For the last few days, I’ve been playing with overclocking my computer. Now, I think I’ve found stable settings that will boost my CPU from the stock speed of 2.67 GHz to 3.84 GHz. These settings were stable for 7 hours of overnight Prime95 testing, so they are looking pretty good.
(Prime95 is a program that stresses the CPU by performing prime number calculations. This runs the CPU at 100% and heats it up. The program compares the computer’s calculations against known answers in order to check for errors).
For my computer at stock speeds, idle temps usually are about 38-42 C, and under a full load, the temps go up to around 65-70.
Overclocked, I get temperatures of 43-46 C idle and 77-81 C under load. These temperatures are considered safe for my chip and motherboard, so assuming everything stays stable, these will probably be my final settings. Though I might try to lower some of the voltages in the bios to see if I can cool it down a little, while maintaining stability.
For geeks curious about the settings, at stock speeds my computer has a clock speed of 133 MHz and a multiplier of 20. Thus, 133×20=2.67 GHz. The chip also has “Turbo mode”. The multiplier for the chip is capped at 20x, but turbo mode will boost it to 21x.
Now I have my computer set to 183×20, with turbo mode enabled. This results in a speed of 183×21= 3.84 GHz.
In the next few days, I’ll run some benchmarks to see if this results in a noticeable improvements in the computers performance.
sneaky
