A64 3200+ question

[Maximilian]

Hey ive got an a64 3200+ and i jus wondered can it be overclocked?? if so how?? should i overclock it?? and is it real easy to overclock?? lol if anyone can answer just one of those itll be fine. O yea ive had a few people telling me that their cpu went on fire n stuff would mine go on fire if i overclocked it?

 

[Serp86]

can it be overclocked?

Of course.

if so how??

Up the FSB

should i overclock it??

This depends mostly on what type of person you are. Overclocking will void your warranty, make the cpu run a tad hotter, and if you pust it too much you will see constant crashes (which indicate that you should back a bit), and if you go all out on the poor thing, you can fry it.

and is it real easy to overclock??

It only involves setting a different fsb setting in your bios. if you mobo has an agp/pci lock you are ok. If not, be careful. too high fsb can lead to fried video cards and pci cards because the agp/pci speed depends on the fsb. You may also want to up the core voltage slightly.

 

[redass1876]

and make sure you have sufficient cooling to do so

ie. bump it slowly and watch the heat rise and be careful

 

[Maximilian]

Aha i found the FSB thing. Think ill leave it alone though cuz it was at 200 and i hit the minus key once to see if it would go any lower and it shot up to 280 then funny little love hearts n mad symbols appeared all over the screen lol. I frantically put it back down and vowed never to screw with it again.

 

[Farmer]

Soviet:

I don't think BIOS settings are applied until your hit 'Save and Exit.' If you accidentally bumped your FSB up more than you want, its not really a problem, as no change will take effect until you Save and Exit and allow your computer to reboot.

Heh, you really need a better video card.

 

[StageLeft]

The risks of fire damage are all but non-existent. Well before it gets hot enough to combust the surrounding peripherals and carpet the CPU will scorge itself. If you go about overclocking slowly, incrementing until you reach the threshold of cpu capabilities (past which the computer won't boot up properly, or programs will start to lock up/ cause errors, etc.), and then scaling slightly back from it, there is no harm in overclocking.

That's for the CPU anyway. You also need to make sure that the RAM isn't getting pushed too hard, and that the PCI and AGP speeds are not out of spec (I guess a lot of new boards will lock these separate from the FSB, which is good).

 

[Regs]

It could be overclocked by 10 x 220, giving it a 2.2 GHz clock. Which means you go into the bios on boot and set the External Clock or HTT to 220 instead of its default at 200. Use PC3200 or PC3500 and you can achieve this overlock easily with stock voltages. 220 has cause some issues with my AGP bus, but that may be because I damaged my graphic's card on more intensive over clocks.