Your greatest overclocks of all time!!!!

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Kato1144

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
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I was reading a article on the AMD forum and it mention the infamous "pencil method" for unlocking CPU's and that reminded me of one of my best overclockes of all time:

The system was a Abit MOBD, can't remember witch one a Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2GHz stock clock 400MHz FSB and a 5.5 Multiplier.

Now on my chip you could unlock the multiplier but you had to tie a wire on one pin and carefully run it through all the other pins to one near the middle of the chip, if the wire ever moved and touched one of the other pins that it ran past, well it would certainly kill the CPU if not the MOBD too, so i opted for the next best option to use a pencil to create a small electrical bridged between 2 copper dots on top of the CPU, it was labeled L3 i think.

Once this was done my 400MHz FSB was unlocked and I was able to push the FPS up to a screaming 525MHz for a effective clock of 2,887MHz or 2.89GHz, coupled with a thermaltake Extreme Volcano 12 running at 100% all times was a wicked over clock and 100% stable, i paired that with a 9800 Pro that I clocked to near XT speeds on core and mem and had a 120mm case fan blowing directly on the GPU also at 100% at all times (that computer sounded like a vacuum cleaner), I could run Doom 3 at high detail (my GFX card defaulted to medium) with no major hangs or stutters, that was big back then in 2004-2005, unfortunately in 2007 I sold that computer to one of my friends who only had a 2 GHz P4 celeron at the time and my PC look like a monster in comparison, unfortunately he brought it to some IT guy who turned off the crazy overclock and lost all my setting (I had everything back up on a piece of paper I taped to the inside of the case and he threw that out too :( ) the PC still exists today and is used for minecraft.... and after that experience I probably wont be selling my PC's that overclock so well ever again, I also recycled my CRT monitors around that time I sold the PC and i really kick my self in the ass for that one as they were good screens and I could still probably use them today... I miss my true blacks everything looks so washed out on LCDs...


Anyway lets here your amazing overclocking stories of the past!!


Edit: sry the multiplier was 11 because the mem actually ran at 200MHz x2 for DDR transfer rate = 400MHz FSB
 
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My dual processor Celeron 300A clocked at 466 MHz to 500MHz (I am not sure of the exact frequency it was too long ago) was by far the best % overclock.

I believe I paid around $1250 for 2 Celeron 300As + 2 slotkets + mobo + ram with a 466 OC guarantee.
 
My current Socket A overclock - board limited - is an Athlon XP-M 2800+ on an Abit KT7A at 2.2Ghz.

Super Socket 7 - AMD K6-2 550 @ 660 on an ASUS P5A.

Video card - Nvidia 7900GS with voltmod for a 50% overclock - lasted 1 year before it fried.

Slot-A AMD Athlon 500 with a 650 core for an overclock somewhere near 800Mhz - back then, they had so many cpus that would bin at the higher speed but not enough demand for the higher speed CPUs, so they clocked them down and sold them as slower parts.

Socket 3 - AMD 5x86 133 & 160

And the top one that got me into overclocking - finding a 25/33Mhz jumper on a 486 system and then deciding to switch the position of the jumper to see what it would do.
 
duron 600 that did 1133. I'm sure it would have done 1200 but I ran out of voltage. cooled it with -20 outside air via a dryer duct. that chip/system is still running today in a garage system.
 
it was a s939 amd x2 or the opteron on a dfi nf4 i think? that I made a chiller for and I think i hit low 3 or 3.2 that was so long ago. but for the best uses of a system it was my 3930k at 4.9 for 3 years then 4.6 for 1 or 2 years
 
I'd say my top 3 would be my Celeron 300A at 466Mhz, Barton 2500+ past 3200+ speeds (I forgot the specifics) and my i7 2600K at 4.9GHz. :)
 
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Somebody else here must have overclocked a P4 Northwood 1.6A.
1.6Ghz -> 2.4Ghz 50% OC

Second place would be my old Athlon Tbird 1.0 to 1.33 Ghz
 
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486 @ 100mhz, PII at 233 or something, Celeron 300A ranks up there, P4(s) 2.4@ 3.4 then [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] 1700XP @ whatever they clocked to at the time. I'm sure there was something in b/w the 300A and the Pentium 1.0ghz I had, I think I had something do a 700mhz or whatever. Basically if it had a 50% overclock, I did it. This week I broke down and did my most piss poor value overclock, a 7700k [email protected].
 
