Overclocking causing lower FPS – beginner OC seeking advice.
Overclocking causing lower FPS – beginner OC seeking advice.
Hello everyone, sharing this experience can be helpful. I received a friend's old PC and decided to try some overclocking for fun. My goal was to demonstrate that the machine could still function well despite the changes. While I pushed the CPU to higher speeds, it didn’t improve performance much. The setup includes an ASUS P5K motherboard, E6400 Intel Core Duo motherboard, 4x 2GB DDR2 RAM at 800Mhz, and a GT520 graphics card rated for 500W. I increased the CPU from 2.1 GHz to just over 3.2 GHz, added a large cooler, and then boosted the GPU from 800Mhz (with 600Mhz RAM) up to 1000Mhz (640Mhz). I noticed a small gain in the Sky Diver benchmark after the GPU overclock, but the CPU remained flat. As a beginner OC, I’m unsure what I might be doing incorrectly. Please see the attached settings picture for reference. Thanks!
The system is not stable. Reset everything and gradually increase CPU ratio if possible. Adjust only slightly and test using Prime 95 small FFTs. Continue until P95 either fails or shows an error. Watch for rising CPU voltage in steps until it normalizes. If you can't change the CPU ratio, try adjusting FSB instead, but be aware this may affect RAM stability—consider loosening RAM timings and increasing DRAM voltage as needed. Monitor temperatures closely during testing. Also run Memtest if you modify FSB settings. Keep repeating until you reach your target or feel comfortable. If you hit the limit, reduce it back to the last stable value.
The E6400 has a locked multiplier. @HQuan This is an old school computer. You overclock these in the BIOS. His overclock settings are perfectly fine. It is not dangerous to overclock in the BIOS. If anything goes wrong and the computer does not start up, you can easily pull out the CMOS battery on the motherboard to reset the BIOS to default settings. If you are running a test that is not CPU dependent then you will not see any benefit from overclocking the CPU. If you want to see if overclocking the CPU makes a difference then you need to run a CPU dependent benchmark. For an older system like you have, try using an older single threaded benchmark like Super Pi. https://www.techpowerup.com/download/super-pi/ Run this test a few times at default CPU MHz and then reboot and run the test again at 3200 MHz. Pretty sure you will see a difference. Make sure you are getting consistent results when making comparisons. Some benchmarks can vary significantly, especially when a CPU is over loaded and running at or near 100%. A 16 year old CPU with only 2 cores can be easily overwhelmed. This makes it difficult to get any sort of repeatable or meaningful benchmark results. You should also run CPU-Z in each situation to see what speed your memory is running at. The bios shows DRAM Frequency is set to Auto. I am not sure what speed your memory is running at. It would be better to manually adjust that setting and then boot up and double check your memory speed with CPU-Z. This way you can make sure you are running at the same memory frequency when overclocked for a fair comparison.
Consider checking out a tutorial. https://www.overclockers.com/forums/thre...guide-v1-1
Thanks everyone for your assistance. I finally achieved it. Ratio 8x FSB: 390 1.33 Volt Ram at 937 MHz gave me 3.12 GHz. I attempted 3.2 GHz but it failed and kept crashing. The FSB 390 and/or voltage appear to be the limits this CPU/Mainboard prefers. I saw a 15% boost compared to 3D Mark, and it will improve even more with my old GTX660. I think the GT520 is limiting the E6400 performance. It's really fun now, thank you! Check out the pictures if you're interested.