I am running my X3 720 at 3.2ghz why I have to be called unlucky :0
to me overclocking is a 'bonus' it would be nice if it was uniform though
but the trend where gamers expect an overclock is kind of asking too much
squeezing out just a little more with no effort and no rigorous testing is what I like and I think the current chips are a great value for this

I do not think people should expect to overclock their GPU cards unless companies start releasing 4850 'black' editions
sure it is nice to try, but its like buying a processor with a locked multiplier, there is no guarantee it will overclock well and you should not expect it even though there is software out there to make the adjustments user friendly

I've been o/c'n for quite a while

P1 200mmx @ 250 (25%)
Celeron 300a @ 450 (50%)
Dual Celeron 366 @ 540 (47%)
Duron 700 @ 1ghz (42%)
Athlon 1ghz @ 1.4ghz (40%)
AthlonXP 2100+(1.73)@2.3ghz (32%)
Opteron 165 (1.8ghz)@2.5ghz (38%)

I completely agree with the post, good to see the subject mentioned again. I've never had great sucess overclocking graphics cards, I presume because manufacturers like EVGA are always binning their chips religiously in order to support having 4+ SKU bins for every single individual model. FurMark and OCCT's new test do seem to be the best tools.

I recently bought a D0 Core i7 920, XtremeSystems forums were ablaze with seemingly magical overclocks anywhere from 4.2-4.8GHz, even the occasional 5GHz CPUz screenshot. Low and behold my D0 920 is only 100% stable up to 4.2GHz, a few hertz beyond that is akin to falling off a cliff into a deep bluescreen sea of death. Thankfully I would of been happy with just a "mere" 4GHz overclock, but from the comments over at XS most of them would've tossed the CPU and bought another. I'm quite happy with my 4.2GHz overclock and find the temptation to try another chip easy to ignore.

Celeron 300A was my overclocking champion, but even though it would post at 600MHz, I wasn't able to get applications stable above 504MHz

I've overclocked everything since and there was a long era of disappointing overclocks that ended when my 2.13GHz was able to run on a 400MHz FSB instead of the original 266MHz

Even the supposedly excellent Athlon XP Barton 2500+ only clocked from 1.83 to 2.4GHz, and that was considered a decent overclock for air-cooling. (3GHz required phase-change)

Hi guys! Back in 1996, I managed to overclock AMD's 5x86 chip from 133Mhz to 166Mhz!!!! It was sweeping the floor with a Pentium 100Mhz. But it had stability issues.

You guys remember MicroProse's Grand Prix 2 game? (Simultator of Formula one cars and circuits). Awesome game. I ran it on the overclocked chip (160Mhz 5x86) and after 5 mins, all cars laterally banked upward in the air at 45 degrees! That was the cpu starting to give up. All cars ran on their left front and rear wheels, while having the right side wheels up in the air. This went on for about 1 min more and then - reboot.

Aaaaaaa....glory days! :)

No kidding. Overclocking is defentatly hit and miss. I've had CPU's get some mad over clocks.

S754 A64 2800+ 1.8Ghz hitting 2.8 on air cooling
S754 A64 3700+ 2.4Ghz hitting 3.0 on air cooling
LGA775 C2Q Q6600 hit 3.2 eazy as cake on air
And after my introduction to lightning...
My Current E8400 3.0Ghz hits 4Ghz on air like it was meant to do it by default

But I've also had some CPU's that would not budge, like..
AthlonXP 2000+ that would only go 100Mhz over
S754 A64 3700+ that would only go to 2.6 (differant one than the one stated above)

GPU's have been less kind to me. my old GeforeceFX 5200 went some ungodly amount over that I can't remember and my old 9600XT went a good 200Mhz over stock.
But all of my other GPU's have HATED any amount of overclocking.

I gave up overclocking my GPU's with my last 3 cards simply because they were fast enough for anything I threw at them.

I can say I'm damn lucky with the fact I've never killing a piece of ware with overclocking, but that's probably because I'm /very/ reuctant to jump voltages on anything. My hardware nowadays is jsut too expensive to be risking for only a few FPS differance in game I'm already getting great speed out of.

Let's look at this post and oc'ing from the perspective of what he got for some time spent tweaking even if it isn't an especially high oc. This could be a reply to 'budget overclocking' 'free performance' 'just buy higher components' or other posts.

At the time of its introdcution in January 2007 the Q6600 was $850, the only other quad core CPU was the QX6700 at $1000 (these are Intel 1k unit tray prices so retail box street prices were higher but whatever.) When G0 stepping came out in April 2007 the price was dropped to $266 and the $1200 QX6800 was introduced along with the $530 Q6700 - certainly an excellent time to buy a q6600. Later the QX6850 was the highest speed Kentsfield CPU at 3GHz and a $1000 price, replacing the QX6800. It was a year until the 45nm Yorkfields were released. So what did he get for his oc, even if it was modest? He got the value of a $1k CPU for $250-300 which clearly destroys the 'buy higher components' argument. Paying significantly more for small speed bumps is silly, it's very rare that a CPU can't go up at least one or two speed grades.