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The first cpu that I ever bothered overclocking was an e8400. Later picked up a q9950, i7 860, i5 750, i5 760, i5 2500k, i5 2600k, i5 3570k, i5 3770k, i7 4770k. Not a one worth bragging about. Not a one that I would say runs 24/7 stable at the clocks some people claim are the norm. All of them about average some less.. Every one that I didn't buy used degraded a bit over time and not with high overclocks or a lot of stress testing past the initial test.

My current 4770k may actually be a downgrade compared to my average clocking 3770k after it slightly degraded.

I just sold my "average" clocking 3770k. Looking back it may be the best clocking i7 chip that I've ever owned.

Don't trust what you read on the internet. My 4770k is actually prime stable. May not be avx stable due to heat but I don't care. I at least used an older version of prime and tweaked the settings to try and stress test. Mostly just used prime blend and let it use as much memory as I could without throttling. Didn't just run crysis then brag on the net about my clocks and fail to mention when my hard drive got corrupted.
 
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cyclone3d said:
My current Socket A overclock - board limited - is an Athlon XP-M 2800+ on an Abit KT7A at 2.2Ghz.

Super Socket 7 - AMD K6-2 550 @ 660 on an ASUS P5A.

Video card - Nvidia 7900GS with voltmod for a 50% overclock - lasted 1 year before it fried.

Slot-A AMD Athlon 500 with a 650 core for an overclock somewhere near 800Mhz - back then, they had so many cpus that would bin at the higher speed but not enough demand for the higher speed CPUs, so they clocked them down and sold them as slower parts.

Socket 3 - AMD 5x86 133 & 160

And the top one that got me into overclocking - finding a 25/33Mhz jumper on a 486 system and then deciding to switch the position of the jumper to see what it would do.
Click to expand...

Oh, if we're going to mention video cards. I have had some good luck there.

My GTX 280 was a beast. Next to my current gpu that may be the one that lasted me the longest. The thing hit just over 720mhz iirc. It was something like a 20% overclock. I ran it like that all of the time.
I used 7950 trifire at 1100mhz which was pretty modest. Still a 37% overclock. Could have gone more on every one. Just not the best option in trifire.
My 6950 both flashed to 6970s using stock 6950 clocks. That was cool. Still didn't oc much past that without high noise and voltage.
I owned three GTX 680 lightnings and under water one did 1300mhz stable without voltage modding. The other two would but barely. Those were pretty average gpus.
Don't get me wrong I've had duds. Like my original GTX titan. I had to throw a water block on that to not get it to throttle like mad at stock clocks. Really I mean a lot. More than most people would admit to. It would run crysis fine at one clock which was one of the games that would make it crash pretty quickly at a slightly high oc. Then Sacred 2 of all games made it crash to desktop. Had to reflash the bios after some testing. I've owned other cards. Those stuck out to me.

