Overclocked My Aging Pentium 4

I was tinkering around my BIOS after listening to a podcast about
overclocking and I found where I could Change the FSB of my CPU. It
was running at 2.8 ghz and the FSB Was 133. I slowly crept the FSB to
144 with multiplier at 21 as any higher gave me errors in windows .
My 2.8 ghz is now running at 3 ghz. Awesome.
But whats really amazing is my favorite online game BF2 No longer
Defaults to medium settings on everything but on High Settings. My
frame rates shot up to 10-15 extra frames per sec too.
My Question is then: How can A mere 200 Mhtz increase make such a big
difference????
My System Specs: Windows XP, 2 Gigs Ram, Sapphire HD3850 with 512 MB

>I was tinkering around my BIOS after listening to a podcast about
> overclocking and I found where I could Change the FSB of my CPU. It
> was running at 2.8 ghz and the FSB Was 133. I slowly crept the FSB to
> 144 with multiplier at 21 as any higher gave me errors in windows .
> My 2.8 ghz is now running at 3 ghz. Awesome.
> But whats really amazing is my favorite online game BF2 No longer
> Defaults to medium settings on everything but on High Settings. My
> frame rates shot up to 10-15 extra frames per sec too.
> My Question is then: How can A mere 200 Mhtz increase make such a big
> difference????
> My System Specs: Windows XP, 2 Gigs Ram, Sapphire HD3850 with 512 MB

An 8% overclock is good safe amount. Increasing the FSB also overclocks the
RAM frequency. That helps the P4's a lot. Be sure to run Memtest86
overnight just to be safe.

On Sep 2, 9:27*pm, "Kent_Diego" <N...@none.no> wrote:
> >I was tinkering around my BIOS after listening to a podcast about
> > overclocking and I found where I could Change the FSB of my CPU. It
> > was running at 2.8 ghz and the FSB Was 133. I slowly crept the FSB to
> > 144 with multiplier at 21 as any higher gave me errors in *windows .
> > My 2.8 ghz is now running at 3 ghz. Awesome.
> > But whats really amazing is my favorite online game BF2 No longer
> > Defaults to medium settings on everything but on High Settings. My
> > frame rates shot up to 10-15 extra frames per sec too.
> > My Question is then: How can A mere 200 Mhtz increase make such a big
> > difference????
> > My System Specs: Windows XP, 2 Gigs Ram, Sapphire HD3850 with 512 MB
>
> An 8% overclock is good safe amount. Increasing the FSB also overclocks the
> RAM frequency. That helps the P4's a lot. *Be sure to run Memtest86
> overnight just to be safe.

Yeah I will do that thanks. When I was slowly overclocking, once It
stopped booting I knew I went too far and had to take battery out and
reset jumpers.
All seems okay pretty stable as I ran Folding@Home all day and no
crashes so far. I also tweaked my ATI HD3850 USING ATI Overdrive
utility.

"SAMF2000" <> wrote in message
news:deba59f9-5f76-4d29-9d43-...
>I was tinkering around my BIOS after listening to a podcast about
> overclocking and I found where I could Change the FSB of my CPU. It
> was running at 2.8 ghz and the FSB Was 133. I slowly crept the FSB to
> 144 with multiplier at 21 as any higher gave me errors in windows .
> My 2.8 ghz is now running at 3 ghz. Awesome.
> But whats really amazing is my favorite online game BF2 No longer
> Defaults to medium settings on everything but on High Settings. My
> frame rates shot up to 10-15 extra frames per sec too.
> My Question is then: How can A mere 200 Mhtz increase make such a big
> difference????
> My System Specs: Windows XP, 2 Gigs Ram, Sapphire HD3850 with 512 MB

Check your cpu temps. If they are low you might be able to raise your cpu's
core voltage a little and get even more out of it. Raise it in one or two
increments which on most MBs is very little but can increase your cpu's
stability greatly in some cases. Most of the P4s ran a bit warm to begin
with, but the rule of thumb is to keep in the 60-65C or under when the cpu
is stressed to the max using something like Prime95 or Sandra. CoreTemp is a
good monitoring tool. BF2 is pretty cpu intensive so, yes 200Mhz can make a
fairly big difference in gameplay. I have a P4 2.8 (probably the same as
yours) in the other room running at 3.2Ghz very solidly with air cooling. It
has been running that way for several years without a hitch at all. The old
P4s just don't compare with the C2Ds and Quads for gaming enthusiasts, but
can get by fairly well in a lot of cases. My 2.8 didn't really run much
hotter with a bump up in core voltage than it did at stock voltage. I really
don't remember what the base voltage was, but I think I only raised it two
increments on a P5GDC Deluxe Asus board.