Now if you were to buy a $30-40-50 aftermarket cooler you could have a CPU that's 'not available' because it's faster than anything that can be bought and the additional cost would still be less than going up multiple stock speed grades. I'd have to argue that the conclusion of this article is off. It's certainly a gamble to think you can match the highest overclocks you can find on various forums, but it's almost no gamble whatsoever that you will match much higher-priced CPU grades, even with stock cooling.

Very timely article. Read this OC report over at PCstats yesterday on E8500 OC'ing. And they "easily" got it to 4.2GHz. Had mine running at 3.8GHz from start and got it to run stable at 4.1GHz (Intel burn of course. Orthos is fine but torture, that is Intel) but didn't like the temps for 24/7. Not sure I'd say it was an easy one though.

Anyways after reading it, I figured I'd go back and OC my one a little more. Just one suggestion for anyone OCing an NVDA MB with nTune. DON'T! Your BIOS settings getting raped once you hit Windows. Only way I could get my system back to old was a safe boot, and disable ntune with Autoruns.

Well once I figured that was the issue (took a while, first 10 trials I figured it was just a bad OC till I noticed it died just after getting into Win ever time). I don't use ntune actively but it does have a good fan control for us likers of silent PCs which I had forgotten about.

So I figured since it is there, lets try OC with it. Well after fairly quickly reaching my old 4.1GHz I had to change mem timings and reboot to get them active. YUPP AWESOME SYSTEM FAIL! Never actually had this happen before with an nVidia MB, so first time running a clear CMOS and unistalling my four sticks to get it back to operate. And then complete reconfig of BIOS. Very funny... For a few secs I thought my MB or mem sticks got killed... Still don't know what it did to my settings, was no crazy speeds for sticks or anything. Just CL4 to CL5.

Happy camper with my 3.8 for now... and don't trust nVidia software. If their HW is crummy and prone to die (I am a big fan of their mem controllers, not. Everyday it has your four sticks running you pray for another day), their software is like baby poop coming at you while changing diper!

Unlucky man, the Q6600 is well heralded for it's overclocking ability and frankly that's a good and bad thing. The smart thing is to buy a chip with high rates of overclock and a good reputation, like the Q6600, the trouble comes when your individual chip doesn't match with the limits of what others can achieve with their individual but equally named chips.

I'm running my Q6600 G0 on an Asus P5K-Pro (P35) and it has a Thermalright IFX-14 strapped to the top of it. I have two BIOS profiles one overclocked and one standard and I switch between them when I need.
The overclock profile has the Q6600 at 3.6GHz and 1.45v. The standard profile has the chip at around 1.28v.
I've found that for gaming (mostly L4D) 2.4GHz is just fine, so I only switch to the overclocked mode for video conversion. I actually bought this setup 1 year ago with the aim of keeping it for 3-4 years and overclocking as needed, so far it's gone too plan but I am continually tempted to buy new hardware despite the minor real world benefits.

I never felt the need to overclock a CPU, ever. I've done my fair share of GPU overclocking. When I build my next PC I won't even bother doing that. :)

I don't really see the point in overclocking anymore, especially for CPUs. I don't do any video editing that would benefit from a faster CPU, and all my games are pretty GPU limited. You can get really good performance these days at ridiculously low prices, right out of the box.

It's just not 1998 anymore.

Overclock efforts over the years:

k6III-450+ - excellent, up to 600MHz
t-bred b 2100 - excellent, up to 2.2GHz
first mobile barton 2600: excellent, up to 2.6GHz
second mobile barton 2600, mediocre, only 2.2GHz
venice 3200, mediocre, can't remember specifics
venice 3500, mediocre, up to 2.5GHz stable
x2 4200, so-so, up to 2.6 stable
c2d e6600,not bad, up to 3.3 now at 3.2GHz and runs cool
c2d e6750, awesome, stable and cool at 3.6 GHz

all in all, a mixed bag, a crap shoot. My experience is that I know pretty quickly how well a cpu will oc, and I always look for that sweet spot of performance X power X temperature and never try to push beyond that.

Just as a question, what PSU are you sporting? I had a BFG 650 watt and my 3850's (mildly overclocked) would crash every time I opened a game. However, upon replacing the BFG with a much quieter Corsair 750tx, I've had 0 problems with the cards crashing, even at a higher overclock.

Maybe your PSU isn't supplying clean enough power...

To be contrary, I'm a big fan of undervolting. :P

Dirty internet truth #1234:

A large amount of joe blow overclocking claims are complete BS, if not made up numbers then laughable stability.

I blame the e-peen nature of the anonymous internet.

It was nice during "the good old days" when a 50% overclock with stock coolers was considered standard with some famous cpus (and old binning) but now? /care off

Huge overclocks aren't new, especially on low-end processors -- my 11 year old Celeron 300A overclocked from 300MHz to 450MHz. Back in the 386/486 days, you could overclock many by 100% from 12 to 24MHz or 33 Mhz to 66 MHz (like the old style turbo mode).