Edit: My current GTX 980ti does decent gpu clocks but the ram clocks like shit.
 
my best overclock that actually took work to get was an socket 754 athlon 64 3000+ clawhammer @ 2.85Ghz water cooled on a DFI Lanparty UT NF3 250gb motherboard.. sadly at the time i knew jack shit about overclocking records and all that but i had a free board and processor from a friend and a water cooling kit my uncle had given me years before.. i just wanted to see how high i could get it at the time since i had no real use for the system outside of that. funny thing is i still have that board and processor and actually have money i can waste on stupid shit, maybe i'll try it again at some point.. (yeah i don't throw any of my old computer shit away because all the e-waste recyclers here sell their shit to 3rd world countries and don't actually recycle any of it)

as far as GPU's go my volt modded 8800GT still reigns supreme for me.. 780/1980/1010(stock 600/1500/900) all air cooled gpu folding 24/7 for 2 1/2 years. not to shabby for a card that cost me 115 dollars + 30 dollar for the aftermarket cooler 9 years ago. used that thing up until about 3 months ago when i was finally forced to replace it.
 
tom_ozahoski said:
You are the only other person other than myself that I have ever heard of doing that! Mine would only post at 133 so I wired in a switch to hit 160 after booting. I could switch between 33 and 40 FSB on the fly.
Click to expand...

Mine posted at 160 and ran fine like that for pretty much everything.

When I got that CPU I had a horrible time with the motherboard I bought as it would crash when installing Windows despite the board specifically saying it supported that CPU. The store I bought it from ended up exchanging the board for me for a different brand/model.

Before that I had a 486 DX2-66 that I ran at 80 for most stuff. It would crash on some stuff at 80 so I wired a fsb jumper to the front panel of the case and would change the fsb on the fly when I needed to run something it would crash at 80 on.
 
drescherjm said:
My dual processor Celeron 300A clocked at 466 MHz to 500MHz (I am not sure of the exact frequency it was too long ago) was by far the best % overclock.

I believe I paid around $1250 for 2 Celeron 300As + 2 slotkets + mobo + ram with a 466 OC guarantee.
Click to expand...

I was going to do the same thing with a pair of Celeron 266's, but after I bought the chips and board, I found out that you had to do some soldering to the CPU's and I didn't want to try that.
I ended up just using 1 CPU on the board and I can't recall what I did with the other.
I ran the single at 400mhz which was an easy overclock for it since it was basically a Pentium II with no cache.

I still have some old procs in a box somewhere,
procs.jpg
 
Two of my best were with those unlocked low volt t.bred B 1700+. No [h]ard mods.
100% benchmark and gaming stable of course.


Abit KR7A-r
1700 dLt3c Tbred B - 0307 VPMW @ 1.625v
190 x 12.5 = 2375Mhz

Soltek SL-75FRN2-rl
(same CPU as above) @ 1.85v
217.16 x 11.5 = 2497.30Mhz

.
1700 at 2500.jpg
 
Susquehannock said:
Two of my best were with those unlocked low volt t.bred B 1700+. No [h]ard mods.
100% benchmark and gaming stable of course.


Abit KR7A-r
1700 dLt3c Tbred B - 0307 VPMW @ 1.625v
190 x 12.5 = 2375Mhz

Soltek SL-75FRN2-rl
(same CPU as above) @ 1.85v
217.16 x 11.5 = 2497.30Mhz
Click to expand...

nice i had the abit board as well that my uncle had given me as a gift, ran a athlon xp 1700+ @ the 2000+ rated speeds. i just don't remember which 1700+ i had whether it was the palomino or the t-bred. but that processor is what got me hooked on overclocking and reading [H].
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
nice i had the abit board as well that my uncle had given me as a gift, ran a athlon xp 1700+ @ the 2000+ rated speeds. i just don't remember which 1700+ i had whether it was the palomino or the t-bred. but that processor is what got me hooked on overclocking and reading [H].
Click to expand...
Thanks. Still have that exact motherboard and CPU in a Windows98/Voodoo4 retro gaming rig right now. Running stock speeds currently.

The CPU you had was definitely a Thoroughbred. The B cores were much better than A. All the Palomino had multipliers locked. Unless you did a socket pin mod of course. Even then they did not go far.

AMD started locking the T.bred and Bartons since they were losing so much profit with everyone buying cheaper 1700+ and 1800+, then easily overclocking them to and 3200+ speeds and beyond.

