Hardware & Technical Overclocking Your Rig

As long as you are careful overclocking is a free performance upgrade there are plenty of guides out there for beginners.
 
Why?

Is it safe to do this and recommended by Frontier Developments.

I don't think Frontier are in the business of recommending anything. They have just provided a set of minimum specs.

How you meet them, by either overclocking or buying a new processor, is up to you and is not their responsibility.
 
Even the hardware manufacturers that provide tools for overclocking don't actually 'recommend' it, and put it at the user's risk. Why Frontier would want to stick their neck out, I've no idea.

Anyone who wants to provide some advice though, I'll take it. I've already got a very mild OC on my CPU, which was as simple as changing a single setting in the BIOS. Knocks the target for Turbo on my i5 3570k up from 3.8ghz to 4.0ghz
 
As others have said, but I will repeat - I'm sure Frontier have not and will not recommend over clocking your rig.

In certain gaming enthusiast circles over clocking is the norm. I myself have an over clocked rig (CPU and GPU). However it was built with over clocking in mind, so it has extra power availability (a more powerful PSU for a more stable voltage) and a more powerful cooling system designed to cope with the extra heat that the processor and GPU will generate whilst over clocked. Plus a chassis/case that can handle the extra power and cooling requirements.

I would not recommend overcooking just any system. However a mild over clock is not dangerous to your system provided the above (power and cooling) have been thought about.
 
As others have said, it's got absolutely nothing to do with Frontier... it's just a things some people choose to do, or not.

I'm a bit of a geek so do it mostly for fun, but it does have tangible benefits - I've been running an i7-920 2.66GHz stable at 4GHz for 5 years now... free* performance!


*not really free as you need to buy a better cooling system than Intel's stock cooler! :p
 
I seem to remember from years ago that you had to fiddle about with voltages and clock-speeds and basically know what you're doing. Now it looks like I can just set the target speed in my motherboard's bios and it does all the hard work for me.

Is it basically just a case of setting the target speed, running a CPU stress test and monitoring the temps to see that they don't get too high? I've got a fat Noctua cooler, so I should be okay to squeeze a bit more performance out.
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Moved to the hardware section. As its a hardware question.

Frontier have never mentioned anything about PC builds or modifications. except for their recommended minimum specs for ED. If you want to overclock is suggest Google might be a better option. proceed at your own risk though.
 
Personaly i dont like to overcklocking as it reduces the lifespan of the cpu and gpu, but if money is not an issue go ahead at your own risk, ppl can talk as much we like, but we cant do anything anyway no matter what our own opinion on the matter is. :rolleyes:
 
Moved to the hardware section. As its a hardware question.

Frontier have never mentioned anything about PC builds or modifications. except for their recommended minimum specs for ED. If you want to overclock is suggest Google might be a better option. proceed at your own risk though.

I didn't even look to see if there was a Hardware section.

I just wanted to know more about it. I never wanted to do it as it sounds dangerous. From the sounds of what you have been telling me, I believe it was on one of my old computers that still now barely works, but is not being used right now.
That I entered the Bios to get more out of the Graphics cards so I could play Black & White Two (Remember that Game?) with all the graphics optioned turned up to full (Graphics that would show realistic waving grass and realistic hair on your chosen creature.) and it worked. Before I couldn't even choose to the higher graphical options. They just weren't high-lighted. You couldn't click on them. Not until I read in their official game forum that you could do this, get more out of the build of my graphics cards if I went into the Bios and altered one of it's values to make it do something at a higher output. It sure did work, as I now found that the higher options, once unreachable, were now highlighted and ready to be taken. Yes, I was now getting more graphical power without the once meagre limitations of my graphics card.

Then.......after a while the graphics started to play up. Hard to describe what I was looking at really without some literary skill beyond my own. I panicked and went back into the Bios to put things back to normal and The graphics options once again reset back to their default level. So the graphics now once again beyond the meagre limitations of the graphic card. Were now only performing their bare necessity, not animating grass and hair with the realism of before. I'm not sure if I had done damage to my graphics card or computer, but I still got to Spore on it for a good while before I stopped using it in favour of one of the computers I use now.

