> If you've overclocked your system at all (_not_ reccomended, but I
> know it can be successful in some cases) then I suggest you let
> the torture test run for a couple of days before committing yourself
> to doing "real" work. It can happen that an overclocked system
> appears to run fine for "office" applications but causes problems
> with Prime95 because very few other applications use the floating-
> point unit even half as intensively as Prime95 does.
>
> Note that simple overheating can also cause problems, even if your
> system _isn't_ overclocked. Might be an idea to check that case
> and processor cooling fans are operating. They have been known to
> fail!
I'd just like to pitch in again...
Overclocking your bus from 100 to 103 is not likely to exhibit problems.
Any problems you have were probably there at 100MHz also.
I'm talking about the folks who overclock their 66MHz (bus speed) Celeron's
to 100MHz. Sure, there are Celerons that can make it and you won't see any
problems, but if that game you're playing exhibits a small calc error once
per hour, who'll notice? You WILL notice it in Prime95 though.
Following along on what Brian Beesley is saying, the problem is definitely
heat. The FPU in CPU's takes up a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the total die package,
but it's not normally used that much (although MMX does share the same
registers as the FPU).
When you play your games, run Word/Excel, you're just simply not generating
as much heat. When you run an FPU intensive program, your CPU will really
heat up much more, and heat is the killer...raises resistance, causes
"misfires" with capacitive loads (e.g. memory, be it cache or registers),
timing problems, etc.
So, I urge anyone out there to not overclock their prime finding machines,
or if you're tempted, do so only moderately (100-103 bus speed for instance,
or possibly 66-75 is not extraordinary).
Those Abit motherboards with their "turbo" setting provides a nice, moderate
3% boost in clock speed and *I* would consider that safe anyway.
Aaron
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