i have a 7900gt and a single amd 3800 2.4 ghz

1st question is... Does it demand more Power from the PSU?

also... how do i overclock my processor and gpu?

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Overclocking is essentially...putting more power through the selected unit....so yes.

Secondly, I got programs with my processor and gfx card which allow me to overclock.

Thirdly, dont even think about it if you havnt got decent cooling

fourthly, why do you wanna overclock anyway? your system sounds fine.

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Software overclocking is pointless, sometimes it can be unstable and you dont get the maximum out of it.

Dont overclock unless you feel your PC is running slow and you cba with an upgrade

well... i am told my 7900gt is capable of overclocking to hell with little penalty, that and athlons by nature can overclock well

after playing dark messiah multiplayer beta and having the frames per second as low as 15-35 i thought i'd see if i can get an improvement by overclocking

even with low textures though and 1024x768 res it's still as bad

I have to put it to 800x600 to get an improvement

it may just be a case of the game being really badly optimised

i ask how much more power it requires because i have a 450watt antec smart power 2.. and don't have much confidence with it

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The first rule of overclocking is that you buy stuff to overclock, not suddenly decide you might try it because you think it might work, though you might be very lucky and good kit.

Power consumption is proportional to the square of the clock speed and directly proportional to the voltage.

Personally I think your PSU will get caned because although its an Antec, Smartpower are their budget range. 450W Smartpower pushes less than a 370W Truepower IIRC, and a 550W Truepower wasn't enough for my old overclocked A64 system. It['s possible it might be ok though since I think Antec started recently putting dual +12V rails into Smartpowers.

Overclocking has saved me a lot of money though. I bought a A64 San Diego 3700+ in July last year, immediately overclocked it from 2.2 to 2.9 GHz 24/7 and it's still very fast. Probably won't need to upgrade for another year or so. It will rip/encode a DVD to 700MB DivX under 2 hours which is still competitive against even dual core CPUs.

would bother...
unoticable difference...
in the old days maybe...... but nowadays.....its fractions..

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Went to a zoo, they only had one animal there, a dog............. It was a shitzu....



I’z leakin… bring amberlamps

if you look at the benchmarks, the diff in performance between a 3200 and a 3800 is marginal...

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

Yep, hence why you buy stuff you know will be good.

I remember getting a 1.47 GHz Athlon XP to over 2.5 GHz on air cooling, that was a very noticeable difference and the chip cost me £38 whereas AMD hadn't even released one over 2.5 at the time, and the most expensive (slower) was about £500.

Wow thats pretty sweet. I'm thinking of buys an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 an overclocking it to save me alot of money too. Obviously it's not quite as hectic as what you done, but still, I can see why more and more people overclock their comps now, because the newer stuff is just priced way out of the market for people to be able to afford.

But the main problem with overclocking if getting it to a stable position and having the correct cooling which is what I'm having trouble looking into later. Tried signing up for the overclockers.co.uk forums but didn't have much luck their as they require a "non-public/private" email address for you to sign up with.

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No loss there. Try a better forum. The only one I can think of at the moment is http://hardforum.com, but I know there are better ones, just can't remember what they're called at the mo.

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Word.

Try pcperspective.com (used to be amdmb forums) or even xtremesystems.org.

alliance of overclocking arts.

http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/index.php

Geared mainly towards Epox users though.

BTW 8RDA+ and 8KDA3 were good boards

right (puts benchmarks hat on)

first thing is, i dont know how much benfit in frame rate you will see from overclocking, but that can be tested so ill egnore that for now and tell you wat you can do.

as for power, yes your system will draw more power even if you dont change any voltages, but so long as you psu isnt struggling then you shouldnt have an issues with a light day to day overclock.

first off, gpu (vid card) is the easier anf prolly give the best benifits for gaming.

htttp://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815

download that, it is a simple registry addtion that unlocks the inbuilt overclocking options in all nvidia drivers. this will add a new section in your nvidia control panel. (right click on desktop, display, click on you monitor name) called overclocking, in which you can set, no oc, auto oc, manual oc.

auto some times works, but is usually best left allone.
manual is the option you want, this will then give you two sliders, one for core freq and one for mem freg.

i suggest pressing the auto detect button, this will give you an IDEA of what is safe, but can be too high or too low. (make sure you UNCHECK run these settings at start up).

once its decided on some settings, go play. see if there is any frame rate improvement, if there is any graphical errors, or and freezes. if there is you have to hit the reset button, and the freqs should default (if you unchecked the box).

if its too high and causes a lock up, then reduce the core by 5mhz, if there are artifacts or other errors, reduce the mem by 5mhz. retest.

if its not too high then you can leave it at that level or you cna move it up a bit, start with the core, move it up by 5mhz, retest, move it up by 5mhz etc, any issues, then you reduce it by 5mhz and leave it alone. then do the same with the mem.

this should fine you the highest clocks that you can achive, things to also note is the temp, you dont want that going into the high 60s or 70s. so keep an eye on it when you exit games. if its too high, then reduce the overclock.

try that then ill try to explain cpu overclocking. which gets quite a bit more involved.

to also clear up a few things, software overclocking is the BEST way to fine the highest stable settings, as you dont have to reset every time you want to change things. but once you have found the 'right' settings, you then set them in the bios so you dont have to set them every restart


sry for bad english, or spelling.
shrek

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Thanks, but I'm running a 5700LE card, which seems pointless now I think about it, I won't gain much from it and I can't monitor the temps very well because I don't own a probe/infared thermometer and the Card doesn't have a built in probe.

Also, I built this PC somewhat 3 years ago and didn't take into concideration that I was using a 200Watt PSU... (no comments on this stupid PSU please).

So basically, I probibally wouldn't have enough power to force it into overclocking nicely and wouldn't be able to monitor if it's at the point of frying.

I heard that Intel P4 Processors use around 80-100Watt anyways, so thats most of it gone in one hit, but I intend to build a new PC at some point and overclock various specs to save me about £300 of so.

Thanks for the info and I will be looking into overclocking my next PC's processor and GFX Card possibly.

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