Over clocking and audio processing.

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Radagoz

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Hi;

I hope I'm in the right place. This is about setting up my new computer.

I was hoping I could get some insight from one or several of you concerning my new system and over-clocking- in any case maybe I can at least provide some entertainment value.

It could be that my question doesn’t need an answer since the power of my system exceeds the need for what I am going to ask about. If that’s so, so be it- but experience has taught me you can’t have too much power, even if you don’t use it. I’ll say right off that I don’t care if my components only last 6 years instead of 10. I’d never keep a computer more than 3 years.

What I’m going to use the computer for is as a DAW- digital recording workstation- music production etc, desktop publishing and internet as well as watching movies which is something I really like to do and playing a few games now and again. It is unlikely I will use it for much else. Okay, here goes.

This is my new system. (I haven’t gotten it yet but I ordered it this morning- get it in about ten days)

Case: Coolermaster Stacker 830 Black Edition

Power Supply: Hiper PS-XP-580 BL Modular Type R SLI-Edition - 580 Watt - blue

Mainboard: Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 Conroe FSB 1066

CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Mini-Typhhon

2 GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-8000 Platinum RAM

Graphics: Sapphire Radeon X1600 PRO HDMI 256mb

Main HDD for OS and Programms 150GB Western Digital Raptor WD1500AD 10,000RPM's

2 x Western Digital 3200YS Caviar RE ( Raid Edition ) optimized for Raid usage

All Drives are decoupled and cooled by XILENCE IceBox HDD Cooler

TEAC Floppy including Multicardreader

TEAC DV-516G DVD Drive,

Soundsystems
Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Elite Pro- playback
MIDIMAN Delta 44- recording

OS Win XP Pro

Complete ultra-quiet System with Ultra Low noise technology

What I would like to know is about over-clocking my system. It stands to reason that if you can get extra performance for gaming then you can do the same for other memory intensive applications and not only is my motherboard geared for that but even includes software for that purpose (which I haven't seen yet)

Sometimes I’m at 100% usage with my present computer and it’s not a dinosaur- 2gig Intel Processor and 1044 ordinary RAM.

Of course, I don’t want to red line but I was wondering what would be a good strong over-clocking with rock solid stability and practically zero chance of any difficulties other than a marginal decrease in the life of some components? Can I get up around 4.0 and attendant FSB etc improvements? I’m a real novice about this end of things so forgive me (if you can) if I just said something stupid.

What I would really appreciate is if someone could tell me the settings I should put into EasyTune5 or M.I.T (which comes with my motherboard) in order to get real improvement short of any possibility of disaster. Over-clocking seems to involve balancing a lot of things like voltage and other features and I suppose if you are stupid in just one area it can mean trouble.

It may be that you know of a forum where this could be answered more capably- but this involves audio recording so maybe someone here is a gamer too or can tell me a story that will enlighten me.

Anyway, hoping someone informed will take pity on me- tell me what I need to know- clarify my situation in terms of what I can and cannot expect, in relation to crunching data related to processing multiple audio plugins and mix-downs and intensive sampler use, I would really appreciate it.

I don’t think over heating is an issue with my system but I’m appreciate and thoughts on that as well.

I’m thanking you in advance for taking the time to even read this.
 
i would highly suggest against overclocking if you dont understand what you are doing and are not confident in it either...

on a side note why did you buy a x-fi, no need for 2 soundcards, the delta will handle playback
 
Okay then.

$a1Ty said:
i would highly suggest against overclocking if you dont understand what you are doing and are not confident in it either...

on a side note why did you buy a x-fi, no need for 2 soundcards, the delta will handle playback
Click to expand...

As to the first, that would be the reason I am asking about overclocking. I should pointout that the motherboard provides overclocking software that I would assume- can't know yet- have default safe parameters; why else would they actually provide software to do it?... so I was looking for feedback about the process in general actually and some chatter which (sometimes) proves productive.

I always use two soundcards. One is dedicated to playback ( the x-fi) and one to recording (Midiman). I've never had a problem- ever. It could be that this is redundant but if it suits me that's what counts. I get much better vocals from the MIDIMAN and I like the playback tweaks of Creative soundcards as well as the fact that they are inudstry standard and most people use them to hear music on. Since my music is available for digital download at a lot of places and free to hear at some others I like the have some idea of how most people hear it.
 