Here is a Sandra shot of same 1700+. Brings back great memories. Was golden age for Overclockers to be sure.
.
Sandra.jpg
 
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So, I only started overclocking 10 years ago, so my favourite OC would have to be my Phenom 1100t pushed to 4.2GHz with 1.5v, of juice running directly into it's veins... or my current media centre 7970 pushed to 1.2GHz.
 
Susquehannock said:
Thanks. Still have that exact motherboard and CPU in a Windows98/Voodoo4 retro gaming rig right now. Running stock speeds currently.

The CPU you had was definitely a Thoroughbred. The B cores were much better than A. All the Palomino had multipliers locked. Unless you did a socket pin mod of course. Even then they did not go far.

AMD started locking the T.bred and Bartons since they were losing so much profit with everyone buying cheaper 1700+ and 1800+, then easily overclocking them to and 3200+ speeds and beyond.

Here is a Sandra shot of same 1700+. Brings back great memories. Was golden age for Overclockers to be sure.
Click to expand...


after reading your post i got interested again and decided to go dig through all my old parts and actually found the processor.. it is the AMD Athlon AX1700MT3C so it was the Palomino which makes sense now why it only overclocked a couple 100mhz.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
after reading your post i got interested again and decided to go dig through all my old parts and actually found the processor.. it is the AMD Athlon AX1700MT3C so it was the Palomino which makes sense now why it only overclocked a couple 100mhz.
Click to expand...
Cool that you still have it. A board to run it too?
Still have the first CPU that I ever bought. Palomino 1900+ which is pretty much same as yours but running x12 multiplier instead of x11.
 
Susquehannock said:
Cool that you still have it. A board to run it too?
Still have the first CPU that I ever bought. Palomino 1900+ which is pretty much same as yours but running x12 multiplier instead of x11.
Click to expand...

the board is some cheap pc chips one i got from fry's for like 15 bucks back in 2005 or 6 after the abit board died.
 
I always did medium level oc's because I had to have a 100% stable system for my photography work. About 2 years ago I was retiring my old I5-2500k from being the main rig where it ran for at 4.6ghz without an issue for 4 years (hard to believe the i5-2500 is that old). I said fuck and and just cranked that puppy up. Low and behold it was solid stable for 48 hours of testing at 5.2ghz. Color me surprised. It was such a good system.

Unfortunately I've parted ways with. Gave it to a friend and him and I don't talk anymore because of a falling out. I miss that little 2500k...it was a beast.

Otherwise all my oc's were like an extra 100~400 mhz here or there starting from the PII days. I was one of those fools who outright owned the pentium ii 450 and didn't oc a celery 300 to 450.

I remember oc'ing my thunderbird 1.2ghz to a rocking 1.4ghz lol back in the day. Man did that thing play serious sam like a crazy fucker.
 
My Core 2 Duo e8400, definitely. Default clock of 3.0Ghz and voltage of ~1.3 volts. It's still running to this day (right behind me) at 4.05Ghz at 1.275 volts using air cooling. It reached 4.32GHz stable but I didn't want to keep it at the voltage required to run that speed permanently.

Documented it here for posterity... too bad the Image Shack pics from 2009 aren't working any longer.

Won the silicon lottery on that one.
 
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My best overclock has definitely been been my Intel E8400 which has run all its life at 430*10 (4.3GHz) at a very modest voltage on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard. Have never pushed it beyond 4.3 but I am sure it will go further without much effort. It is still running strong although it doesn't get used very much and the heatsink fan needs to be replaced.
 
Technically mine was probably the i5-2500K from 3.3 to 4.5GHz. My current Ryzen 1700 from 3.0 to 3.85Ghz on stock voltage feels pretty good. I can probably get that to at least 3.9Ghz without increasing the voltage too much. Neither of these are pressing the envelope in any way but are nice comfortable overclocks for everyday use.
 
My 2600k from 3.4 to 4.4

Athlon back in the days of pencil trick didnt give me much oc at all.
 
