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The two main CPUs in the market today (by a large majority) are produced by two companies in all market sectors. They are AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and Intel (Intel Corp.) These two companies are not alone in producing CPUs as there are a small number of other companies like VIA and CYRIX which also produce CPUs. Usually a CPU manufacturer will require a CHIPSET to control various characteristics of their CPU (like Hyperthreading or Quantispeed) and more often than not will release a chipset of their own design to be used by various other corporations and companies in the making of motherboards. The best thing about these companies is that they provide a cheaper product to the end user by heating up CHIPSET competition in the marketplace (more later). Some of the dominant ones out today are SiS (Silicon integrated Systems) or VIA (Versatile Instructions Architecture -don't quote me) but there are still quite a few others on the backblocks that can't be counted out. There are few CPUs that cannot be overclocked. In fact nearly ALL functional CPUs may be able to perform higher and faster than they currently do (even Apple Macintosh and 486 systems). Be forewarned about the consequences of burning out a CPU though, as you still want a stable system after you've finished overclocking it... or DO YOU? When overclocking a CPU there are several factors involved. Primarily there is your Internal and External Frequency, the multiplier used and CPU voltage. All of these factors vary between CHIP MAKERS and between the individual chips themselves. Now we get to the interesting bits where you have to:- look at your processor to find the STEPPING look in your BIOS (Binary Input Output System) for changeable values and check your motherboard manual for jumper settings. So what is stepping huh? Stepping are the identification values written/engraved on your CPU to identify it on the product line and thereafter. Things like Voltage, FSB, Max temperature, Date of manufacture, Which process was used (called packaging) etc. are represented by a series of letters and/or numbers on the CPU itself. Usually to find this out, you'd have to remove the HSF (heat sink and fan) and perhaps wipe/scrape off some of the paste which may be in the way. Then a lot of small information should reveal itself. On AMD CPUs the latest ones have them on a small black sticker, whereas Intel CPUs have them on the metal DIE (core) itself. You can look on the internet for the specific STEPPING of your CPU in a search engine like GOOGLE. Once you have found what settings are given by the specific characters you have the basis for your overclocking to begin with. And about the BIOS? The bios itself controls numerous things on the motherboard like Date and Time, Hard Drive information, CPU operation, RAM settings, PCI bus, AGP values, Integrated system components like USB, RAID, SCSI, LAN and so on. Usually there are different chips on the motherboard used to control these things and more often they will be referred to as CHIPSETs. These chipsets are what control various things you won't even think about -hard drives, PCI and AGP cards, and basically the rest of the system components inside your case. The bios has the most important role of specifying microcode and interfacing between the CPU and the Operating System (like LINUX/WINDOWS/MACOS). All of the components comprising your BOX have to be registered/recognised by BIOS before the operating system can interpret signals from that device (Plug 'n Play Windows Components/devices -like Winprinters are slightly different however) and put them into more useful instructions. This is called POSTing (Power On Self Test) The changeable values in BIOS in relation to your CPU will designate how your CPU operates depending (of course) on what values you assign to it. This is where you will find various options like the Core voltage, CPU FSB:PCI divider, Voltage adjustment +10%, Multiplier value. There may or may not be more or less than the specified options. This depends entirely on the motherboard maker (ABIT, ASUS, Epox, IBM, Intel, Iwill, MSI, Soltek, Chaintech, to list but a few...) The most system-wide benefit you will get from changing these values will be FSB (front side bus) related. The front side bus is the speed (amount) of data transfer between the CPU and the RAM and nothing else. Increasing this value can be done in the bios (on recent motherboards) and the higher the bandwidth (yeah, that's what this is called), the higher the system-wide performance gain -USUALLY. You can gain higher system performance by overclocking your CPU and your FSB at the same time but only on Intel MUST you do that. An unlocked AMD Athlon XP/Barton CPU will perform admirably at VERY HIGH FSBs before problems and instabilities start occurring. Your system components have to support the changes you make and we're talking specifically about your CPU Internal Frequency (CPU FSB) and the RAM frequency. If your system components do not officially support the changes you make, you are overclocking the component. Some manufacturers do not DISCOURAGE overclocking and if it were marketable to do so would advise the public of their high quality product. A company like CORSAIR does not openly support overclocking but gives a lifetime guarantee on all their products (afaik) and the XMS module I am using is costly but is advertised as For Gamers Only (implying it'll take whatever punishment you can give it). Motherboard Jumper Settings Usually a motherboard that has the aforementioned values in only a JUMPER setting on your motherboard is either getting old or not keeping up with the most current features(ets) -often big name brands will cut costs on their computer components by NOT PROVIDING any of the additional features. But most of the options above will be locatable in the Mainboard Manual for adjusting various values of your motherboard. There would usually be just 2 or perhaps 3 important values in relation to the CPU. Voltage and Multiplier are most common. For the More technically inclined feel free to peruse this CPU decoding site. I'm afraid Intel doesn't offer a similar multiplier changing system. If you find that too much and want some more general information how about TRYING HERE -enjoy the haystack ... |
| A recent purchase of a Barton 2500+ has upgraded my system from medium to high performance once again. So feel free to peruse the upgrade page or if you would like AMD Thoroughbred and/or Barton CPU and L3 bridge information, please click here. |