How do you overclock your computer?

[arcadecab]

I have heard you can "overclock" your computer to get extra mhz of processing speed above the specs of the actual processor.  I currently have a relatively slow 450mhz computer.  Until I upgrade later this year, I was thinking of trying to overclock it to get extra speed out of it for MAME games.  Is there any danger to doing this?  Could it harm the hardware?  How exactly is it done?  Is there a simple process I could follow and how much more speed can I expect?
Thanks.

[locash]

Try www.overclockers.com.  You can find some beginners guides.

[Tiger-Heli]

I currently have a relatively slow 450mhz computer.  Until I upgrade later this year, I was thinking of trying to overclock it to get extra speed out of it for MAME games.  Is there any danger to doing this?

Of course, but lots of people do it anyway.  Overclocking generally raises internal temps and shortens component life.  However, if your processor would normally last for 8-10 years and you normally upgrade it every 2-3 years, if it only lasts 4-5 years overclocked, what does it matter.

>  Could it harm the hardware?

See above!

>  How exactly is it done?

450 Duron, 450 K6-2, 450 PII, what?
Depends on the processor and the mobo?  www.tomshardware.com or www.anandtech.com will usually have guides on what you can expect and how to do it.

In general, there are two methods- multiplier and FSB, Speed is a combination of front side bus (FSB) and multplier.  And you increase one or the other.

For example, a 450 Duron runs at 100 Mhz FSB, and 4.5 multiplier.

If you can unlock the processor and adjust the multiplier, multiplier adjustment is the safest method.  Say you change the multiplier to 5.5, you now have a Duron 550 with no other changes to the system.

FSB is trickier - AMD made some 133Mhz FSB processors, so if your MB supports this, you could set this and run at 133x4.5 equals  600 Mhz.  This would probably not be attainable, but you might be able to go DOWN on the multiplier and run 133x4 at 532Mhz.

You also can do intermediate adjustments, but now it gets tricky, for example if you increase the FSB above 100 but less than 133, you are now also increasing the PCI and AGP bus speeds and increasing all the system components at the expense of stability.

For example, I have a Pentium 200 MMX (66.66 FSB x 3.0 Multiplier).  The multiplier was not adjustable on this so I overclocked from 200 to 225 MMX by raising the FSB to 75Mhz (PCI bus went from 33.33 to 37.5 MHz).  Everything was happy and MAME did slightly better until I swapped my Western Digital HD for a Maxtor and it took six hours to load Windows.  I called Maxtor and when I explained about the overclock, they said "That could definitely cause the problems, as well as voiding your warranty"  Set the FSB back to 66.66 and the drive worked flawlessly.

>Is there a simple process I could follow and how much more speed can I expect?

Depends on your processor, motherboard, etc.  Even different Duron 450's will hit different limits.  In general, AMD's tend to run hotter and closer to the ragged edge so what you can reach is questionable.  Also, it may boot at one speed, but not run any apps, but at a lower speed but not run more than 2 apps simultaneously, etc.

As a rough guide, I would expect 475 to be achievable, 500 to be quite likely, 550 maybe, and anything above that would be pretty lucky.

The general rule in the enthusiast crowd is to overclock until you see stability problems and then back down about 25 Mhz or so.

[Mike]

I'll sum it up for you quick. You probably can't overclock your computer for a number of reason. First is that you don't know how to overclock your computer. Which means you probably bought a compaq, dell, hp or some other off the shelf computer. They don't write thier bios's to be overclocked.

Second is you probably have a p2 or p3 450. Which don't overclock well because the way they are made. If your chip will overclock don't expect to get your FSB up to much more than like 112.  Which will only increase your CPU to like 504mhz. In my opinion that isn't enough of an increase to bother overclocking. My Celeron 2.2Ghz overclocks to 3.3Ghz that I would say is worth overclocking. My personal belief is that if your not gaining at least a 25% increase in clock speed it isn't worth doing as you won't be able to tell the difference and it could run worse.

That is my opinion, I just didn't want you to waste time trying to figure out how to overclock something that isn't worth overclocking.