpu.
Also make sure you can get as much cooling into and onto your cpu/motherboard and if possible have an exhaust fan blowing out the hot air from the case.
There is lots more i could go into but i'd say these are the basics you should be looking for unless your going to go down the route of water cooling!
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#4

Post by rowpie »

pentiums are best at fsb overclocking. however in your bios make sure you lock the pci bus at 33, agp at 66 and i think pcie is 100 mhz. if your ram isnt capable of keeping up with the new speed then you can use dividers to keep the ram at its normal speed.

if your using a stock cooler you wont get much overclock. p4 coolers arn't the greatest in the world.

boinc is a very stresful program on your cpu so it has to be 100 % stable as to not cause errors in your work units. prime 95 is a very good benchmark for stresing cpu's for stability. if it can handle a couple hours of that it will normaly be fine.

usual warnings though. not all cpus are created equal. some oc well, some dont at all. remember intel are only obliged for them to work at the rated speed. also putting extra voltage will reduce the lifespan of a cpu but considering most replace them within 5 years thats generally not an issue.

babysteps are key. getting the most out a cpu can take a couple days of stress testing after each increase.

Also google info till you've got tired of reading it. there is a lot of places with info. researching what other people get when they overclock that cpu will also give you an idea of what you might (and i stress might) be able to expect to achieve.
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#5

Post by Guest »

Thanks,

I am running XP-Pro
SETI is the only project I am involved in.
My RAC for this machine is currently 179.43 although that will hopefully change as this machine has been idle for 2 months.

Thanks,
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#6

Post by Megacruncher »

At the risk of highlighting the bleeding obvious, have you enabled hyperthreading in your BIOS settings? This would give you a 50% improvement over not having it on.

Other than that step by step increasing of your FSB, as described,is the only way forward. Good cooling is important. Before you upgrade all your stuff, you can get a good boost by an occasional hoovering out of dust and fluff from all your filters, fans & heatsinks.
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#7

Post by utopia-i »

hi ... so is hyperthreading recommended? - I run WUs that are 20 day deadlines .


In my 'old' folding at home days there was a marginal increase in points ..
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#8

Post by Megacruncher »

If your CPU supports it then there should always be some benefit in enabling hyperthreading. WUs will run significantly more slowly but of course there will be 2 on the go at once. The length of the deadline shouldn't matter as BM is very good at taking all the variables into account.

It's not a patch on having multiple cores though. :)
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#9

Post by MacDitch »

I second what Megacruncher is saying. If I recall correctly HT can get you as much as a ten percent increase in throughput.

Probably won't be that drastic, but the computer will always do two work units on HT faster than it will one after the other.
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#10

Post by Nightlord »

Depending on project(s) requirements, your OS and your CPU L2 Cache, you can achieve a lot more. I've personally seen RAC climb above 1.5 times the same CPU with HT switched off.

Some projects don't actively promote using HT because it slows the return of individual WU's - each WU takes longer. (Folding has this approach). At the same time however, you are running two of them!

Now, what you really want is a multi core thundering beast of a box that hoover's up the WU like there was no tomorrow. Maybe you can come across such a beast... :wink:
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