Thanks to Mackey D for pointing me in the direction of this OVERCLOCKING THE NFORCE2 A BASIC GUIDE for newbies by ricjax99! well hell , some experienced overclockers might even find it useful! Here's a rip.
There are essentially two types of overclocking - front side bus and multiplier. Motherboards have a clock chip that generates a signal. This signal controls how fast the board's circuits run. This speed is measured in millions of cycles per second, or Megahertz. Today's current crop of motherboards run at stock speeds anywhere from 100Mhz to 166Mhz. Additionally, there is circuitry that enables the computer's processor, or CPU, to run at a multiple of the board speed, hence the term multiplier. For example, let's take a processor that runs at a speed of 1533 MHz, such as AMD's XP1800+. The overall speed of the processor is derived from the basic front side bus (henceforth known as FSB) speed of 133 MHz, with a multiplier of 11.5. Now, before you fire off a nastygram questioning my math skills, yes, I know that 11.5x133 only equals 1529. However, the bus speed I quoted is an approximation. The actual speed is 133.3333...ad infinitum. So, if we apply FSB overclocking to our system, and bump up our FSB speed to say, 145 MHz, we now have the processor running at 145x11.5, or 1667Mhz. Applying multiplier overclocking has similar effects on speed. If we bump the multiplier to 12.5, we now have a machine running 12.5x133, or 1667 MHz. We can also combine the methods. For example, we could set the multiplier at 12 and the FSB at 139 for a total speed of 12x139, or 1668 MHz. As to which method is more desirable, we'll get to that soon. In addition to actually increasing the speed of the computer, there are also methods of increasing the efficiency with which information is passed. Adjustments to such things as memory timings have a large effect here and in fact, can have almost as large an impact on overall performance as simply ramping up the speed of the system.
Overclocking The nForce2 - A Basic Guide
There are essentially two types of overclocking - front side bus and multiplier. Motherboards have a clock chip that generates a signal. This signal controls how fast the board's circuits run. This speed is measured in millions of cycles per second, or Megahertz. Today's current crop of motherboards run at stock speeds anywhere from 100Mhz to 166Mhz. Additionally, there is circuitry that enables the computer's processor, or CPU, to run at a multiple of the board speed, hence the term multiplier. For example, let's take a processor that runs at a speed of 1533 MHz, such as AMD's XP1800+. The overall speed of the processor is derived from the basic front side bus (henceforth known as FSB) speed of 133 MHz, with a multiplier of 11.5. Now, before you fire off a nastygram questioning my math skills, yes, I know that 11.5x133 only equals 1529. However, the bus speed I quoted is an approximation. The actual speed is 133.3333...ad infinitum. So, if we apply FSB overclocking to our system, and bump up our FSB speed to say, 145 MHz, we now have the processor running at 145x11.5, or 1667Mhz. Applying multiplier overclocking has similar effects on speed. If we bump the multiplier to 12.5, we now have a machine running 12.5x133, or 1667 MHz. We can also combine the methods. For example, we could set the multiplier at 12 and the FSB at 139 for a total speed of 12x139, or 1668 MHz. As to which method is more desirable, we'll get to that soon. In addition to actually increasing the speed of the computer, there are also methods of increasing the efficiency with which information is passed. Adjustments to such things as memory timings have a large effect here and in fact, can have almost as large an impact on overall performance as simply ramping up the speed of the system.
Overclocking The nForce2 - A Basic Guide
