Overclocking Athlon 950

[Guest]

Hello,
I'm a nerdette who wants to overclock her Athlon 950.
I'm going to use the pencil trick found on motherboards.org.
What settings do I need to change in the bios?
What's the highest speed you think that I can get and have a fairly stable pc?

Thanks.

 

[CMRvet]

<font color=red>What settings do I need to change in the bios?</font color=red>
To raise the CPU speed: CPU multiplier and/or FSB (Bus Speed)
To improve general system performance: memory timings at 2. (CAS, CAS to RAS and RAS)

However you must consider that depending on your hardware you can have stability problems with overclocking.

<font color=red>What's the highest speed you think that I can get and have a fairly stable pc?</font color=red>
With reasonably good cooling (i.e. volcano 6Cu+) about 1100 to 1250 Mhz depending on your case temps.
There are a lot of overclocking outcomes at <A HREF="http://www.overclockers.com" target="_new">http://www.overclockers.com</A> in the CPU database.

Also you need to check the speed of your RAM, it must be 7.5 ns (PC 133). Download hcpuid from <A HREF="http:// www.majorgeeks.com/article.php?sid=275" target="_new">http:// www.majorgeeks.com/article.php?sid=275</A>
Remember to keep the CPU temps lower than 50º Celsius.

 

[Guest]

Thanks!

 

[svol]

If you have good quality RAM you can first start with OC'ing the FSB with junpers or inside your BIOS. Just increase it with a couple of MHz a time and check if its stable, if not you may want to increase your VCore (if its possible) a little, which can increase stability with higher CPU speeds. Keep in mind that OC'ing the FSB also means OC'ing the PCI and AGP Bus speeds; your PCI speed is 1/3 of your FSB (100/3=33.3 MHz) and your AGP speed is 2/3 of your FSB namely 66.67 MHz.
When you found the highest possible FSB setting (especially your RAM will hold overclocking low, as I asume that you have 100 MHz RAM, if you have 133 MHz you might be able to OC it to 133 MHz!) and after you unlocked your CPU (if it isn't already unlocked from the factory) you start to rise your multiplier, with higher multiplier you also might need to increase your VCore.
Finally keep in mind that increasing your VCore also means increasing your heat output.

Maybe you can tell which heatsink you have and if you have any casefans, because you might need better cooling when you go overclocking. But because of the low heat output of your CPU, nowadays heatsinks can offer great overclocking opportunities.

<b>THGC:</b> before: :frown: 😱 , after: 😎 .