Would you overclocked, before upgrading CPU??

[caz67]

Hi Guys.

I get asked this question all the time, by my mates and family..

Would you rather overclock your current CPU, than upgrade to the latest version??

Im talking about 3.06B 533fsb with HT to a 3.2C 800FSB with HT.

I overclocked the 3.06B @ 3.45 600FSB 1.65V.

The system, is i850e chipset, and asus p4t533-c mobo.

IMO, i would stay with the overclock. I would rather squeeze, out everything form current cpu.

Is there any real world performance difference, between the two FSB speeds??

My friends, has the newer the better mentality.

Its a family PC, will be used for gaming, and photoshop etc.

cheers

 

[Corporate Thug]

of course, i have a 2.8C running at 3.5ghz right now. i wouldnt upgrade until something in the 4-4.5 ghz range becomes affordable

 

[DanZee]

A good rule of thumb would be - overclock that ah heck to hell, but have enough cash on standby to get a replacement in case you prematurely fuse your CPU to your MoBo or HSF.

 

[Tango57]

Originally posted by: DanZee
A good rule of thumb would be - overclock that ah heck to hell, but have enough cash on standby to get a replacement in case you prematurely fuse your CPU to your MoBo or HSF.

exactly! get your money's worth and redline that cpu until something like the 4 ghz cpu's come out.

 

[PCTweaker5]

Originally posted by: shady06
of course, i have a 2.8C running at 3.5ghz right now. i wouldnt upgrade until something in the 4-4.5 ghz range becomes affordable

Becomes available!

 

[buckmasterson]

I overclock as soon as I upgrade! If I get a year out of an overclocked cpu it's worth the money.

 

[xSauronx]

i do oc, i was on a budget but this 1700+ runs great at 2.1ghz

 

[StageLeft]

Overclocking is basically free, so why not do it anyway?

 

[smahoney]

Considering the cost of a 3.2 and the fact you will need a new motherboard and memory when you already have a CPU that runs at 3.4.....

Seems sort of obvious in your case.

A 3.2 isn't worth much anyway unless you are going for phase shift cooling like a vapochill or prometia and are targeting 4GHz or greater.

 

[charloscarlies]

You won't notice a huge increase in performance from the added bus speed. I actually made the switch from a p4 3.06 533 on a Gigabyte 850e board to a 3.0C on an 865 and the increase was very minimal. In fact the difference was so small that I actually switched to an A64 setup.

I agree with everybody above. Your current setup should be more than enough for the family computer. I say keep it (which is still very very fast compared to the average computer) and wait until something in the 4ghz range becomes affordable.

 

[Jayavarman]

Depends on who asks the question. If they have the technical know how and know the risk and of overclocking, I would tell them to go ahead and knock themselves up, I mean out. I wouldn't want to tell them yeah, overclocking is the great, but then when they do it wrong something blows up and they blame you, then that's bad.

 

[caz67]

Thanks for your help guys.!!

I dont think a Prommie, is going to happen..LOL.

No real difference with increased FSB, thanks, thats what i was looking for.

OK. With my overclock to 3.45 600FSB 1.65v. How long can you keep a stable overclock??

I have tested with Prime95 and metest86, no issues or problems??

The reason i asked, is one of the responses, said that he got a year out of it??

Does this mean that the CPU, will have issues, eventually or was this just a general statement??

If its for gaming, would i be smarter to go with AMD ??

 

[Jeff7181]

I normally don't have a CPU for longer than a year, so I can't speak for the life of it beyond that point... but this XP2500 I have right now I've been running at either 2.2 ghz on 1.65 volts or 2.3 ghz on 1.750 volts since July 23rd last year. (every now and then I switch back and forth between settings for various reasons and don't get around to setting it back because the speed difference isn't really noticeable)
It's still going strong... no problems with it... it runs SETI@Home about 16 hours a day 7 days a week ever since I installed it. I won't get a chance to see if it'll last a year cause my Mobile XP2500 is on it's way

*EDIT* A possibility for you might be to get an 865 or 875 motherboard that supports dual channel RAM, and keep your current CPU... the RAM bottleneck will then be gone, allowing the CPU all the bandwidth it's FSB can handle. The single channel boards are an extreme bottleneck when you consider that with a 533 Mhz FSB, you'd need DDR533 (PC4200) RAM to keep pace with the FSB. On the other hand, if you had dual channel PC2700, that would be like having DDR666... which would provice more than enough bandwidth for your 533 Mhz FSB P4.

 

[caz67]

Excellent, thanks for the help.

I am currently using PC800 rdam, 16bit, in dual channel at 400mhz.

I didnt realise that you could run dual channel using pc2700
DDR333???

I though it was only for pc3200+??

I know most current boards, support 400mhz/533mhz/800mhz.

I think pc2700, in dual channel would be a good option??

Will i still get good results overclocking with PC2700??

I realise that if, im going to upgrade CPU in the future i will need 3200.

 

[myocardia]

I wouldn't recommend you change anything about that system, since you don't live in the US. It would more than likely cost you at least $1000 if you live in Aus. or NZ just to buy an Abit IS7 or IC7, plus the ram. We can get an IS7 and 2x512MB sticks of good ram for ~$300 US, but the prices on computer parts are much higher anywhere besides the US. Besides, you're already running dual-channel now, and the highest stable overclock we've heard of with a 3.06B is 3.5ghz, and you're close enough that you wouldn't notice any difference by upgrading anyway.

 

[charloscarlies]

*EDIT* A possibility for you might be to get an 865 or 875 motherboard that supports dual channel RAM, and keep your current CPU... the RAM bottleneck will then be gone, allowing the CPU all the bandwidth it's FSB can handle. The single channel boards are an extreme bottleneck when you consider that with a 533 Mhz FSB, you'd need DDR533 (PC4200) RAM to keep pace with the FSB. On the other hand, if you had dual channel PC2700, that would be like having DDR666... which would provice more than enough bandwidth for your 533 Mhz FSB P4.

Didn't he say he was running an 850e? That would be rambus...not ddr.

You said you are running PC800 rdram? You might consider finding a good deal on a couple of sticks of PC1066. I sold 2x256 of Kingston PC1066 for $90 bucks on ebay. Then you could sell your PC800 for a marginal loss. That would eliminate your memory bottleneck until you plan on upgrading the whole system.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: charloscarlies

*EDIT* A possibility for you might be to get an 865 or 875 motherboard that supports dual channel RAM, and keep your current CPU... the RAM bottleneck will then be gone, allowing the CPU all the bandwidth it's FSB can handle. The single channel boards are an extreme bottleneck when you consider that with a 533 Mhz FSB, you'd need DDR533 (PC4200) RAM to keep pace with the FSB. On the other hand, if you had dual channel PC2700, that would be like having DDR666... which would provice more than enough bandwidth for your 533 Mhz FSB P4.

Didn't he say he was running an 850e? That would be rambus...not ddr.

You said you are running PC800 rdram? You might consider finding a good deal on a couple of sticks of PC1066. I sold 2x256 of Kingston PC1066 for $90 bucks on ebay. Then you could sell your PC800 for a marginal loss. That would eliminate your memory bottleneck until you plan on upgrading the whole system.

I don't recall recommending that he just switch RAM...

 

[caz67]

thanks heaps all.

I live in Aus, and it will cost about $800.00AU for the Abit and Ram.

Ill just wait, and upgrade the whole system..

cheers