BF2S Forums Question about performance and looks in game...

well you could overclock but you wil need to read up on it, just go to google and type in AMD Athlon 64 bit 3500 overclocking

overclocking depends on your motherboard. Its relatively simple when you know what youre doing... but you can permanently damage your cpu and other things if you do it wrong.

I'll give you a quick rundown since im bored:
The front side bus is the most important thing in overclocking. The FSB x the cpu multiplier = speed of your cpu in mhz. For example, if your FSB is 200, multiplier 12, your cpu is running at 2400mhz. The FSB also determines the speed of your RAM, so you'll need to turn the speed of your ram down before turning the FSB up or you'll destabilize your system. For example, if you have DDR 400 (PC3200 ram), you'll want to change the speed in your bios to DDR333 specs, and then the FSB will overclock it. The challenge here is achieving a good stable overclock on your CPU without crippling your RAM in the process.

Your bios might have something called a hypertransport multiplier as well. I have no idea what hypertransport does, but you dont want the HT multiplier x FSB to go over 1000. So before turning your FSB up you'll need to turn hypertransport down to 4x. If you push your FSB over 250 you'll need to turn it down to 3, and over 333 down to 2. If the HT goes over 1000 it may cause instability.

There should also be a setting in your BIOS that controls the PCI/AGP/PCI-E ratio, and you want these to be 33, 66, and 100 respectively. You dont want your PCI or AGP components running faster than they should.

Now, before you start overclocking you should download some kind of tool to monitor the temperature of your CPU. Motherboard monitor is a good tool, and supports most motherboards. You can get it here: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_d … RSS,00.asp . Speedfan is another good tool, and it will tell you how much power your components are getting too, though unless youre having power issues thats not so important. You'll also want some kind of stability testing tool to make sure your computer is stable after you're done overclocking. I use Prime95, which is a program that calculates insanely large prime numbers and checks them against a database of correct answers, to make sure your CPU isnt making any computing errors. You can get prime95 here: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm . A few other tools are superpi and sandra 2005, (sandra is a bit complicated so i dont recommend it). Prime95 will work fine though. You should also download something called cpu-z. Its a program that shows you the current speed of your cpu, as well as the voltage and some other handy things: http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php

You're also going to want some kind of tool to measure the speed of your RAM. I use cacheburst. You can get that here: www.benchmarkhq.ru/fclick/fclick.php?fid=210 . Measure the speed of your RAM before you touch your bios settings, so you know how fast your RAM is normally. (use the "report" button to create a web document with a graph and #s and such.)

All of those are free utilities.

Ok, now that you have all your little tools ready, you can start messing with your bios. Some of your motherboard settings may differ, but they should all be relatively similar.

The higher you push your cpu speed, the more power its gonna want. This is where you can fry your computer if you screw up. Pushing your cpu voltage too high WILL cause permanent damage, and no the manufacturer will not replace it for you.

To begin with, find the bios section that controls your RAM and set it to 1 speed lower than it should be. For example, if your ram is pc3200, ddr400, set it to ddr333 speeds. If you dont do this, your motherboard will try and run your RAM faster than it should, and can cause instability.

Next, find your cpu controls, and turn the FSB up by about 5 points. You dont want to increase it in big leaps, you want to increase it slowly and check for stability. You also need to turn the cpu voltage. (remember, turning it too high is BAD.) You definitely do not want to go any higher than about .15 volts over the default voltage. You shouldnt even go that high without some damn good cooling. Different motherboards have different voltage options, and some even let you key in manual settings. You want to increase the voltage very, very slowly.

Anyway, after increasing the FSB and voltage by a small amount, save and exit the bios and see if your computer will still start windows. If, at some point your computer stops responding, or won't boot into windows without blue screening, or stops beeping when you starts up, or in extreme cases wont display anything at all, you're going to need to reset your bios. To do this, either open up the bios when the computer starts and either turn down the FSB a bit, or turn the voltage up a bit (but only if youre sure it wont overheat your cpu). Or, if you cant even open up your bios because your computer doesnt display anything, get your motherboard manual out and find the CMOS jumper switch. Its in different places on different motherboards, so i cant be more specific than that. Anyway, follow the instructions in your MB manual to reset the bios. If you dont have your manual you can probably find an online manual at your manufacturers website.

Once windows starts up, turn on motherboard monitor and keep an eye on your cpu temperature. Different cpus have different tolerances, but as a general rule you dont want the temperature going over 55c under load. As in, when your cpu is at 100% utilization, the temperature shouldnt go over 55c. Now open up prime95 (or whatever else you decide to use) and get it started, again keeping an eye on your temperature. If you have a dual core cpu, you'll need to run 2 instances of Prime95 to fully load your cpu. If prime95 runs longer than 5-10 minutes without crashing, your computer is relatively stable. (I say relatively because it may still crash later on).

If you think your setup is relatively stable, run cacheburst and check the speed of your ram against the report you saved earlier. Eventually you want your ram to run at the same speed it does at default, which takes some fine tuning. For example, you may need to turn your FSB up by about 40-50 points in order to get your RAM back up to regular speed, but if you kept your CPU multiplier at the normal speed there is no way your computer would run. So you'll need to turn your multiplier down a bit, EG: multiplier 10.5, FSB 245 will get you ~ 2570 mhz. The higher FSB will allow your ram to run faster, and hopefully get it back up to where it should be despite the slower bios setting.

What i recommend is not worrying about your RAM Speed until you've determined a stable speed for your CPU. If your CPU runs prime95 at, say, 1800mhz, turn your multiplier down and see what you need to set the FSB at to get the same speed. This will take some tweaking.

You're going to want to run prime95 for 24 hours, or even longer to make sure your computer is rock solid stable at the overclocked speed. If it fails at any time it means your cpu has made an error, and you might want to tweak some settings.

I should make some kind of disclaimer too, just so I dont get my ass sued if anyone reads this and cooks their computer. So here it is: I'm just some guy on a forum. The contents of this post do not constitute professional advice, and in fact you should probably ignore everything i said for your own good.

Oh, and if your computer came from a company like dell or gateway, or if it uses pretty much any intel brand motherboard, it probably doesnt have settings to overclock at all. I should have mentioned that sooner...

There are lots of sites on the internet that have guides to overclocking, and forums where you can talk to people more experienced than myself. http://www.overclock.net/ is ok, www.ocforums.com is another good place. Have fun.

A GeForce 6600GT is not enough for BF2. I've everything on low except textures and terrain (mid), but i've still goddamn 20fps in some cases (Sharqi TV station on the balcony looking east direction). What did DICE do?
My PC settings are good. It's BF2. Playing online with a fps lower than 40 is suicide.

Last edited by <b|k> lukie (2006-05-02 15:01:36)