Intel P4/PD Overclocking Guide

At long last, that article you’ve always wanted about overclocking is here. Thomas takes you step-by-step through the overclocking process and teaches you some things while he’s at it!

The term “Overclocking” refers to the act of pushing the components of your computer beyond their stock settings, which can result in irreversible damage. Overclocking is neither endorsed nor recommended by any semiconductor manufacturer. The second you overclock a component in your computer, any and all warranties for that component theoretically become void. GotFrag Hardware does not take responsibility for any damage that could possibly be done to your computer as a result of reading this guide.

It’s a very rare occurrence when you get more out of something than what you paid for. When a product exists that exhibits the ability to scale beyond its original value, people tend to jump all over it. Computer processors are a prime example. By buying a processor rated at lower speeds than a more expensive one, then overclocking it to speeds equal to the expensive one, you just saved yourself some money.

Sounds like the perfect deal: Paying less for the same thing. Only if the process was that simple. Overclocking does not come without its fair share of risks. You could destroy lots of different parts of your computer which would then need to be replaced, costing a lot more than that expensive processor you could have bought in the first place. Nevertheless, the allure of overclocking is two-fold: Getting more than what you paid for, and the thrill of taking your equipment to the limit. PC enthusiasts the world over have banded together to create scores of overclocking websites and databases dedicated to what is becoming an increasingly popular trend among power hungry computer users. Not surprisingly, some of the most avid overclockers consist of competitive eSports athletes like you and me. Competitive gamers can take advantage of not only overclocking their processors, but also their RAM and video cards as well. I don’t know of any gamers that wouldn’t want to capitalize on any opportunity they had to make their computer run faster without spending any extra money, and indeed, that is the reason I am writing this article.

While any processor can be overclocked in the right conditions, this guide is targeted specifically towards processors from Intel. The techniques used when overclocking both Intel and AMD processors are fundamentally the same, but the different terminology used is enough to warrant their separation into two different guides. For the Intel guide, we plan to educate you about the principles of overclocking, and then take you along on a step-by-step overclocking adventure!

{mospagebreak title=Things to know}Clock Speed

When overclocking a component of your computer, the goal is to gain performance by increasing what is known as the clock speed. The clock speed of an Intel processor is the value that is most emphasized in advertising. For instance, the processor I bought was advertised as follows: “Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz”. 3.0GHz!?!? Wow, that’s a big number! What 3.0GHz means is that the processor is operating at 3 billion (3.0×10^9) cycles per second. After overclocking, we could be looking at somewhere around 3.5GHz, a pretty nice increase. However, with increased clock speed comes increased heat output, which is the primary enemy of overclockers everywhere.

Clock speed is actually the product of two values: the Front Side Bus (FSB) and multiplier. The FSB, to put it simply, is the path through which the CPU communicates with the rest of the computer. The CPU gets information from the RAM through the FSB, so the faster the FSB, the less time it takes for such an exchange to take place. In addition, the FSB of your RAM and the FSB of your processor allow your computer to function most efficiently when they are EQUAL. This is why it is just as important to maintain a synchronized RAM FSB clock when you are overclocking your CPU, as high discrepancies between the two can lead to your computer either not booting into the operating system, or not being very stable at all once it has booted. Intel processors, or at least the ones most of you probably have, have effective FSB speeds of either 533MHz or 800MHz. But of course this is also not that simple, silly Intel managed confuse us yet again. Current Intel processors are able to send 4 instructions per cycle on the Front Side Bus. You may have heard the term “quad-pumped” before, this is the term used to describe these Intel processors that boost their effective FSB by a factor of 4 by sending 4 instructions per clock. So this tells us that since the effective FSB speed is 800MHz, and that number was obtained by multiplying the actual FSB speed by 4, the actual FSB speed must equal 200MHz. This is the golden value of overclocking: the real FSB speed. The FSB speed of the processor, in our case 200MHz, is then multiplied by the multiplier to obtain the clock speed of the processor. The multiplier of my processor is 15. So:

FSB (200MHz) x Multiplier (15) = Clock Speed (3.00GHz)

As mentioned earlier, the FSB of the CPU and the RAM should be ideally equal. In the case of our 200MHz FSB CPU, we should want to have DDR400 (PC3200, 400MHz effective due to DUAL Data Rate (200MHz * 2), 200MHz clock speed) RAM. That seems relatively simple, but in reality it is actually more complicated than that. RAM is made using all sorts of different manufacturing processes and materials from several different companies. These companies label their RAM types as weird names, like TCCD, TCC5, CH-5, BH-5, and a whole lot of others. Well it turns out that certain types of RAM are A LOT better for overclocking purposes than other types of RAM, exactly which types are desirable will be mentioned later.

