30 MA XIMUMPC MARCH 2006 MARCH 2006 MA XIMUMPC 31
Overclocking Intel: Step-by-Step
Getting a simple overclock out of an LGA775 Intel motherboard is amazingly easy. The only rub is that some Intel-based
boards require you to increase the FSB speed in percentages, so keep a calculator handy. For this example, we used the
Asus P5ND2-SLI P4 LGA775 board, which supports overclocking from within Windows and the BIOS tooSTEP 1: ADD NOS
The majority of modern
motherboards support
overclocking from within
the operating system, so
rather than fi ddling around
in the BIOS you can just
run a vendor-made over-
clocking utility in Windows.
Asus’ NOS is a typical
specimen. You select the percentage of the overclock you
desire and reboot. A manual Precision Tweaker function lets
you goose the FSB manually as well.STEP 2: BACK INTO THE BIOS
You can also adjust FSB
settings from within the
BIOS, which is what we
prefer (we don’t fully trust
the Windows apps). Just go
into the BIOS and look for
a section that refers to your
CPU or frequency setting.
On our P5ND2-SLI board,
they’re in a section labeled
JumperFree.STEP 3: TWEAK BY HAND
We bypassed the
auto overclock
modes and set
our front-side bus
manually using the
Precision Tweaker.
Other BIOSes won’t
use fancy words,
and will simply list
this setting as front-
side bus speed.STEP 4: TYPE IN
THE FSB SPEED
You can enter the front-side
bus speed directly here,
which is a little easier than
choosing a percentage.STEP 5: DO THE MATH
The P5ND2-SLI displays the fi nal bus speed but many other
boards use the base clock speed of the front-side bus. For
example, a 1066MHz front-side bus isn’t truly clocking at
1GHz; it’s really 266MHz quad-pumped, which means it sends
and receives data four times per cycle. An 800MHz bus is
really 200MHz times four.STEP 6: CHECK FOR STABILITY
Our 3.73GHz P4EE actually gave us reasonable reliability at
4GHz with air-cooling and two 12cm fans parked next to the
processor and voltage regulators. Fortunately, if the OC failed,
this board (and most all modern motherboards) will reset the
CPU clock speed to its stock setting or lower so you don’t
have to reset the CMOS to get the system working again.BEST INTEL PROCESSORS FOR
OVERCLOCKING
INTEL PENTIUM EXTREME EDITION 955 We hit a reason-
ably reliable 5GHz with phase-change, so we think there’s a ton
of overclocking potential in the new Presler dual-core, even at the
high end.INTEL PENTIUM D 840 The budget dual-core 3.2GHz
Smithfi eld will push the envelope for overclockers—up to
4.0GHz—provided you can keep it cool enough.INTEL PENTIUM 4 560J Using water-cooling, we’ve pushed
this 3.6GHz Prescott-core CPU up to 4GHz with nary a problem.