Anyone Dabbled with Overclocking?

[janelled]

Well I have an AMD Athlon 64 3700 running at 2.2Ghz at the moment. I am probably going to pick up a higher end processor along with some other odds and ends this summer, so I thought to myself. What the hell, maybe I will try overclocking this one a bit first (then if it decides to crap out I can buy a replacement) I was hoping to hit 3.0Ghz with it, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me how high I could likely (as OC is all by chance of course) take the speed on air cooling. Thanks in advance!

[rabb1t]

By my understanding, a 40% increase on it's power (note this won't be a 40% increase in performance) is an amazing overclock. However, this takes a lot of effort and often liquid cooling. I think more typically a 25% increase is what peeps get to on a fair bit of effort and air cooling. (There are a lot of peeps referencing an OC of the 2 gig X2 3800+ core to 2.5 gig on air at the NewEgg site.)

I have only done OC through software, which allowed for a 10% OC rating. That 10% only gained about 3% in performance and spiked the temperature (thus the noise volume) about 5c idle and ~5-10c or so under load (I believe on the retail cooler). To me, that really didn't seem worth it.

Someday I may try again for something like a manual OC in the 25% range, but I don't know, with the cores I have I've never really felt 'behind' enough to really require it. :D

[Kullall]

There are TONS of sites with info on OC'ing. I used to build computer systems at my old job, and OC'd ram, video cards, and CPUs. I personally never saw all that much of a performance difference in games, and was just downright baffled by people who would ask to have the newest hardware OC'd.

[janelled]

Yeah it was just a thought. I probably won't even end up buying a processor, much less trying to OC for a long time! Not having money can suck!

[Liin]

If you want to check into how to OC I would suggest going to Hardocp.com . On the forums they have a few guides on overclocking and the way to go about it correctly.

[Breogan]

Well I have an AMD Athlon 64 3700 running at 2.2Ghz at the moment. I am probably going to pick up a higher end processor along with some other odds and ends this summer, so I thought to myself. What the hell, maybe I will try overclocking this one a bit first (then if it decides to crap out I can buy a replacement) I was hoping to hit 3.0Ghz with it, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me how high I could likely (as OC is all by chance of course) take the speed on air cooling. Thanks in advance!
I think 3Ghz on an AMD64 is a highly optmistic figure. Expecting 2.6-2.7Ghz would be a closer ballpark but even so, overclocking ain't a science, so there's no guarantee your processor will overclock decently.

[Lord_Vyper]

No chance you'll hit 3Ghz on air. You might be able to hit 2.5-2.7, but that's largely dependant on your motherboard and RAM being OC-friendly.