Can't see you needing to overclock for audio with that new system. I have a lesser system than that, also running both an audigy and a Delta 44 (I only use my audigy for the odd game here and there and movies, for the 5.1. The delta deals with anything music related, playback and recording (and the converters are waaaay better)), and I do not feel I have even come close to reaching my systems limits with audio. I have never hit that 'oops i guess I'm using too many tracks' situation. I also use it for games and movies some of the time. I used to be an avid gamer and performance from that aspect has always been important to me. However I still don't feel my system needs overclocking in any way. You certaibly shouldn't need to overclock even for games on a system like that.

For games if you were going to overclock then the most likely thing to overclock would be your video card anyway. However I have heard a few things about if you have some monster of a graphics card going, it could actually be detrimental to the performance in audio production. The idea being that a monstrous graphics card will eat more cpu cyles etc, which could be of use somewhere else in the system at the time.
 
I agree with legionserial. Leave it alone. Stability is the most important factor in a DAW, and if anything malfunctions you're gonna be guessing that the overclocking is responsible, leading you to a version of computer hell.

At the least, give it some time in stock configuration. If you're not satisfied, then you can mess with it.

If you're hitting the limit on your current system, I would guess you have a lot of concurrent processes running, along with some of the XP eye candy that you really don't need for a DAW. I have less of a computer for my DAW than your current system, and it works just fine.
 
are you going into a more production-based daw or a multitracking-based daw? because if you arent using twenty different software synths with vsts piled up on them then, like everyone has already said, would not need to overclock anything on your comp. even if you did have to run a bunch of virtual instruments and midi controllers you shouldent run into any problems without any tweaking to your system. your processor as it is might even be a little overkill. as attractive as overclocking may sound, it really isnt needed in the daw world with the advent of dual core processors and hyperthreading that can do more than we would ever need without even flexing.
 
I would be careful with overclocking -- you could end up having all your recordings sounding like chipmunks :eek:
 
That's a lot of horsepower under the hood already, I can't imagine you'd really need to chance blowing a head gasket in the middle of a session for the sake of a little more performance. I agree, stability should be your goal first.
 
To successfully and Stabily overclock your system you really have to know what you are doing (But maybe your software will help in that regard) because when you overclock your FSB you also overclock your PCI,DDR,ect which is what causes the Instability so your moghtboard should have deperate speed setting for your DDR,PCI ect so you can Overclock the FSB without also overclocking the other parts of your system.....

Then there is the Heat Factor, You need a really good Cooler to keep your temps down....If you do decide to Try overclocking I suggest that you Overclock your FSB just a Little bit at a Time and then run some benchmarks while monitoring your temps and keep upping the FSB untill your CPU gets too hot (Say 50c or higher on a Load) or becomes unstable and then back off on the FSB a Bit till it is stable and cool and then stay there as you have reached your overclock Limit...also make sure that you are NOT overclocking the other Parts of your system at the same time as the FSB but if your Motherboard is set up for proper overclocking then it should have these settings....

I have my system Overclocked quite a Bit and it runs super Stable and Cool....
I have a P-4 2.6ghz HT 800MHZ FSB Northwood Overclocked to 3.2ghz and a Moded Zalman CNPS7000-CU Cooler which keeps the CPU under 35C on a Load on a Hot day and it runs super stable and has been running this way for a few years now but I also made sure I had the Correct motherboard and CPU and cooler for overclocking and I did a lot of Research before I did it so my system would be stable as possible after overclocking....

But with a New Core 2 duo CPU you are going to have so much Horsepower that I don"t think Overclocking is going to give you much of a performance Boost....I suggest you use your CPU Like normal and if you notice that you are have performance Problems say when recording 64 Tracks with Plugins then maybe try overclocking it a Little bit....

There are also some overclocking web site that should give you some good info.....


Cheers
 
It seems overclocking is an "endless race", no?

With that processor , RAM ....
are you sure you need more to work with audio?

(If is for gaming, well, I dont know nothing about).

Ciro

*Hey (edit), now I remember: one time I overclock my processor (Intel Pentium 2.26), when mixing a "full of virtuals and plug-ins and gigastudio and a lot of audio tracks" on Sonar.But has a good reason, CPU was peaking on 100%.Never more need it.
 