Another computer that may be approaching it last legs as well or maybe it just needs a good reinstall. The computer I did the Bios thing on I think is Pentium and I had brought it in late 2005. The slightly newer computer was purchased probably sometime in 2008-2009. I'm not really sure as it was originally my father's before he brought a new one. I can barely use it at the moment as it has a busted keyboard and too many programs, it's memory nearly full. I can barely be used without stalling or hanging. I'm using the Acer Laptop at he moment. Which was another acquisition from my father after he started using a new laptop as well. That's three computers he has and two for me. This current laptop computer I'm using also needs a good clean and if it was capable of being used for the Alpha/Beta I might have started removing all the non-essential software by now. The much older computer, the Pentium from 2005 is in storage somewhere in the house. It barely works and very slowly. Not sure if I was the one who did the damage or not. As I only had made the alteration in it's Bios for a short while before the graphics started going haywire.

Is that Over-clocking?
 
Is that Over-clocking?

Basically, yes. Overclocking is boosting your hardware to above the normal settings. It's done either using 3rd party software or more commonly in the BIOS. Tweaking voltages, clock cyles etc. The effects vary from not really noticeable to very pronounced. If you don't have good enough cooling on the components your are messing with, then you run the risk of something going wrong due to over heating.
 
I see that you are an alpha tester.
I to have a overclockt system , but I wonder if it is beneficial to the alpha test.
it could be that over clocking our systems also ads more bug sensitivity to it.
and it could also make it harder for FD to sif out the bugs.
because were creating alien situations.
 
Hi,

I have been overclocking for about 13+ years. You do it within sensible limits and methodology. I'm looking for free performance essentially over the life of PC. At first you won't need but in the middle to end it comes in handy. When I say end I mean at that point even with overclock you cannot really play modern games. A good place to is www.overclockers.com. They have well written and technically correct and conservative guides.

For example my CPU is overclocked from 2.8GHz to 3.6GHz. It runs this overclock all the time. I have Intel Speedstep running so the speed varies depending on how much load is placed on the CPU. When I play games it runs at 3.6GHz and when I'm surfing probably about 1.7 GHz. I can push it to 3.8GHz with my £28 CPU heatsink and fan; beyond that I would have to get a better HSF. My graphics card came with an overclock from Sapphire of 150MHz (950MHz) out of the box. You click a button on the card and it applies that automatically. My videocard is currently overclocked to 1.050GHz. It's a Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X. I reckon I could push it 1.1GHz but beyong that it would need a better cooling system then the Vapor-X. I always like to keep a bit in reserve that way I know I'm not going to be pushing up against the capabilities of my cooling system and I stay in the sweet-spot for overclocking that component. The law of diminishing returns sets-in. I don't go out of the specs from Intel etc... for the voltages, current etc and keep at least within 10% of the max they recommend. You can get the technical docs from the manufacturers. I like to do that so that I can see it in black and white in a pdf from Intel etc...
 
I see that you are an alpha tester.
I to have a overclockt system , but I wonder if it is beneficial to the alpha test.
it could be that over clocking our systems also ads more bug sensitivity to it.
and it could also make it harder for FD to sif out the bugs.
because were creating alien situations.

No not really. If it's a bug it's a bug. If your system is unstable then your system is unstable. When you overclock you check for stability. This will put your PC under loads that you will not hit in the real-world. My CPU has been on an overnight run of computing prime numbers this hits all core at 100% I started it off at 8 in the evening and stopped it at 8 in the morning. I recorded temps over that run and there were no issues. That's a 12 hour run of the CPU at 100% load. ED will not hit a CPU anywhere close to that.
 
I'm all for overclocking if you personally are willing to risk stability.

I am not, I purposefully avoid it. It's one thing if my CPU wants to do it's turboboost thing, but I'm not altering the BIOS or anything.

I bought overspecced RAM (1866 running at 1600) and a 3570k CPU to run at stock speeds, and a motherboard that purposefully doesn't offer much OC tools. Some people would call that silly, but I'd get workstation or server class hardware if I could justify the cost and the noise.
 
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