Worth tinkering with a 4yr old AMD3400+?

the lemming · 17 Nov 2007 at 00:22

Hello

I am exceptionally new round here and would greatly appreciate some guidance and advice.

I have a 4 year old Advent PC bought from PC World which has had af few upgrades since then.

My spec at the moment is:

AMD 64 processor 3400+
2GB ram. One chip from the Crucial site and one chip from PC World
NVidia GeForce 7600GS card
Three hard drives 80gb, 120gb, 120gb. XP is on the 80gb drive alone

All this is inside a box from m a p l i n with a 250mm fan on the side of the case

Could somebody please tell me if it is worth trying to over-clock my 4yr old processor?

I am a complete novice in this area and my only claim to fame is the ability to relpace the RAM chips and the graphics cards without frying the whole system so I would appreciate any comments on what could go wrong especially if there is a high probability of toasting the processor if it all goes **** up.

Cheers

Nick644622 · 17 Nov 2007 at 00:37

You are not supposed to mention competitors, best edit your post before you get moaned at. Re over clocking go for it, at four years old it is not a big loss if it dies on you.

jak731 · 17 Nov 2007 at 00:53

save up some money before you go ahead incase you manage to blow anything up although with all the failsafes it should be quite hard to do

jabski · 17 Nov 2007 at 04:47

go for it. doubt it will blow up really

steve258 · 17 Nov 2007 at 04:55

Why not? If anything should go wrong at least it's had good 4 years

gamesaregood · 17 Nov 2007 at 05:16

Is the Bios of a Pre Built PC like that going to have overclocking options?

Street · 17 Nov 2007 at 09:31

Its ALWAYS worth tinkering with things!

steve258 · 17 Nov 2007 at 13:41

If it's from PC world chances are it has a very basic bios that offers no overclocking option, but don't let that put you off as you can use clockgen to overclock in windows.

slipd · 17 Nov 2007 at 14:26

steve258 said:
If it's from PC world chances are it has a very basic bios that offers no overclocking option, but don't let that put you off as you can use clockgen to overclock in windows.

Sorry to hi-jack this thread, but...

I've often wondered how that works; does the cpu suddenly get overclocked once Windows has finished loading the software? I'd have thought that was a little be more dangerous that OC'ing from within the bios because of the suddenness of it

Also what if the software crashed or Windows crashed would you lose the OC?

Similarly, do these Windows-based graphics overclocking utilities only OC your hardware once Windows is up?

SW.

steve258 · 17 Nov 2007 at 15:37

Yes that's why it's always recommended to oc from within the bios because if it doesn't post then you know it's unstable without crashing the windows. But nevertheless it's still useful to overclock if your mobo does not support it, the downside is you can't control voltage.

And yes with software oc it is only applied when software is loaded after windows boot up. The only benefit really is that you get to set the oc on the fly or to reduce it when you don't need the power.