What is over- clocking?

I don't get it. I heard Asus C90s overclocks their processors. What is overclocking anyways? Is it a good thing? I have no clue what it is.

 

The most basic description would be taking the clocks (running speed) of somthing and making it higher thus "over" clocking because its running over its default speeds.

Its a good thing, more power for free. The bad thing is usually more heat.

And in the case of a notebook on a battery, less battery life.

 

So, how long of battery life can I expect out of a C90 with overclocking? And how much overclocking power can I get out of a C90?

 

Usually overclocking involves a lot of risks. In addition, I think Core 2 CPUs are already fast enough without overclocking.

No offense, but people are just so greedy nowadays.

 

Heck if I know on the battery life, not very long probably out of a small 6 cell battery. the overclocking featuer is designed to be used when your plugged in and want max power. It would also be determined by alot of other factors like what the rest of your hardware is, your back light level, what programs your running ect.

The C90 does a 20% fsb overclock, so a 20% boost in cpu power.

This is not risky at all, esp for a C2D wich has much higher levels.

 

I was go say runing the cpu high then the design specs

 

There is virtually no reason for a regular user to overclock the CPU. The performance of nowadays CPUs is already more than enough for most tasks. Not even games will need 100% of the CPU. The only apps that might need it are CPU-intensive, like video editing.

But if I were a new user with little or no experience in laptops I would leave overclocking alone, at least for a while.

 

Video Editing {Yes, please.}

if i get an x6800 in the c90 can i OC it?

 

100$ says I can find a game that uses 100% of your Cpu ^^ that overclocking will help with.

 

Probably you can find it . But in general, the bottleneck for games is the GPU and not the CPU.

I standby my advice that novice users should not overclock laptops.

 

i agree w/ yuou but novices should'nt be overclocking anything lol >.<;;;;;;;;;;

 

That is Asus's point. They have created software where simply by the press of a button (literally, a hotkey) the computer switches modes and overclocks itself. That way no need for users to do anything and allows them to overclock the comp safely.

And actually more games the cpu is actually becoming the bottleneck like the ultra popular supreme commander. Once the units gets into the hundreds your cpu starts crappin out.

 

can you still ove4rclock the x6800 even though the button will not work? like through bios or something?

 

Of course I am going to try to find my max on my e6600 on the c90. Though a laptop limits how much you can do due to heat restrictions I figure I should reach 3.2 ghz comfortably.

 

According Asus there is no changes made to voltage during the overclock on the fly. The only thing changed are bus speeds. C2D are known to easily reach 3ghz without voltage boost. The switching is done using "Power4Gear eXtreme Key" which provides 4 modes High Performance, Entertainment Mode, Quiet Office, Battery Saving.

X6800 will not overclock as it already is at 2.93 which is the target Asus has set due to thermal limits of 38W of design of C90. Maybe you can go higher with C80 or C70 as those will be bigger designs.

 

There is no point in getting the X6800, because you can not overclock it. The max FSB the c90 can go up to is 319Mhz. But C2D's are quad pumped so that would be an effective FSB speed of 1276Mhz.

The reason you can not overclock higher with the X6800, is it uses more wattage than a E6600, and it would be too hard on the power supply.

The one way you *might* be able to overclock a lot higher than 20%, is by getting an e4x00 CPU. These CPU's are known to pin mod in certain boards. The pin mod basically increases the FSB from 800Mhz to 1066Mhz, and also increasing the CPU speed. For example, an e4300, with no overclocking, just a pin mod would run at 2.4Ghz, which is 33% faster than the e4300's stock 1.8Ghz. So if the motherboard on the c90 supports this pin mod, it *might* be possible to take an e4300 and overclock it 33% (pin mod) + 20%. So that would = about 2.75Ghz.

 

ohh ok i understand, so what is the point of them putting the x6800 o.o;;;;;;; i guess if you wanted to put it in a desktop machine later or something lol?

 

Yeah, the benifits are not worth it most of the time if ever and without good thermal disipation you risk damaging your hardware.

Few exceptions to this.

The C90 obviously was built to overclock, and thats why it does it for you automaticlly.

I also belive the 2600XT will be a good gpu to overclock as its on a 65nm process so it will not heat up as much with the extra demand and is probably very conservativly clocked at stock levels, but with all the power present will have huge gains. Thats just a guess tho, we will have to see what hands on benchmarks show.

 

Well the X series cpus from my desktop knowlege are the only cpus that offer you a unlocked cpu multi. This allows overclockers alot more options and less restrictions when overclocking, also they are always of the utmost highest quality silicon and hand picked.

But both of those advantages are pretty pointless on a notebook.

The other advantage wich I have never heard of tho that alex mentioned the other day is "XXXXX" (i forget what the feature is called) but pretty much he said that if the cpu detects that your running a single threaded application, since its not using both of the cpu's cores it will automaticly overclock one of the cores to compensate and thus give better performance.

It sounds neat, but I dont know how usfull it will be in a notebook, that means lower battery life if your on battery (wich the c90 wont be too often I dont think) it may also be over written by all the power save features a notebook usually has.

 

ohhhhhhh ok i see thanks vicious

 

Overclocking isnt of much use in the notebook world primarily because when you overclock your cpu runs hotter and in most cases needs higher than stock voltage.

Heat and decreased battery life isnt what most people are looking for but in the case of a c90 which is probably going to be desktop replacement for most people then it should have some benefits.

Now if your interested in desktop overclocking, one of the primary reasons why i overclock is to take my $316 E6600(2.4ghz) to 4.2ghz. Much higher than many can do with their $1000 X6800 cpu.

My E6600 running at 4.2ghz

 

wow very nice @_@;;;;;;;;;;;

 

my 200$ 2.2ghz Opteron 148 does 3ghz stable I run it 2.8tho since its stock volts and on 24/7 with a 1:1 ram/cpu ratio.

best 200$ FX57 (1000$ also back in the day when I built this) I ever got.

Next up for me is a q6600 @ 3.0ghz 24/7

 

My Celeron 1.6GHz can run at 1.8Ghz, the most stable. After that, bsods.

How i ended up with the Celeron : My Pentium 4 based machine got fried and the technician changed everything. To cut down on cost he stuck a Celeron without my knowledge.

 

Dynamic Acceleration Technology is a Santa Rosa thing for Merom processors though - I don't see why it would work with desktop cores.

Also, someone earlier mentioned battery life. I think for the c90s, reduced battery life is the least of your worries - i.e. having that 19-min battery life reduced down to 15