These are my favorites over the years.

Intel Celeron 300A @ 450MHz
Intel Celeron 1.8GHz @ 3.0GHz
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 3.2GHz @ 4.0GHz (x2)
Intel Core i7 920 C0 @ 4.0GHz
Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz / 3.7GHz Turbo @ 5.1GHz

I actually had to go through three Celeron 300A's before I got one that could do 450MHz. The Celeron 1.8GHz was a CPU in a friend's machine. His computer had a decent graphics card but it was slow as all fucking hell in Unreal Tournament 2004. So I overclocked it and the thing was still slow as hell but it was better than it was. I was surprised it would clock that high. The Core i7 920 C0 was another surprise. I had a D0 that wouldn't clock for shit and immediately regretted selling the C0. Most people had a reverse of that experience. Out of the Core i5 2500K's, we had a lot of them that would all do better than 4.8GHz and a couple that could do more than that. I can't remember which board it was, but I was only able to get it to 5.1GHz on one of them.
 
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Mine would have to be a C2Q9550 @ 4.0GHz w/ a Xigmatek Dark Knight and 2 Scythe Ultra Kaze 133cfm fans w/ silver tape mod.

I dialed it back down to 3.8GHz after the wife started complaining about a burning metal and plastic smell, not including the 20 or so degrees in difference from the rest of the house.
 
LGA775 Celeron E1200 - 1.6Ghz stock to 3.2Ghz

Only CPU I ever got to double the stock speed. Did it with an 92mm air cooler too.
 
dual xeons 1600 at 3200 i think that was best i ever did . asus pc dl board. best i ever did with a 350 gph pond pump and spiral waterblocks

Jen
 
My three best are in Red Font. --- Unless you consider % based --- and then it's the one in yellow font. :)

Tandy 1000 - push a button on the front overclocked from 4mhz to 7mhz IIRC.
Pentium 133mhz - Packard Bell = couldn't overclock
AMD K6 200 wouldn't overclock at all - tried 233 - was iffy. This was my FIRST personally purchased PC when I went to college as a freshman in 1997.
AMD K6 450 wouldn't overclock at all - tried 500mhz was iffy.
AMD Duron 600 overclocked to 900Mhz IIRC
AMD Duron 800 overclocked to 1100Mhz IIRC
AMD T-bird 1100 overclocked to 1300 MHz IIRC
Intel P4 1.6A overclocked to 2.4Ghz --- 800MHZ O/C! That was probably my favorite processor of all time. Probably because gaming was REALLY fun back then in my later college years --- and that was a REALLY nice upgrade from the t-birds. The Intel was signficiantly faster in just daily use than the T-bird processor. I distinctly remember I could open Window Explorer and my several GBs of music content (nabster) would display through windows explorer so much faster!
Intel P4 2.4B overclocked to 3.0Ghz IIRC - not very different from 1.6A o/c
Intel P4 2.4C overclocked to 3.2Ghz IIRC - not very different from previous 2
AMD 64 3000 - didn't like to overclock
AMD X2 BE2400? something or other --- got like 200-300mhz overclock -- but it was not that great of a system...budget build
AMD X2 3600 - maybe a couple hundred Mhz on O/C --- nothing exciting
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.3 ghz o/c to 1.7 Ghz
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 o/c to 3.0 IIRC
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 o/c to 3.2 IIRC
Intel i7 920 DO - o/C to 4.0Ghz ---- 1.36Ghz O/C! probably my second favorite processor of all time. It's still going to today -- a buddy has it and it works like a champion. X58 chipset was fantastic. Tri channel RAM - 12GB RAM. That was a beasty setup -- I bought it used from a board member here, used it for a couple years. It's going strong with it's third owner now.
Intel i7 4470K - o/c to 4.5Ghz ---1 Ghz O/C! beasty processor ---nothings making it cry uncle yet --- probably good for a couple more years at least!
 
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