Overclocking 101...BIOS or utility?

[marcplante]

I have an Athlon 64 x2 3800+ that I'm thinking of overclocking so it will better complement an 8800GT i'm going to plug in.

I've read the article on overclocking that refers to tweaking the BOIS. are there utilities that allow this kind of manipulation in a control panel type interface, or are you best served working directly in the BIOS?

I have the appropriate stability diag tools and have run them already.

If a utility, which one is recommended

The processor has a big cooler on it, and I'm upgrading the PS to a Corsair 520HX

Thx

 

[kmmatney]

You usually want to finalize things in the BIOS, but you can use overclocking utilities to test out the cpu. A lot of motherboards come with overclocking software, so try that first. When testing out a cpu, I normally do a modest overclock in the BIOS (a setting that I know will boot), and then use a utility like ClockGen to overclock in windows. Once I find the Max settings in windows, I'll go back to the BIOS and modify the settings to what I found using software.

With the Athlon 64,, overclocking involves raising the FSB, and changing the memory and HTT dividers.

 

[cprince]

since you have the 8800GT, you can try Nvidia's nTune utilities: http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.54.00.html

 

[Capt Caveman]

bios

 

[hokiealumnus]

+1 for BIOS. It's the only way to go IMO.

 

[n7]

AMD has a very decent tool for use with their Phenoms which is very good, but aside from that one, bios always.

 

[n7]

oops dp

 

[BlueAcolyte]

BIOS first.