Overclocking

[Inferno]

I've never overclocked a computer before so I have no idea what I'm doing.

I have a Dell XPS 410 with a nvidia geforce 8600gt 512mb, a VIA RAID pci card, and a netgear network card. All of the other parts are stock.

I just want to make it a bit faster for emulaters and recording and stuff. I've never had a problem with heat on my computer. It's very cool all the time.


How exactly do I do it?

edit-
Oh and it has a extra sata internal harddrive, a old IDE hardrive that is mounted in the case with cardboard and tape and a extra external USB backup harddrive.

[flibitijibibo]

I have an XPS 410 as well. I'll just say it now before someone researches again: the BIOS is locked. No CPU overclocking there. OS overclocking methods just cause the PC to freeze/crash.

As for the GPU, you can use nVidia nTune to overclock, just make sure the fan keeps up with whatever you put it up to. I dunno the recommended overclock for an 8600GT, but someone here will know.

[Inferno]

Stupid Dell.

Well maybe a minor GFX overclock will boost my performance on SSX 3.

[Pooky]

Stupid Dell.

Well maybe a minor GFX overclock will boost my performance on SSX 3.

Probably not, as most emulators rely almost entirely on your CPU.

[Inferno]

PCSX2 is set to render on DirectX hardware mode.

That means it should be working off my GFX card right?

[343guiltymc]

Lol they don't want people returning fried PC from careless overclocking. Still, I don't understand why they don't enable overclocking on their high priced XPS lines.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Most emus run almost 100% on cpu, for example, a core i7 with a 6200 could probably run SSBB at 1920x1080 fullspeed

[leorimolo]

Most emus run almost 100% on cpu, for example, a core i7 with a 6200 could probably run SSBB at 1920x1080 fullspeed
Well it does use the gpu for anti alising which I would use running at those resolutions

[Inferno]

Most emus run almost 100% on cpu, for example, a core i7 with a 6200 could probably run SSBB at 1920x1080 fullspeed

*ahem*


PCSX2 is set to render on DirectX hardware mode.

That means it should be working off my GFX card right?

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

It might work, but seeing as i sometimes get lag on KH1 when im on a q6600 and a 4870 I doubt it..

[Syuusuke]

It renders from your gpu yes, but everything is still done from your cpu, everything that happens and such.


The reason why pcsx2 doesn't use the GPU as much is due to the fact that GPUs are designed on the hardware level to efficiently run OpenGL or DX code when called upon by Direct X/Open GL APIs, whereas CPUs run x86 code. Therefore the GPU isn't much use in emulation as the instruction sets are also more limited than on a CPU AFAIK.So the actual emulation is more hardcore than your nifty little graphics you see and I don't believe the gpu can do that kind of emulation.

Of coursewe can start talking about nvidia's CUDA thingy, but the guys at pcsx2 said something about it not being fast enough to handle it or switching something, I dunno.

[Bhamid]

how do you overclock anyway?

[Cortexian]

how do you overclock anyway?
This (http://tinyurl.com/on37gg) should get you started fairly well, it's a risky and touchy process to get right.