Games - Overclocking

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	Games - Overclocking

Overclocking is the process of forcing a computer component to run at a higher clock rate than designed or designated by the manufacturer.

Overclocking is usually practiced by PC enthusiasts in order to increase the performance of their computers. Some hardware enthusiasts purchase low-end computer components which they then overclock, thereby attaining performance of a high-end system, while others will overclock high-end components, attaining levels of performance that surpass the peformance of the newest generation of computer hardware.

Commonly overclocked components include: processors, video cards, motherboard chipsets, and RAM.

Considerations for overclocking

Overclocking allows one to boost a computer system's performance by increasing clock frequencies. There are several methods of overclocking and no two components will overclock the same. One important consideration when overclocking a component is to ensure that it is supplied with the proper amount of power to function properly. However, providing too much power could permanently damage a component. With so many factors affecting how a computer can be overclocked, an improper setting could prove disastrous. As a result, only more expensive motherboards--with advanced settings that computer enthusiasts are likely to use--have built-in overclocking capabilities.

One very important requirement for overclocking a computer is an effective cooling system to remove the excess heat produced by overclocked components. Because most stock cooling systems are designed specifically for the level of heat produced during non-overclocked use, overclockers typically turn to more effective cooling solutions, often employing heavy duty heatsinks and more powerful fans, among other technologies. Water cooling is often used as well, and when properly implemented provides much more effective cooling than heatsink/fan combinations.

Methods that have been used to cool overclocked components include: forced convection (a fan blowing across a surface); Liquid Cooling (liquid coolant carrying waste heat to a radiator, similar to an automobile engine); liquid nitrogen; dry ice; phase change cooling (as used in refrigerators); and submersion (placing the entire computer in an inert fluid). In most cases liquid nitrogen is only a temporary cooling measure because keeping nitrogen coolant in a liquid state is usually quite uneconomical. Because of this, liquid nitrogen (or dry ice, for that matter) is usually used only as an extreme measure to aid in setting a record in a one-off experiment (destroying the cooled hardware in most cases) rather than for cooling an everyday system. Of the aforementioned methods, air cooling, liquid cooling, and phase cooling are the most popular, due to their efficiency, availability, and affordability.

System stability is another major concern when overclocking. A commonly held view is that overclocking causes a system to be significantly unstable. This is rarely the case when the system is properly tested with careful temperature and voltage monitoring. Without proper cooling, an overclocked component can overheat, causing the computer to crash, freeze or hang; in other words, become unstable and potentially unusable. The computer will have to be reset and underclocked, or given a voltage increase or better cooling. Stress tests (or "torture tests") can be used to test a system's stability by placing a high load on overclocked components, often for several hours or even days. Commonly-used programs for stress testing are Super-PI, Prime95, SiSoftware Sandra and Memtest86.

Overclocking arises in part due to the economics of the manufacturing processes of CPUs. In most cases, CPUs with different rated clock speeds are manufactured via exactly the same process. The clock speed that the CPU is marketed under is the speed at which the CPU has been tested to consistently operate well, but often processors can operate at frequencies substantially higher than stated in the specifications. There are, however, CPUs that are actually at their physical processing limit i.e. they cannot operate at higher frequencies correctly. With proper power and cooling, slower CPUs may be made to run at literally the same speed, or faster, than similar CPUs with higher stock clock speeds.

There have been situations in which a chip manufacturer will deliberately underrate a chip in response to market pressure. This results in an inexpensive component that (with a little extra voltage) is easily overclocked to match the speed of a more expensive component. One example is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (codename Toledo) processor, which was easily made as fast as the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+, simply by increasing the voltage and clock speeds. Manufacturers will often sell these processors at 50% extra. Users can often easily overclock a component to above the highest settings a manufacturer will sell a component for.

Recently computer experts experimented with a Pentium 4 3.4 GHz HT processor, cooling it using liquid nitrogen, and blowing cold air at high speeds past it. They managed to achieve over 3 GHz above the original frequency, which is a considerable amount. Few users would tolerate regularly topping off their computer with liquid nitrogen, the noise alone of such a system making it impractical. These tests are interesting, however, as an illustration of what is possible when great amounts of heat can be removed from a system and are an indication of what could be achieved with better (but not as drastic) cooling.

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