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Thank you!

I want to thank all of you for that great input. That is what I wanted to hear. You know how the mind is. I think one of you said something about too many processes running. I think you are absolutely right. On my new system that is all being taken care of by the expert who's putting it together. I'll just stay with my stock system and thank you again.
 
Radagoz said:
I want to thank all of you for that great input. That is what I wanted to hear. You know how the mind is. I think one of you said something about too many processes running. I think you are absolutely right. On my new system that is all being taken care of by the expert who's putting it together. I'll just stay with my stock system and thank you again.
Click to expand...

Now your talking bro! Well done! (the people here really are great aren't they?) :)
Regards Superspit.
 
Right!

superspit said:
Now your talking bro! Well done! (the people here really are great aren't they?) :)
Regards Superspit.
Click to expand...

"added Hispano", that's funny.
 
You can be reasonably conservative if you can overclock without increasing the voltage. This will keep any extra heat generated to a minimum.

Also as someone else pointed out, you need to watch for the effect of overclocking on you ram etc. If you get to the stage if needing a ram divider to maintain stability, then you've probably gone too far
 
Bulls Hit said:
You can be reasonably conservative if you can overclock without increasing the voltage. This will keep any extra heat generated to a minimum.

Also as someone else pointed out, you need to watch for the effect of overclocking on you ram etc. If you get to the stage if needing a ram divider to maintain stability, then you've probably gone too far
Click to expand...

Hi BH......what's a ram divider?
I know that the FSB speed can affect ram speed (and trip it up). So you can't just overclock your machine via the bios and expect the ram to remain stable?
Regards,
 
newer systems these days, let you over clock your cpu without changes in your ram. One good way of keeping stability of your ram would be to loosen the timings of the ram & basically underclocking only your ram through bio's. That'll allow your ram to run at over clocked speeds. In example, i don't know how to explain it, but for every 2 steps you over clock on your cpu, your ram would be over clocked half that, like 30mhz(cpu)/15mhz(ram). If you like overclocking, get a liquid cooler so you can over clock the muliplier on the cpu more and then do your fsb, so that you don't drastically increase speeds in the whole system & cause unreliabilities, shortened life spans & overall system being unstable. I run my dual core 930 pentium d at 3.4ghz right now with 2gb of pc3200 & it runs stable for the most part, but I upgraded the fans, expecially on the chipset.
 
overclocking will always ALWAYS reduce the longevity of your hardware - even a minor overclock 3%, 5% in your BIOS will considerably shorten how long your system will live - even the newer chips, yours for example, and the Athlon X2's meant to be overclocked, live a longer and more stable with no overclock whatsoever.

with a machine as beefy as yours, i doubt you'd even see a noticible improvement in speed. sure your numbers on paper would be higher, but unless you're really seriously pushing your chips, any real-world pratical gain would, in my opinion, be far outweighed by that fact that you're pushing your machine to an earlier grave.

-erik
 
flat1ine said:
overclocking will always ALWAYS reduce the longevity of your hardware - even a minor overclock 3%, 5% in your BIOS will considerably shorten how long your system will live - even the newer chips, yours for example, and the Athlon X2's meant to be overclocked, live a longer and more stable with no overclock whatsoever.

-erik
Click to expand...


Not really True if done correctly... If you don"t Increase the Voltage and there is no Temperature differance on your CPU then it is Running in the Same Basic enviroment it is Running in without overclocking.....

The reason why a CPU would have a Considerably shorter Life span from Overclocking is if it is Running at a Higher Voltage and temperature than it is designed for but if you overclock Properly then you don"t have to Raise the Voltage or the Temperature......

A Cpu can last 20 years if run within normal tollerances so even if overclocking shortens it"s life by 50% that is still more than twice as Long as most poeple use the same CPU for as usually after a few years a CPU is to old to be practical anymore......

I"ve been running the same Overclocked CPU since 2001 (2.6ghz Overclocked to 3.2ghz which is allmost a 25% overclock) and it has been running Cool and Stable and trouble free for the Last 5 Years and will for quite a bit longer I feel so I feel I have gotten my moneys worth out of this CPU.....


Cheers
 
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