Rule of thumb....increase core voltage no more than .15v. Explanation: your T'Bird is set at 1.70v by default, general rule of thumb is to not increase more than .15v, hence don't exceed 1.85v. Some hard core Overclockers, and I mean HARDCORE, will jumper and solder their mobo to achieve higher voltage settings. Of course this will DRASTICALLY reduce the life of you CPU. Above is a real good explanation of CPU life expectancy, by Packet. Very nicely put, if I must say Packet.
To further answer your question. Increase in core voltage = increase in stability in particular cases. Lets take my 800 T'Bird for instance. It's an OEM core, so right off the bat, I know I'm probably not going to achieve too high a clock speed, but you never know. So I start the bump up, first I OC see the chip by increasing the multiplier in increments of .5 In other words, by default my 800 has a multiplier of 8.0, the first step for me would be 8.5, then 9.0, then 9.5, etc....until I reach a point of failure. At that point I would stop increasing the multiplier and set it at my last sucessful boot. So I bumped the CPU to 8.5, it boots fine, do a quick benchmark, no crash. What next? Increase to 9.0, boots fine, benchmark real quick (run SETI or RC5 on top of 3DMark 2000, with BurnBX or CPU torture, and play an MP3 or something), no crashes. Good, bump to 9.5, boot freezes. See what I'm getting at? Up your multiplier until the machine won't boot. So it didn't boot at 9.5, what do we do? Drop back to 8.5 and start phase 2.
Phase two of the OC'ing experience is where we up the FSB if possible. Depending on your Mobo, you should increase the FSB in the smallest increment possible. I.e. if your board supports FSB speeds of 100, 103, 105, 107, 110 etc.... you start with 103 and work your way up, just like you did with the multiplier, incresing by the smallest unit possible until your CPU fails. With each increase, boot into windows and do a quick 5 - 10 minute benchmark to test for quick stability. Once you've reached your highest FSB setting and teseted for stability, take a look at your setting. This is where voltage comes in. On to phase 3...
Phase 3: Look at you final setting. Hypothetically lets say you took my 800 T'Bird and set the multiplier at 9.0 and the FSB at 110. That gives you an OC'd speed of 990. But we're still at default voltage. Now its not a long shot at this point so lets try something. Lets set the multiplier up one more notch to 9.5 and leave the FSB at 110, if this OC is sucessful it will give us a combined speed of 1045. But you'll remember that the multiplier setting of 9.5 failed earlier right? This is where voltage increase comes in. WE are now going to bump the voltage up to 1.75 and try the boot. If it works and all seems stable keep increasing your FSB and multiplier along with voltage to add stability until you can't increase anymore. Then look at your setting, by the time your done you should have a max multiplier for your CPU set, a max operating FSB and a voltage setting of 1.85. You can ersearch further and learn how to increase voltage above 1.85 but I wouldn't reccommend it. SO I'll stay away from that. Once you have a max operting speed, try to average out your multiplier and FSB setting. Here's an explanation:
I'm going to give you two successful overclocks here, both are using an 800 T'Bird:
800 8.0 multiplier x 133 FSB = 1064MHz overclock
800 9.5 multiplier x 112 FSB = 1064MHz overclock
Now considering we reached an OC'd speed of 1064, which one will perform better? Essentially the 8.0x133 will work better due to an increase in bandwidth across the motherboard bus. They will both operating at the same frequency, but the 133FSB will offer a slight increase in performace. I'm not real good with figuring out percentages, or I would give you a % performance increase. None the less, I'm sure someone will give you one, if they read this completely. SO with that info in mind, balance you CPU and complete your OC.
Some things to keep in mind are temperature, RAM, and stability. Temperature will be your worst enemy. Figure out your target OC speed and determine if you want to cool via conventional air cooling, or if you want to be extravagant and cool via peltier or water solution. Buy good cooling products and install them before your OC. I would also suggest you buy some digital thermometers and install them before your OC as well. Actually install the cooling solution you pick and the digital thermometers before you OC. Make sure you have one of the digital thermometers thermal sensor at least touching the side of the CPU core. If you need help with this, let me know and I'll explain further. Throughout your OC you need to monitor your temp VERY closely, do not exceed 50C. If yout get around 50C and your not under full load, back your speed down to stay at a safe operating temperature. Once you achieve your desired speed and your at a safe temp, now you need to really test for stability. Run RC5 which you can grab from anandtech.com, or SETI@home, check the distributed.net for that one, perhaps CPU torture, BXburn, and anything else you want, all along with 3DMark2000. I would also suggest you use something like CPUIdle or RAIN to help cool the CPU. Put that baby under 100% load and let her run for at least 24 hours. WATCH THAT TEMP!!! Make sure she doesn't get too hot. If you machine fails, follow the above steps and back down on the speed until shes stable. I know you didn't want a gosphel session, but I thought that might help you understand a little better since you said you've been reading a lot of guides lately. Let us know if you need anythig else. Happy OC'ing....
OOPS...almost forgot. You will need good RAM to achieve a descent overclock. Some may snap at me for saying this, but I reccommend Mushkin products over any others. I personally have had nothing but good experiences with them. Also, if you make an OC and you machine freezes, try to set you RAM to CAS3 or fiddle with its operating frequency, that may help to achieve that next highest speed.
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