Pedal to the Metal: Overclocking the Athlon

[email_atif]

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 28, 2007.

Hey Everybody,

I've tried my hand at writing a guide on AM2 Athlon overclocking, "Pedal to the Metal: Overclocking the Athlon." It's hosted at PC Perspective for online viewing and in PDF form to read later:

Guide, (For Online Reading) at PC Perspective
Guide, (PDF for Offline Reading) at NinjaHippo

Any feedback (comments, questions, concerns) would be appreciated.

Peace

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 28, 2007.

[Un4given]

Okay folks, look this over and give comments. If you find errors email_atif will correct them, and then I'm hoping to make this a sticky.

[email_atif]

Over 100 views and no replies? Any comments at all?

Peace

[proxops-pete]

Layout is great... just didn't have time to read it all...

[email_atif]

^ Thanks for the feedback, something is better than nothing

Peace

[speedyaxon]

Wow, overclocking guides sure have come a long way....

This deserves attention on more than just Sharky. You not only have a great sense of the big picture and how to lay out a logical, well structured piece, but manage to keep the article flowing and engaging to the reader. I can tell you've spent tens of hours on this at least.

I haven't read every word, but was looking at the big picture and reading the text in between the obvious tables.

One of the only suggestions I could think of, upon going back and re-examining when a suggestion would come up, would be to somehow include the Core 2 in there. If that were possible, you'd have as close to a complete guide as I've ever seen.

I suggest this because you have so much general information about overclocking, that this guide shouldn't be brand specific. It could apply to so many more people if it included Intel as well, and that's a good thing. This guide is awesome!

Now, I know, that would either entail you merging information from another article or having someone contribute, because I wouldn't expect you to rush out and buy an Intel setup, but this needs to be read by everyone starting out. It'd not only help them, but cut down on a lot of simple questions by the newer folk that could be answered more completely in this article.

(So what do you do for a living, if I may inquire? It seems like you certainly must know how to write manuals or technical articles or something along those lines. One is certainly not born with this kind of writing ability. )

[email_atif]

First, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the detailed feedback. Thank you very much for reading the article. Let me try to address your questions:

This deserves attention on more than just Sharky. You not only have a great sense of the big picture and how to lay out a logical, well structured piece, but manage to keep the article flowing and engaging to the reader. I can tell you've spent tens of hours on this at least.

Yes, when all was said and done, as ridiculous as it sounds, I think I had put in ~ twenty-five hours of work from beginning to completion.

One of the only suggestions I could think of, upon going back and re-examining when a suggestion would come up, would be to somehow include the Core 2 in there. If that were possible, you'd have as close to a complete guide as I've ever seen.

I *may* in fact go about doing this since I think most of the groundwork has been laid out (particularly for those using nForce 650/680-based motherboards)

I suggest this because you have so much general information about overclocking, that this guide shouldn't be brand specific. It could apply to so many more people if it included Intel as well, and that's a good thing. This guide is awesome!

The reason why I limited myself to AMD only was because I wrote this guide as an entry in an AMD-sponsored contest. AMD requested that people from the community write an overclocking guide specific to AMD hardware, hence the focused approach

Now, I know, that would either entail you merging information from another article or having someone contribute, because I wouldn't expect you to rush out and buy an Intel setup, but this needs to be read by everyone starting out. It'd not only help them, but cut down on a lot of simple questions by the newer folk that could be answered more completely in this article.

Believe it or not, my personal system actually is Intel-based... and overclocked :P Finding the time to do an adequate write-up, and possibly obtaining an Intel-chipset motherboard (I own an nForce 650-based motherboard) would be two of the challenges hindering immediate completion of any such update.

(So what do you do for a living, if I may inquire? It seems like you certainly must know how to write manuals or technical articles or something along those lines. One is certainly not born with this kind of writing ability. )

I am a full-time student majoring in Computer Engineering at UCR and a part-time Student Assistant at California's DTSC.

As far as writing manuals - don't have any experience of that sort. Writing technical articles - a good high school friend and I used to have a website (VNRoundup) where we'd do hardware/software reviews and post editorials. I suppose that the experience with the website helped in putting together this guide

Peace

[Un4given]

Going to sticky this for now.

[Squirrel Meat]

holy crap that was a good article. i read that thing the whole way through! awsome read man, the best one i have read, simple while explaining everything through and not loosing me with a crapload of math. fantastic.

[email_atif]

* STANDS AND APPLAUDS *

Thanks for reading it from cover to cover. I think between you and speedyaxon I've managed to find two people who truly love to read.

Thanks for taking the time to read it and sharing your feedback, I appreciate it

Peace

[Squirrel Meat]

* STANDS AND APPLAUDS *

Thanks for reading it from cover to cover. I think between you and speedyaxon I've managed to find two people who truly love to read.

Thanks for taking the time to read it and sharing your feedback, I appreciate it

Peace

no problem man, it was quite worth it. oddly enough it just so happens that i am having a bit of trouble overclocking my 6000+. i know its not an easy overclocker and i have it at 3.2 gig right now just to keep the ram at spec (ddr2800) but if i try to push it any higher certain games and my graphics card dont get along very well. i dont know if its just that i need to up my voltage on my ram or what. upping my voltage on my ram seems to help but when i had it at 3.3 with increased ddr voltage it seemed that my games would get more and more sluggish the longer i would play games and i dont like that. its perfectly stable at 3.2 and im alittle lost at what to do next. and lo and behold, your guide came along and im messing with it a bit more. we shall see what happens!

[email_atif]

Do you have both of these Vista patches installed:

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=938979
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

There's been a lot of patches for Vista, I would highly recommend running Windows Update and grabbing all of them (in particular those relating to game issues, memory leaks and/or dual core issues)

Peace

[Squirrel Meat]

Do you have both of these Vista patches installed:

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=938979
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

There's been a lot of patches for Vista, I would highly recommend running Windows Update and grabbing all of them (in particular those relating to game issues, memory leaks and/or dual core issues)

Peace

yep i have all of them and i check for windows updates at least once a week even with my auto updates turned on. the first patch you listed helped my system immensly after applying it. holy crap did it help.

[wh666-666]

Nice article atif. I subscribed to the thread when you first posted but ive only just had chance to read it with it being 40 pages long. Very informative and really helpful for novice overclockers especially.



However ive just got a couple of comments that i mean purely in a constructive manner.

- In some pages like the introduction and pages thereafter some of the things written feel like they may be in danger of being repeated. Sure, you can clarify if a point or explanation isnt too clear but dont feel obliged later to clarify the point again. Also just because the webster dictionairy doesnt offer a definition you dont need to quote that. The definition alone is fine regardless of where it is defined from.

- There are one or two words like "anyways" that isnt entirely gramatically correct and maybe "crap" could be substituted with rubbish, just because the article is very nicely written and while it can be informal in a easy to read way.


Apart from the odd sentence editing that i was just pointing out if you wanted, it was really a pleasure to read your article. I also liked your part near the end regarding overclocking myths which if you wanted, could be another article in itself adding and debunking more myths. Anyway well done!

[email_atif]

^ Thanks for the feedback.

Point well taken on repetition in the guide

Pardon my ignorance, I don't understand the feedback regarding the dictionary definition? (The definition I provided was my own, by the way)

It was a constant push and pull battle in whether to play it completely formal or "show my age" so to speak, and make the reading slightly conversational. For this reason, I chose to leave in words like "crap" and the little allusions to my partial insanity

Thanks for the read again wh666-666

Peace