hallo everyone i would like to ask a couple of things about overclocking because i am considering to do so. I have an Amd phenom 9600 Quad-core 1)which is the easiest way to everclock my cpu? 2)What is a safe value to put for the cpu frequency? i now that i will come up with more questions while searching through google so i will keep asking... thanks
If it's a black edition, just turn up the multiplier in the BIOS, by far the most stable way to overclock a phenomII just like AMD does. Other way is upping the FSB which is out of spec, also making all the busses out of spec often and that's what leads to data corruption.
Overclocking is dependent on the quality of the board and memory so you have to test in small increments.
In addition to the above advice, it is also highly depending on the quality of individual CPU, not the model.
There are so many people with stupidly high overclocks its not funny! The testing of stability can be a bit of an iffy thing. Even if its stable for running prime95 for 24 hours, it doesn't mean the overclock isn't too high! sometimes you will get slight pauses in programs or doing things. If the voltage has an auto option, best to leave it as is. Although overvolting increases overclock potential, it also creates more heat and potential cpu damage. Also generally manually setting voltage means the cpu won't down its voltage is idle states, increasing power use and idle temperatures. Tweak all the settings you have for performance (minus memory timings), and up the FSB. A little overclocking is safe, they do have that built in headroom. Its also dependent on temperature, which is why the new Intel and the Bulldozer's have built in overclocking, however it is fairly limited. The AMD's upcoming version looks more effective than the Intel solution. Anyways, a 10 percent overclock should be easily doable, and a 20 percent overclock is probably the safe limit all things considered (I think its around 20 percent as well for the AMD's compared to Intel). Above that you run into voltage, temperature, stability issues. Its not just the CPU that you have to consider, its the other controller chips on the motherboard (south bridge etc), the RAM, and a big overlooked consideration - the effect of the extra heat on hard disk drives. Despite what I have heard, I still believe temperatures kill HDD, I do not sonider a 70C hdd temp as being safe! HDD failures in laptops I could almost guarantee is due to excessive heat, not from moving it around. The HDD spins at 7200rpm (eco drives are 5400rpm, but you shouldn't use one as your main drive). The heads of the drive are exceptionally close to the platter. There can be up to 5 platters (disks) inside a desktop disk drive (3.5"). Remember heat+magnetics, and heat makes metal expand... etc etc. They are precision devices. Don't expect too much from your overclock. A 20 percent overclock does not necessarily equate to 20 percent better performance. But it can be a worthwhile exercise, because technically if you have a 2.4Ghz processor now, you'll end up with the equivalent of a ~2.88Ghz processor with a 20 percent OC.
About the manually setting the voltage, that is not entirely correct... Nowadays, all mobos have the option to manually set an offset voltage, which in combination with speedstep enabled, will give you the lowering of multiplier AND voltage when idle. About the performance increase, that is correct indeed. I have a 45% oc on my i5, but the performance gain is less. When comparing Gigaflops in IntelBurnTest or LinX, you will notice that clearly.