{mospagebreak title=Overclocking Methods}Method

Now to explain how to actually overclock your system. There are really only two ways to overclock an Intel processor: raise the FSB, or raise the Multiplier. Far and away the easiest way to overclock is by raising the multiplier. Bump the multiplier up to 20 and there you go, you got your extra 1000MHz clock speed. Oh how nice that would be. Unfortunately for us, multipliers are typically locked, especially on current Pentium 4 chips. So that leaves us with one option: raising the FSB speed. The ONLY way I would go about raising the FSB speed is through your computer’s Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). There exist some third party utilities that let you raise the FSB of your CPU, but to be honest, those seem sketchy at best.

The important thing to remember about your BIOS is that not all BIOSes are created equal. Some BIOSes, like those found in Dell computers, are severely crippled excuses for a BIOS that are designed specifically to prevent inexperienced users from messing around with some settings that could prevent the computer from working properly. Other BIOSes will let you change just about anything and everything. From an overclocking standpoint, there are basically three different kinds of BIOSes: good ones, bad ones, and in between ones. Overclocking can sometimes be a very precise art, with ever-so-slight adjustments meaning the difference from success to total system failure. As such, a BIOS with loads and loads of features will always be ideal for an overclocker. Unfortunately, you can’t just go around choosing which BIOS you will be using. Motherboard manufacturers choose which kind of BIOS to implement on their motherboards, so you are pretty much stuck with whatever kind they ended up using. The good news is you can buy motherboards from certain manufacturers that do indeed use fully functional BIOSes on their products. Such manufacturers include MSI, ASUS, and DFI, to name a few.

Starting Out
OK so you know what FSB is and you know what you are trying to do, now it is just a matter of doing it. First thing’s first: familiarizing yourself with your tools. To do this you should restart your computer and find out what button it asks you to push to get into “setup”. It is usually delete, but it could be F1 or F5 or any other function button for that matter. Once in the BIOS, locate what should be called “advanced chipset features”. Look at all of those options and even play around with them. Raise the FSB of your CPU, mess around with the ‘vcore’ and ‘vdimm’ voltages, have fun – it won’t do anything to your computer unless you save those settings to your CMOS before exiting the BIOS. Which brings me to my next point: If you are messing around in the BIOS, DO NOT SAVE SETTINGS! Next thing you should familiarize yourself with are the characteristics of your CPU and RAM. You can do this by downloading a utility called CPU-Z. The things to note about your system in CPU-Z are your voltages. You should make sure to write down the stock (what your initial readout should be unless you have overclocked already) voltages so that you can use that as a reference as you overclock. You should also be aware of where the CMOS jumpers are on your motherboard. They are usually located next to the CMOS battery, which is a flat, round battery about the size of a quarter. One last thing you want to know about is the temperature of your processor. It is also beneficial to know other temperatures in your system, and there are utilities, such as Motherboard Monitor 5 and Speedfan, that will let you do this with ease. It is important that you know the limits of your particular system. These utilities should be running every time you use your computer so you can constantly keep an eye on your temperature.

{mospagebreak title=Rules and Step 1}Rules
Next thing you want to do is learn the rules of overclocking, especially if you are a beginner. They are as follows (and there may be variations of these rules, but here they are according to me.) :

1. Never raise the FSB clock by more than a 5MHz increment at a time. You might even consider using smaller increments, as this will allow you to determine the maximum clock speed on a certain voltage before jumping to the next level.
2. Do not bump up the voltage unless you understand the consequences. Boosting the ‘vcore’ to your processor can both add a great deal of heat output to your system and put excessive strain on your power supply. The moment you raise the vcore to your CPU is the moment overclocking truly starts to get dangerous from a “your whole system might get destroyed” standpoint.
3. Do not continue to overclock if you see temperatures largely in excess of 60C. 60C is hot. You generally do not want any component in your computer running any hotter than this (with the exception of your video card). If you see your CPU temperature exceeding 60C, even under load, then it is a very good idea to quit while you’re ahead rather than risking any permanent damage. This is assuming you have air-cooling for your CPU, if you have a water-cooling or a phase change setup, then chances are you don’t need to be reading this guide.
4. Set realistic goals for yourself - Be smart about this. If you are new to overclocking, and you suspect your computer might not be of the greatest specifications imaginable, set a lower target, maybe 100MHz. If you are pumped up about going full speed into it with your new super rig, set it a little higher, maybe 600MHz or so. A general rule of thumb for the average overclocker is to shoot for a 10% overclock (3.00GHz stock to 3.30GHz overclocked)

Overclocking
Let me start off by saying that the system being used for this guide does not possess what I would call a “Good” BIOS, rather, it is an in-between one. The pictures will represent this, and the explanations will compensate for this. I am setting a goal of a 10% overclock, which means my target speed will be 3.30GHz.

