Concept: overclocking "wizard"

[teddymines]

With all the possible motherboards, CPU's, memory and chipsets, has anyone considered building an overclocking wizard? I envision this wizard gathering configuration data and user expectations, then producing high-level and low-level details on how to set up the system.

Example:
Someone is interested in "mild" overclocking on an 8K7A with a 1.2GHz Athlon C and 256MB Crucial non-ECC. The system would say something like "Set your multiplier to X, your RAM timings to Y, etc." The user can get more detail at any time, which would look like this: "Go to BIOS screen A, look for option B, and set it to C."

With all the knowledge on this board, it would be helpful to have some of it resident in a single system, as opposed to having people ask the same questions over and over. I have tons of questions about overclocking, and I know people have my exact setup, but I hate bothering people with the same questions and the obligatory "And just how do I do that?"

Any thoughts? Could AT create such a system????

 

[Def]

Sounds like some of the n00bie Micro$oft "wizards" to setup an email account or something.

Personally, I think that if you don't know what any of the BIOS options do, you shouldn't be OCin'. Not that you'll kill something, as that's almost impossible to do through any BIOS, but how would they recover it if they choose too high of a speed and couldn't even POST? Would they know to clear the CMOS? etc. etc. Case in point, I helped a friend build a computer himself and OC it. I pretty much just gave him pointers and supervised his progress to make sure he didn't make any mistakes. I then helped him OC a little. Now he ICQ's me and says his computer is unstable. He has no idea to even go about checking basic things like the VCore, various voltages, multiplier etc. Even though I walked him through it once, he didn't understand what was going on. IMO OCin' experience is gained through making mistakes, sometimes they're really minor, other times they're huge(hurts the wallet). You can't gain experience through a "wizard".

IMO, there are plenty of n00b guides on OCin', and the basic practice itself is extremely simplistic. One can spend a few minutes reading any one of these guides and get a good idea of how to tackle their particular combo setup. Yet with experience, someone can take it to a whole new level and turn it into an artform if they have the time/money/determination to do it.

 

[rabsi]

*G* who want's to overclock a 1,2 GHz when they can buy a 1,4 Ghz ...

 

[Demon-Xanth]

What might be interesting would be a program that could combine prime95, Q3 demo, powerstrip and softfsb functionality to do an automatic overclock where the program would slowly turn the speed of a system up under load and monitor temperatures and errors. When it detects these have it back off a user defined percentage (ie: 5%) for safe stability. At which point it would report the max:

CPU speed/FSB speed
Graphics core speed
Graphics memory speed

That way it becomes a no brainer "tune up"

 

[teddymines]

<< One can spend a few minutes reading any one of these guides and get a good idea of how to tackle their particular combo setup. >>


My point is that I see so many of the same questions over and over, that a uniform place to find tips based on one's configuration would reduce bandwidth. The solution could simply say to set your vcore to whatever and your timings as such. More detail? Then that option is there as well.

There are people out there with screaming machines. Why not offer the option to mimic their settings without having to achieve every detail solely through trial and error? Once you mimic those settings you are free to explore other options to go even faster, if you wish.

Not everyone out there wants to learn about RAM voltage and timing. Some of us just want a faster machine than we paid for. This would support that desire.