n00bish questions

[mod2max]

Hi, these questions are a bit n00bish but ones that I would like answered never the less

1. What happens if you up the Bus speed on your CPU by too much and don't up the volts? (Same question applies to GPU's)

2. Will a BIOS update for a Gigabyte GA-X38-DS5 improve the performance and stability of my system?

3. My Q6600@2.4 (G0 stepping) runs at nice temps under my Zalman Cu7700 would push my Q6600 to 2.7 have a big effect on the temps?

4. Has anyone ever had to use BootBlock recovery before? And how easy/hard is it?

Cheers all

[Shyska]

1. System becomes unstable (reboots) or at a higher stage doesn't boot at all.
2. Don't know that exact mobo and bios, some updates gives performance boost (but rarely), some fixes address certain issues like CPU compatibility, etc. check description of the new bios.
3. No, but it will give an effect, also it varies from system to system.
4. Haven't. But used similar Asus utility that made my grief go away Very easy, another (working) PC to look up info is a big plus.

[mod2max]

Thank you Shyska

[Silverel]

1. You could drop the multiplier down a step, increase the divider from 1:1 to 4:5, and try to get a faster speed that way. GPU's have no bus speed, and are more linear to OC. If you can't push it any further you'll probably need more volts. Make sure it's cool enough to do so. Temp monitoring utilities (multiple ones) are your friends.

2. More likely than not, but if you're not having any problems they don't "recommend" it. Anytime you flash the BIOS there's a chance of killing your board. Just write everything down that you need to know, and DON'T use any windows based utilities to do it.

3. Keep it under 70c, and you might run all the way up to 3.33ghz. Depends on the quality of that particular cpu, board, and memory though.

4. ---

[mod2max]

Thank you both, you've both given me a grater and safer insight into overclocking

And I really wanna do it know just ran 3DMark06 Basic and only got 6423
Probably my graphics card holding back the score I would guess

Which yes I know alot of people would love to have a score like that but when your playing a load of new high spec games it dosn't really cut the mustard. Or maybe I'm just expecting too much I dont know...

[Paulieg]

When thanking others, it's a good idea to click on the "thanks" button..

That Q6600 of yours will most likely go to 3.0 Ghz with only a minor increase in vcore. You definately won't need more than 1.375v to do this (unless you have a very bad chip). At this vcore, you should not have any heat problems with that Zalman, if it's installed properly.

[mod2max]

lol cheers for that... didn't see it before

And my current CPU temp is is about 44c got loads of things open mostly browser tabs win media player PC Wizard install demos got Word open Tm says I'm using like 30%.

Is that good? not sure what it gets up to under heavy load last time I did a check with Crysis it went to 54% after a few hours and I've got a heater on in my room and everything.

[Paulieg]

Not bad at all. Here's a suggestion. Download Coretemp. This will monitor your core temperatures, which is more important than your cpu temp, as it's the core that you really want to stay cool. Coretemp will give you your "tjunction" temperature. If you keep your cores 15-20c below this tjunction at full load, you're doing fine.