Without further adieu; the process begins with restarting your computer. When it gets to the post screen, press whatever button you found out about earlier, and use it to enter your BIOS. Once in the BIOS, go to the “Advanced Chipset Features”. First thing to do is raise the FSB clock. Depending on your particular BIOS, there may or not be an option for “CPU Overclock By:”, and if there isn’t then find a comparable option. Either way, enter this option and you should see something that looks like this. Go ahead and move the cursor down a few notches representative of whatever increment you have preselected. I chose 5MHz* in part because it is a nice solid number for the first jump, and because you are unlikely to experience any troubles with a 5MHz FSB jump unless your computer is total garbage. You will notice from the pictures that my BIOS does not provide me the option to overclock the FSB of my RAM. This is a really big limitation for the extent of my overclock, as you will see later. If your BIOS does allow you this option, go ahead and do it: raise the RAM FSB by 5MHz as well. This means that both should be running at a FSB speed of 205MHz. (* Note: Some BIOSes scale the FSB increase with the selection of different numbers. This should be displayed in the right hand side of the screen as shown here.)

Now that you have entered in those settings, return back to the original BIOS screen and select “Save & Exit Setup”. Type in Y for Yes and your computer will restart. This is the exciting part: waiting to see if your computer will boot into the operating system. Assuming your computer successfully got back into the OS (If your computer does not, read along further where I will explain what to do in such a scenario), there are several things you should do before going back for more overclockage. Generally, you are going to want to test your computer under some harsh operating conditions to see if the overclock will hold up and allow your system to continue to be stable. When doing this, you will want to have your temperature monitor up as noted before. In my case, I chose to just play some games at this first overclocking increment, and my computer held up just fine and recorded temperatures no higher than normal. The ideal program to use at this stage is called Prime 95. Prime 95 is a program that calculates some stuff that nobody reading this probably cares about, but the calculation is very hard on the RAM and processor, which is why it is called a “torture test”. Running Prime 95 successfully for a substantial period of time is a very good indicator that your system is totally stable. After completing this step, I ran CPU-Z and produced the result shown. As you can see, we have a solid 100MHz increase in clock speed so far, 200MHz to go.

{mospagebreak title=Move it up}Now on to our next increase in speed. Restart the computer and get back into your BIOS and Advanced Chipset Features. Follow the same procedure as above, only this time you might want to push the increment down a little bit. I chose to use 5MHz again because that just happens to be my style, living on the edge and all. Do the same with your RAM. Again you will note that my BIOS does not afford me the option to overclock my RAM, which is why there is no representation of the RAM being overclocked on the BIOS screen in the pictures. Also, in my experience, it is around the 10MHz FSB increase that you might start to notice a temperature change for an operating processor. It is also about the time where you may or may not be able to get the processor to boot into the operating system.

After saving my settings and restarting, I was pleased to hear that lovely Windows login sound once again. Just as it was last time, it is important to test the processor at this new clock speed, as I did while playing some Counter-Strike: Source. The processor reached a peak temperature of about 50C, which is normally what it gets to under such conditions when at stock, so no cause for concern. However, I noticed the idle temperature was 1C higher than it was before. With this in mind, I took another snapshot of my CPU-Z readout, and got ready for another increase.

As you can see in the picture, so far we’ve increased the clock speed of my processor by about 220MHz, only 80MHz or so more to go. You’ll also notice from the readout that the FSB is shown to be 215MHz. This is logical when taking into consideration the increment scaling that I mentioned before. Basically this means that although I have only used 2 increments of 5MHz, in reality it has been slightly more weighted than that, and I have actually increased the FSB by a full 15MHz, rather than 10MHz.

Back into the BIOS for our third (and hopefully last) FSB increase to get us to our 3.30GHz goal. This time it would be really wise to decrease the increment in order to get a better perception for the limits of the processor. And yet, I of course chose to increase the FSB by another 5MHz. So, whatever increment you chose for this increase, make sure you do the same for your RAM, and save settings to CMOS and exit the BIOS.

This time I had some problems. When my computer started back up, it would almost get into windows, but then it would restart. This process would cycle over and over again if I had allowed it to. So now your computer won’t start up correctly, what are you going to do? Don’t panic, there is always a solution! Get back into your BIOS to make some new adjustments. This is the first time we are going to raise the vcore (CPU voltage) so that there is more power going to the processor for it to be able to operate at these new higher clock speeds. Depending on your BIOS, you should be able to increase of decrease voltage by some pretty small increments. In my case, it is .0125V, so I will add one increment on to my stock voltage of 1.5V, giving me a total vcore of 1.5125V. So, we save these settings and restart the computer again, only to be greeted by the same results: the computer almost gets into windows, but not quite. So, the only thing to do is repeat the process, raise the vcore by another .0125V, so your total vcore is now at 1.5250V. Again, after saving the settings and restarting, the computer still won’t get me all the way into windows.