Some low-end Core 2 Duos these days seem to also overclock by 50% or more regularly, eg. 2.4GHz -> 3.6 GHz.

See this old [H] review on the 300A: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTU=

halp me, I feel old for remembering 386s.

Overclocking's #1 rule has always been "Your millage may vary".

In my personal experience, I have successfully overclock a number of components. The most tricky part of lot was a Venice 3200+. It needed a nice dose of voltage in order to obtain any decent stability at 2.4Ghz.

I had an E6300 that was tricky to overclock. It was mainly because it had to work with a 975X board. The board needed a couple BIOS tweaks to get 333Mhz+ FSB. By comparison, my current EP45-DS4P is a breeze to overclock along with its Q6600 B3. I am certain my Q6600 B3 can handle 3.4Ghz with a few more volts and sufficient cooling. The only problem is that it is already toasty at 3.0Ghz with a tiny voltage boost.

No surprises. I personally overclocked a half-dozen different Q6600's all from different steppings and production dates. One B3, five G0's by the time all was said and done.

One wouldn't OC even a whisker. One had to be jacked decently high on Vcore to hit 3.0ghz stable. The other four hit 3.2ghz, but needed varying degrees of voltage applied. Two probably would have been the magical 3.4-3.6-3.8ghz chips that a lot of people had, but I didn't feel like pushing them that hard once I got 3.2ghz at stock or stock + 0.05625v or something modest-- with another 0.1v a lot of chips screamed to 3.6ghz+. I had a few more Q6600's I never did bother to OC either.

I am looking forward to Core i5 or Core i7 in my next upgrade to OC one of those, although I'll probably opt for a more conservative overclock near stock voltages.

For my personal systems the CPU is almost always overclocked. Video cards I have had terrible luck overclocking so I just leave them alone most of the time. I am currently running an E6400 at 3.2ghz which is a 50% overclock. Its been running that way since day one. I figured if the overclock does shorten the life of my cpu I am not out much anyway. I can't remember the exact number but I read something that stated intel plans on a 7 year lifespan for its cpu's. Even if I cut the life span in half which isn't likely I will have moved onto something newer and better long before the 3.5 years is up.

For my wife and kids they get hand me down systems that I am done with. Their systems always run at stock speeds to be sure I don't have to futz around with them.

I always thought that overclocking was for your 2+ yr old computer that seemed a little sluggish on the newer software you just bought. So a slight OC brings it back to where you expect it to be. So at some point (when you've reached the limits of the OC) your pc can't keep up with current software demands, therefore it's upgrade time, or new pc time.

However, it seems that a lot of guys are overclocking brand new components just for the fun of it. Well that's cool and fun, but if you get that cpu that won't oc at all, the fun is over. My Q6600 will only go to 3.0 just like Dustin's, so oh well. I'm done overclocking. I think for now on, I'll just buy the fastest hardware I can afford and just live with it.

I also get the impression that many of the overclockers are gamers that think it will give them a slight advantage in deathmatch. OC = pwnage, or something like that. :)

Prime95 is not a good indicator of stability as it can take many hours to find a problem and often misses marginal problems. Use IntelBurn and you will know if your system is stable in 10 minutes. A small overclock is OK but anything more is asking for trouble. A cool stable system is more important. When something crashes or your hard drive gets corrupted you will be sorry.

Overclocking is often a hobby, same as woodworking, hotrodding, collecting baseball cards or gardening. Extra performance in certain apps is gravy.

'Back in the day' you had to choose between OCing and spending a lot to to run games at playable framerates. That's hardly necessary anymore unless you're running jumbo monitors.

My last overclock the biggest issues has been my old northbridge however the new CPU is so fast vs what I had it's not really a big deal I'm not getting a huge overclock.

I remember when I overclocked my Tbred B 2600 (166x12.5). The highest I could boot into was 220x11 ( http://www.failratio.net/images/computer/220x11.png ). I settled down to 209x11 since it was stable using stock voltages. Not to bad all in all seeing I was using air-cooling.

dustin, i noticed in the article you have a x83vm (nice budget gaming laptop BTW...) and i've posted before on the forums looking for advice on how to overclock the heck out of the 9600 gs; maybe you can iluminate me on the topic now :)

Perhaps you are doing it wrong? Testing for stability is key. No overclocking is the same as you said it yourself.

I usually run my computer 24/7 and not a single hick up whether I run it stock or overclocked.

I overclock my own computers and never overclock computers I build for others. With all the photo editing I do and some minor video editing, then I find it beneficial to squeeze out some extra speed since it's relatively free. Great thing is that my systems are very quiet. What I do not do is overclock the GPU since my 'hardcore' gaming days are essentially over.

The most overhyped overclock is the unlocking of the fourth core in the X3 chips. I remember reading a forum post where the guy was building his computer with the idea that it was going to be an X4 by using an X3.

Whoa. That CPU is sending psychic shock waves at me!

Yeah stopped OC'ing because the first crash due to stability was frankly the last I wanted due to OC. sta-/relia- bility > * to me.