oc'ing the 8RDA+

I'm totally new to over clocking.
I have a Epox 8RDA+, volcano 9 HSF, 300watt psu, 512 DDR 2700, Athlon xp barton 2500.

With Aida32: reads 1844 Mhz (5.5X335) (bios settings are cpu clock "default ", fsb freq "166 ").
When I change the CPU clock in bios to 12.5 it reads in Aida32: 2100 Mhz (6.5X323).

If I leave it at this, will I fry anything? My CPU temp reads a average of 41c/105f. Will it hurt the NB?

 

Dude! Not sure if you're the right place here for overclocking advice but whatever...

I don't have a Barton 2500+ but I'm fairly certain that the default settings for that chip are 11x166 as that chip is a 333FSB chip with a default speed of 1.83Ghz.

I have not clue what Aida is talking about because those are definitely not your settings. Though it may be giving you the correct total Mhz, it's reporting your multiplier wrong and there's no way you could run at a 335FSB. So don't make any decisions on what Aida is telling you.

Most people use WCPUID to confirm bus speeds and multipliers. It's free.

But back to the more important question. You upped your multiplier from default (11) to 12.5. Will you fry anything? Almost definitely not. Most Bartons are very overclockable. Your CPU temp is fine even if that's not the cpu core temp. Wish I could get a temp that low. The NB on that board only has passive cooling but I've never heard of anyone frying a NB until they got in the 210-220 FSB range and that's very rare and you're no where near that.

You have both a very overclocking-friendly cpu and motherboard but in general, upping the multiplier is not the ideal way to overclock. Ideal overclocks involve upping the FSB not the multiplier. Doing so increases your system's bandwidth, not it's overall horsepower. And bandwidth is the choking point in most of today's systems - especially AMD ones. Your 8RDA+ locks the AGP and PCI buses to spec so you don't have to worry about taking them above spec when upping the FSB.

What many people do is to raise the FSB slowly while reducing your multiplier and by doing so, keep your total Mhz the same as "normal ". This way you increase your bandwidth without overclocking the total Mhz of your system. Of course, with that Barton, you could probably do both - just keep in mind that raising the FSB has greater benefit.

There's alot more to overclocking such as raising your Vcore (cpu voltage) to insure the stability of your overclocked cpu. Extra heat generated, etc. With minor overclocks, your most common dangers are a corrupted registry and a trashed File Allocation Table on your hard drive - meaning you basically lose all data - but the drive isn't damaged.

Good luck and take baby steps if you do overclock.

 

Chiles4, thanks for the reply. Have to digest what you've given me. Makes some sense. Gonna download the program you mentioned and go from there.

 

WCPIUD says: 2088.6 Mhz, system clock: 167.02 Mhz, system bus: 344.9 Mhz DDR, multiplier: 12.5.

Volcano fan was too noisy, replaced it with a copper fin HSF. Runs at 45c/113f.

Thanks Chiles4 for turning me on to WCPIUD. Good program.

 

Glad to help!