{mospagebreak title=Almost there!}After repeating the procedure a couple more times, I had raised the vcore up to 1.55V, which is about as far as I was willing to raise it. The computer still won’t boot all the way with these settings so I have no choice but to lower my FSB increase to a total of 14MHz, knocking it down by only 1MHz from the unbootable amount. I set the vcore back down to 1.5V, saved my settings, and tried to boot at 14MHz. Again, the computer would not boot all the way into the operating system, so, I raised the vcore again, this time up to 1.5250V. After saving the settings, I restarted the computer again and waited patiently.

SUCCESS! The computer booted up nicely into windows. I ran my gaming stress test, and this time I even ran Prime 95 for a short period of time (you should run it for much longer than I did) all to get the results that the system was indeed stable at this speed. As you can see in the CPU-Z readout, it is running at 3315MHz, that is a full 15MHz over my original target.

So, goal achieved, I am satisfied with my overclocking results, but I do notice one slight problem. The CPU temperature according to Speedfan is reading 3C higher than it was before, meaning my idle temperature was right around 44C. Normally I wouldn’t fret about a temperature like that, but after running the Prime95 torture test, the temperature was 58C. That is really close to my 60C limit I decided on earlier. Although the final temperatures you get after achieving your overclocking goal might be within the boundaries that you had decided, they could still be a little higher than what you would prefer. In that case, you might consider backing down the FSB a little bit to sort out your temperatures. Another problem to note with my end result is that the system failed in the Prime95 torture test that uses your Memory as well as the CPU. This is very likely the result of my inability to overclock my RAM, which means it is not running on par with the FSB of my processor, which results in instability.

If at any time during your overclocking experience should your system not POST (not do anything except make noise after you turn it on), there are some things you should know how to do. If you recall, I stated above that you should know where your CMOS jumpers are located on your motherboard. If your computer will not POST as a result of some change you made to the BIOS while overclocking, clearing out the CMOS will likely solve this problem, as it restores default settings to all components. To do this, turn the computer off and remove the jumper from the motherboard for about 1 minute, then put it back on. After doing this you could be missing some critical files for firewalls and virus protection software, so reinstall those programs, set your system clock to the right time and date, and be thankful you did not totally destroy your system.

Parts
So I ended up increasing the FSB of my processor by a total of 21MHz. This means the final FSB was 221MHz. Ideally, I would have liked to have my RAM run at that speed also, and even if I had had the option in the BIOS to overclock it, there is no guarantee that the particular RAM I have would overclock to 221MHz (DDR 442-ish).

So the underlying problem might be that I am going to need RAM with a better ability to overclock than what I currently have. As mentioned before, there are various types of RAM produced by different companies, and these types of RAM have been rated by overclockers according to how well they perform and how far they can be pushed. Not only that, but the products companies make that use the chips that are able to overclock well have been noted and here are a some of them sorted according to different types of overclockage:

***NOTE*** IF YOU ARE READING THIS GUIDE, THE RECOMMENDATIONS LISTED HERE MAY NO LONGER REPRESENT THE BEST OPTION. PLEASE POST IN THE FORUMS OR PM AN ADMIN REGARDING CURRENT RECOMMENDATIONS

Light Overclocking Memory:
DDR2: Crucial Ballistix DDR2 533
-Micron is making some nice DDR2 modules these days, and Crucial gets first pick at the lot. The Ballistix will scale very nicely for a light overclock.
DDR: Crucial Ballistix DDR 400
-For memory that will help out light over clockers, you are gonna be spending just about 100 dollars for 1GB. Several products such as Corsair XMS and Kingston HyperX fall into this category, but from what I have gathered about the Crucial Ballistix that I have listed there, it is bar-none the best bet for the price.

Moderate Overclocking Memory:
DDR2: OCZ Gold Series DDR2 800
-Man oh man this stuff has a lot of headroom should you want to set your ratio a bit (a lot) higher than 1:1.
DDR: Crucial Ballistix DDR 400
-As you can see, this memory is the same as the Light overclocking memory. Reason being: it has a huge amount of headroom. This is going to be the some of the best overclocking RAM you can get for the price.

Extreme Overclocking Memory:
DDR2: Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1000
-Other than the fact that it is Crucial we’re talking about, the number is 1000. I mean, come on.
DDR: Mushkin Redline DDR 500
-As can be seen from ZeGermans’ Price Guides, Mushkin Redline memory can be some of the absolute best memory for overclocking purposes. If you have the motherboard ability for it, no doubt Mushkin Redline is a good thing to have.

(note: Most newer Pentium 4’s use DDR2, while the older ones use DDR. If you are unsure about which type you need, CPU-Z should be able to tell you that.)

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