Ed

On Sep 3, 8:07*am, "Ed Medlin" <ed@ edmedlin.com> wrote:
> "SAMF2000" <SamuelF...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:deba59f9-5f76-4d29-9d43-...
>
> >I was tinkering around my BIOS after listening to a podcast about
> > overclocking and I found where I could Change the FSB of my CPU. It
> > was running at 2.8 ghz and the FSB Was 133. I slowly crept the FSB to
> > 144 with multiplier at 21 as any higher gave me errors in *windows .
> > My 2.8 ghz is now running at 3 ghz. Awesome.
> > But whats really amazing is my favorite online game BF2 No longer
> > Defaults to medium settings on everything but on High Settings. My
> > frame rates shot up to 10-15 extra frames per sec too.
> > My Question is then: How can A mere 200 Mhtz increase make such a big
> > difference????
> > My System Specs: Windows XP, 2 Gigs Ram, Sapphire HD3850 with 512 MB
>
> Check your cpu temps. If they are low you might be able to raise your cpu's
> core voltage a little and get even more out of it. Raise it in one or two
> increments which on most MBs is very little but can increase your cpu's
> stability greatly in some cases. Most of the P4s ran a bit warm to begin
> with, but the rule of thumb is to keep in the 60-65C or under when the cpu
> is stressed to the max using something like Prime95 or Sandra. CoreTemp is a
> good monitoring tool. BF2 is pretty cpu intensive so, yes 200Mhz can makea
> fairly big difference in gameplay. I have a P4 2.8 (probably the same as
> yours) in the other room running at 3.2Ghz very solidly with air cooling.It
> has been running that way for several years without a hitch at all. The old
> P4s just don't compare with the C2Ds and Quads for gaming enthusiasts, but
> can get by fairly well in a lot of cases. My 2.8 didn't really run much
> hotter with a bump up in core voltage than it did at stock voltage. I really
> don't remember what the base voltage was, but I think I only raised it two
> increments on a P5GDC Deluxe Asus board.
>
> Ed

I checked temps on both my CPU and GPU After running both with SETI
cpu client and folding@home gpu client and both ran around 60 degrees
c so I think I'm fine. I figured my CPU Was holding back my video
card.

> Check your cpu temps. If they are low you might be able to raise your
> cpu's
> core voltage a little and get even more out of it. Raise it in one or two
> increments which on most MBs is very little but can increase your cpu's
> stability greatly in some cases. Most of the P4s ran a bit warm to begin
> with, but the rule of thumb is to keep in the 60-65C or under when the cpu
> is stressed to the max using something like Prime95 or Sandra. CoreTemp is
> a
> good monitoring tool. BF2 is pretty cpu intensive so, yes 200Mhz can make
> a
> fairly big difference in gameplay. I have a P4 2.8 (probably the same as
> yours) in the other room running at 3.2Ghz very solidly with air cooling.
> It
> has been running that way for several years without a hitch at all. The
> old
> P4s just don't compare with the C2Ds and Quads for gaming enthusiasts, but
> can get by fairly well in a lot of cases. My 2.8 didn't really run much
> hotter with a bump up in core voltage than it did at stock voltage. I
> really
> don't remember what the base voltage was, but I think I only raised it two
> increments on a P5GDC Deluxe Asus board.
>
> Ed

I checked temps on both my CPU and GPU After running both with SETI
cpu client and folding@home gpu client and both ran around 60 degrees
c so I think I'm fine. I figured my CPU Was holding back my video
card.

You are fine. You might even be able to bump up the Vcore a bit and get a
little more out of that P4. If the temps raise above 65C very much I
wouldn't go a lot further. The CPU will throttle back when it gets up to
75-80C to keep it from frying, so you can't burn up the processor with heat.
An extremely high increase (usually more than 30%, but I try and not go
above 15%) in Vcore can hurt a CPU, but conservative increases don't hurt it
at all. All cpus are different, even in the same batch/steppings when it
comes down to how far they will overclock. You could get up to 3.1-3.2Ghz
out of it which is pretty good for a P4.


Ed