When I was a teenager my Father bought me a 1957 Chevrolet. It came with a good motor and I really liked the car but after a while we decided it needed a little more oomph. Dad thought about different things we could do. Finally, he went to a junk yard and bought an almost brand new motor out of a wrecked Corvette. We pulled the old motor out and put the new one in. Boy, we were happy with the new performance.
There were a number of things we could have done to hop-up that old Chevrolet but we went the new motor route. It had much more horsepower and a lot of things that made the motor really hum. I told you that to lead into what can be done to boost your old computer you think is a little too slow.
Back to the Chevrolet, we could have replaced the cam shaft with a high lift cam and installed much larger valves with stronger springs, port and polished the exhaust and maybe even blue printed the engine. It possibly would have been faster and stronger than the new Corvette engine. A computer you are getting tired of is much the same. There are things you can do to make it come alive and have that special feeling you may think is lost.
Right now I have an HP Pavilion a6237c with an AMD Athlon™ 64 x2 dual core 5000 processor running at 2.60 GHz. I am thinking it is too slow. When I first bought this computer I thought it was really fast but with time it seemed to get slower and slower. I have to admit, not all of this slowness is the fault of the computer but due to the many applications I have added to the system. Every time you add a new application, the vendor has this feeling their product is so important it must be attached to the start up menu. So guess what, every time you boot your computer, it loads all of the applications you have added to the already too long list.
You could do what my Dad and I did with the Chevrolet and replace the motor (Processor CPU), but there are many things you must consider if you go that route. Another idea could be to simply overclock or over throttle the CPU and make a few other changes to your system. There are things you must consider before overclocking. Number one is that this can very easily damage your computer motherboard and the processor itself. Still, this procedure is done all the time by computer geeks and they get away with it. Does their computer last as long as it would have? Probably, but you need to use care in the process. Look at the numbers for a moment to understand what I am talking about. Above I told you my HP computer’s processor was running at 2.60 GHz, now just what does that mean? That means the speed of my processor is 2,600,000 beats per second. Yes, that was per second and the first number was million. If I overclock my processor I probably can get away with increasing it to 2.7 or maybe 2.8 without doing harm if I use other precautions. That may seem like a very small amount of increase but consider what this small numerical increase really is. It would indicate an increase of 100,000 to 200,000 beats per second. Now that number doesn’t seem so small does it? If I overclock a major concern is heat. The processor usually has a fan attached right on top of the processor and it is designed for that processor running at the speed designed for. If I overclock, it may run hotter. Newer computers guard against overheating by down throttling when the temperature goes to high, but sometimes this protection must be turned on. This involves checking the settings in CMOS to be sure automatic throttling has been enabled. If it has not, then you should turn this setting on. To get into your CMOS on most computers simply reboot. While the computer is in the process of rebooting, press a key on the keyboard (sometimes F8 or F10). That will probably put you into another screen asking you for directions. From there you can get into your CMOS. On some computers you will need to press the delete key and on others it may be some different key.
One processor famous for heat damage is the AMD AthlonXP™. Some geeks will increase the voltages in the overclocking process and this can cause heat problems. There are basically two ways to increase the speed of the processor: one is to increase the multiplier and the other is the speed of the front side bus (FSB). I have not discussed either of these two terms but if you Google them there are many articles which simplify their explanation. An effective overclocking will usually involve some small, and I emphasize small, voltage changes. These changes should only be in the range of .05 to .1. Most modern processor will not allow changing the multiplier so that leaves one method and that is to change the speed of the front side bus.
The simplest way to overclock your system is through the BIOS if your BIOS will allow you to make the needed changes. Unfortunately, my AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000 is locked and does not allow these changes. My option is to change the CPU. AMD CPU’s are mostly locked; however, the Black Edition is unlocked and you can make the changes from the BIOS, and it is a simple process of changing the multiplier. Let me show you an example. The formula for these changes is multiply the bus speed by the multiplier to get the core speed. On my computer the actual bus speed fluctuates between 200.1 and 200.9. If you multiply this by 13 (the multiplier) the answer is about 2612 MHz. On my computer since the bus speed changes slightly, the actual core speed changes as well. If you have a CPU-Z gauge you can watch these changes in real time. If I buy and install a Black Edition CPU that has an unlocked multiplier it is a simple matter of changing the multiplier. Just don’t make large changes, and be sure to keep a close track of the temperature of your computer. I will show you a couple of formula changes and you can see the difference it would actually make: 200 x 13 = 2600 or 2.60 GHz, 200 x 13.5 = 2700 or 2.70 and 200 x 14 would give you 2800 or 2.80. You should be able to achieve a core speed of 3.0 easily enough.
I hope this has been an enjoyable blog for you. It certainly has been a learning experience for me because I had assumed I could just open the BIOS change the multiplier and overclock my computer. It took a lot of research to find that would not work on my AMD processor.
Kermit
