I'm on my first cup of coffee, so this ain't Gospel. If I screw anything up,
I'm sure someone will be happy to tell me where I went wrong. But I ought to
be able to bluff the average newbie into thinking I know what I'm talking
about, so here goes:

"Aaron Dinkin" wrote in message
...

First I would like to know what the heck these cryptic symbols mean:

***I will use "" as my highlighter...

"Barton (AQXEA) XP2500+ @ 2.2GHz (10x220) - 1.775vCore"

The speed at which a cpu runs is determined by the fsb (front side bus)
times the multiplier.

The most common stock fsbs are 100, 133, 166 and 200. Overclockers raise
them as high as the cpu and memory will allow. (For reasons mostly known
only to the marketing departments, AMD doubles that number and Intel
quadruples it when selling cpus -- so if AMD sells a 266 it runs at 133 and
if Intell sells an 800 it runs at 200. Am I confusing you yet? If not, read
on and I'll try harder.)

Some AMD cpus have the multipliers "unlocked" so they can be changed at will
for more speed. All Intel cpus are "locked," so they can be overclocked only
by raising the fab.

In the example above, a stock Barton 2500 runs at 11x166.66=1833 mhz, or
1.83 ghz. It has been overclocked by raising the fsb to 220, so 220x11=2200
mhz or 2.2 gigs. (If the multi was unlocked, he might have tried
166.66x13=2.16 ghz, see how it works?)

That cpu's core voltage at stock settings is 1.65v. The overclocker in this
case bumped it to 1.75v to increase stability at the limits of performance.

But that also increases the amount of heat the cpu generates, which is why
you see endless arguments about temperature readings, how hot is too hot,
and which heat-sink and fan combo work best.


"512MB Dual TwiSTER PC3500 @ DDR440 1:1 (9,3,3,2.0 - 2.7v)"

Often in overclocking, the memory is more of a bottleneck than the cpu. The
highest officially certified memory speed is PC3200. That's also know as DDR
400. DDR stands for Double Data Rate, in this case 400 is double the fsb
speed of 200 -- which is as high as Intel and AMD want to go at the moment.

But overclockers, being the extremists we are, have created demand for
faster memory for fsb overclocks, spawning a cottage industry in memory
sporting faux ratings like PC3500 (216 fsb, DDR 433,) PC3700 (233 fsb DDR
466,)
and PC 4000 (250 fsb, DDR 500.)

In the example above, the memory is at 220 mhz, just a few ticks above its
rated speed. It's running 1:1, which means the same speed as the fsb.
There's also 5:4, where the ram runs at 80% of the fsb, and 3:2 or 66%.
Those are used when you want to set the fsb higher than the ram can go for
maximum cpu overclock.

The ram or DDR voltage works the same as the cpu. Most ram defaults to
2.55-2.6, a lot of times it will run faster than it's supposed to if you
bump the voltage to 2.7-2.8.

The numbers set off by commas are referred to as ram timings. This one is
actually written backwards, probably because that's the way it appears in
the bios of that particular motherboard. The most important number in this
case is the last one, 2.0 is the CAS rating. That's the lowest, and the
fastest. For the slowest, CAS 3, most people would write it like this:
3,4,4,8. To figure out what CAS means and what the other numbers are, I
refer you to the arcane but edifying bios encyclopedia at www.rojakpot.com

When overclocking, raising or "loosening" those ram timings will often allow
you to run a higher fsb. Once the cpu as high as it can go, you want to
"tighten" them again for the maximum stable performance.


"2500 Barton 0343 it is locked solid . 1 stick of
DDR 3200 Kingston .
Can not get anything higher than 1837.49 MHz ( 167.04 x 11.0 ) Vcore is
at1.69 V . Is there anything I can do to boost this puppy up a bit ?? MB
is 21 Celcius , CPU is 32 Cel . Thanks in advance
I'm running mine at 213x10.5 @ 1.75v with no ill effects (36C system/49C
socket using Prime95). I'm using Kingston PC3500 @ 2.6v. From your temp
readings you've got room to play. Start raising CPU voltage in .025v
increments. Keep an eye on your temps.
FRH"

And Y'ALL are talking about Weeks (in regard to chip manufacture) what
is this all about???

Voodoo and mass hysteria, mostly. In general, early chips in a series have
limited overclocking potential until AMD or Intel get the bugs out, so later
weeks can sometimes go higher. Every now and then an urban myth surfaces
about a magic week where the cpus all seem to do better than average and
everybody scrambles to buy them while they're hot. Also, AMD recently
started locking cpus, so some people are trying to buy chips made in the
weeks before that happened.

Trouble is, most vendors don't specify what weeks they're selling. The are
charts online that show you how to read the model numbers on the top of the
chip in case you want to see what you got.

Okay, I am all done with the said above...

Now it is your turn (yeah, You the one reading this RIGHT NOW) to talk
about your experiences and such and what you recommend for a FIRST
TIMER, what information sources you recommend, tips of the trade, your
worst mess up in your OC'ing history (i want all the meaty details How
hot was the fire, how many houses did you toast, how many cats
died,etc,.),

Sorry, but the statute of limitations is not yet up, and there was a gag
order imposed as part of the plea bargain. Perhaps you could sneak into a
meeting of your local chapter of Overclocker's Anonymous. But try not to
betray shock and disgust, or you could be badly overvolted.

What resources you recommend (I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH)
such as where to get your parts,

www.newegg.com is the single best, IMHO. www.pricewatch.com gives you
comparative prices from multiple vendors, and www.reselleratings.com tells
you which of them are lying thieves.

where to look for overclocking
informations, where to look for memory and hardware information, what
type of dumb questions did you ask when y'all were No0Bs, How High/Low
can you go (Temp wise, Cost wise, etc), What cooling systems do you
recommend, What is the BEST CPU and RAM and MB and PS for OVERCLOCKING

Right here is good. There are guides, reviews and forums at
www.anandtech.com, www.tomshardware.com and www.overclockers.com that I can
recommend, plus a bajillion others all over the web.

(No Flame Wars (pun NOT intended)), Just Talk... Because I want to be
able to save all the responses and make it into an OpenContent Book or
maybe I could compile it for WikiPedia their OverClocking section,

All my free advice is copyrighted and I charge big bucks for republication.
My lawyers will sue you if you reprint without permission. Overclockers are
all honorable and trustworthy people and would never, ever, pretend to know
something they actually stole from somewhere else. It just doesn't happen,
honest. (OK, sometimes when babelfish mangles the translation really bad you
can tell.)

for the near future I would just want to have all this info for
reference so when People ask about (what is a multiplier, or how fast
can you go) stuff in RealLife not just iNet I can give them an answer
that they wont just say "Oh You Just Started OC'Inc You Cant Know"...

Sorry to disillusion you, kid. But if you stay in this newsgroup until
you're old and gray, people will still call you a fool on a daily basis. Or
at least that's what I hear from the old fools who still hang out here.

Thanks in advance for helping develop a resource for people to learn
about Computers...

No, no, no. This is a resource to help people learn how to break perfectly
good computers by hot-rodding them so they can while away the time between
running benchmarks by fixing them again. Don't you know ANYTHING about
overclocking????