First Time Overclocking

[Barrabas]

Hey guys, I have a couple of questions I'm hoping you can help me with. I've decided for the first time to give overclocking a try and see what I can do. My machine is long in the tooth, so i'm not too scared to mess it up considering i'm planning to upgrade by the middle of the year. However, I wouldn't want to take any unneccesary risks.

The PC is:
1.2Ghz AMD Thunderbird
133Mhz FSB
VisionTek Geforce 3 (purchased within 2 weeks of the original release)
512 MB Crucial CAS2 SDR at 133Mhz.

So i'm starting with the Videocard, going slowly up on the core clock, then planning to up the memory next. I'm using the instructions to go about 5Mhz at a time, test it under stress, and if I see artifacting I should stop the program and ratchet it back down to the last level it was stable at.

So i'm doing this, and i'm not very far yet, but I'm starting to think I'm overclocking this card, and using powerstrip it's only going to be overclocked when I'm playing certain games. But even if its not artifacting in my tests, i'm wondering how long I can leave it at the level I leave it at without negative effects. Lets say I spend 4 hours gaming, while my test wouldn't have stressed it that much, i'm wondering if that might be too much.

I'm having the same thoughts for the CPU, but the CPU is going to be permenantly overclocked as opposed to just during gaming, so that is even more of a concern.

Any advice from folks with experiance would be much obliged.

Oh... by the way, what does artifacting look like exactly?


One other thing come to think of it. What is a good program I can use to check my temperature with?

 

[DeRailur]

The type of mobo you are using could be helpful for answering some questions.
A good proggy to use to monitor cpu temp is MotherBoard Monitor. But be advised that this will only work if your mobo supports it.

 

[Barrabas]

Its a Peice of Crap ECS K7S5A. It was a $40 replacement for a dead A7V 133

 

[vshah]

be wary of overclocking with a substandard motherboard.....it would probably be the first thing to fail.

then again i don't have any experience with ecs so it might be allright....

when ocing the gpu core, pushing it too high will cause the game to crash or not run at all

when ocing the vidcard memory too high, you'll get crazy triangles all over the screen, or random missing pixels....you'll know when it happens

-Vivan

 

[George Powell]

you won't be able to get much of an overclock with that setup. perhaps 10 to 15 % on the CPU at the most.

Best thing to do is wait until you have your new system and then start to tinker to get practice at OCing. That way if you do go too far it's not the end of the world.

Also if its your first time out into OCing be preparred to spend a little money if things go wrong.