Overclocking guide: Part 1

What is Overclocking?
Overclocking is the process of making various components of your computer run at faster speeds than they do when you first buy them, and were designed to run. For instance, if you buy a Core 2 Duo E4300 processor working at 1.8 GHz, and you want it to run faster, you could overclock the processor to make it run at 3.0 GHz.

Disclaimer:
WARNING: Overclocking wears down the hardware and the life-expectancy of the entire computer will be lowered if you overclock. This guide is merely for those who accept the possible outcomes of this overclocking guide and overclocking in general.

Why would you want to overclock? Well, the most obvious reason is that you can get more out of a computer than what you paid for. You can buy a relatively cheap processor and overclock it to run at the speed of a much more expensive processor. If you're willing to put in the time and effort, overclocking can save you a bunch of money in the future or, in some cases, can give you a faster processor than you could possibly buy from a store 

The Dangers of Overclocking
 The first and most common danger is heat. When you make a component of your computer do more work than it used to, it's going to generate more heat. If you don't have sufficient cooling, your system can and will overheat. By itself, overheating cannot kill your computer, though. The only way that you will kill your computer by overheating is if you repeatedly try to run the system at temperatures higher than recommended. Pentium 4s run MUCH hotter than any other CPU for example, so you should always check what the normal operating temperature is for your particular processor.

Don't get overly worried about overheating issues, though. You will see signs before your system gets fried. Random crashes are the most common sign. Overheating is also easily prevented with the use of thermal sensors which can tell you how hot your system is running. If you see a temperature that you think is too high, either run the system at a lower speed or get some better cooling.

The other "danger" of overclocking is that it can reduce the lifespan of your components. When you run more voltage through a component, it's lifespan decreases. A small boost won't have much of an affect, but if you plan on using a large overclock, you will want to be aware of the decrease in lifespan. This is not usually an issue, however, since anybody that is overclocking likely will not be using the same components for more than 4-5 years, and it is unlikely that any of your components will fail before 4-5 years regardless of how much voltage you run through it. Most processors are designed to last for up to 10 years, so losing a few of those years is usually worth the increase in performance in the mind of an overclocker.

The Basics

Let's have a quick look at some of the terms that will be used a lot in this guide:

Multiplier - a technical explanation here
Front side bus (FSB) - a technical explanation here
Northbridge - a technical explanation here
Southbridge - a technical explanation here
BIOS - a technical explanation here

When you buy a processor, or CPU, you will see it's operating speed. For instance, a Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU runs at 3.2GHz, or 3200 MHz. This is a measurement of how many clock cycles the processor goes through in one second. A clock cycle is a period of time in which a processor can carry out a given amount of instructions. So, logically, the more clock cycles a processor can execute in one second, the faster it can process information and the faster your system will run. One MHz is one million clock cycles per second, so a 3.2GHz processor can go through 3,200,000,000, or 3 billion two hundred million clock cycles in every second.

The goal of overclocking is to raise the GHz rating of your processor so that it can go through more clock cycles every second. The formula for the speed of your processor if this:

FSB (in MHz) x Multiplier=Speed in MHz.

So, in short, (FSB) 200MHz x (Multiplier) 10= 2000MHz CPU speed, or 2.0GHz.

Let’s look at this table of Core 2 Duo CPUs:

CPU	FSB/quad-pumped (MHz)	Multiplier	Speed (MHz)
E4300	200/800	9	1800
E4400	200/800	10	2000
E4500	200/800	11	2200
E6300	266/1066	7	1860
E6320	266/1066	7	1860
E6400	266/1066	9	2130
E6420	266/1066	9	2130
E6540	333/1333	7	2330
E6550	333/1333	7	2330
E6600	266/1066	9	2400
E6700	266/1066	10	2660
E6750	333/1333	9	2660
E6850	333/1333	9	3000
Q6600	266/1066	9	2400
Q6700	266/1066	10	2600

So, if we were to overclock the FSB with a $99 Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, we could do the following progress:

CPU	FSB (MHz)	Multiplier	Speed (MHz)
E4300	200 (stock speed)	9	1800
E4300	233	9	2097
E4300	266	9	2394
E4300	300	9	2700
E4300	315	9	2835
E4300	333	9	2997
E4300	345	9	3105

 -“OK, that’s fantastic, but how do I overclock??”

See you on part 2 of the guide!

Quick burnout render

Today I don't have much to say,so I'll just post a very short video of some lifelike smoke I'm trying with FumeFX.

Please ignore the quality, lack of sound and choppiness. It was just a test to see smoke dynamics on FumeFX

I'm preparing a nice and easy overclocking tutorial for tomorrow!

BartPE: Live Windows on a CD

Today I wanted to talk about BartPE, which is simply a bootable CD with a live, working version of XP or windows 2003 that you can use without a hard drive (along overclocking or diagnosis programs) or when your windows installation is corrupted and you need to copy files over.

It's very useful when for example you get a virus infection and can't / don't want to boot from your hard drive in case you don't want more files infected. You can install an antivirus on BartPE's virtual hard drive (RAM) and clean your HD. Or defrag the hard drive, even.
In a more advanced environment, you can mount registry hives and edit any settings on the hard drive's Windows.

Try it! It's free and easy to use. You just need a WinXP or 2003 CD.
Download BartPE: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/


Bonus:

another render of the 3D car I've made recently, Alfa Romeo TZ3 Corsa.

Thoughts on a Cloud OS

I was talking some years ago with a Linux expert, one of the big important ones. We were of course talking about operating systems and their future. I was talking about a very fast, on the fly, live OS dedicated just for gaming. Imagine getting a new PC game, putting the DVD on the drive and restarting your pc. BIOS POST, and off it boots the game. What's the point? None. Maybe not needing drivers or updates or antivirus or whatever, so you'll experience the most of the game as long as you meet minimum hardware requirements.

So the guru said to me: "you wanna know what's the future of operating systems?"

Well, no...

This was the year 2001, when internet was still slow and Windows XP was the greatest thing ever. And that's when I heard the first concept of a Cloud OS. What's a Cloud OS? Well, imagine your computer with a very very fast internet connection and no hard drive. Or your friend's computer, with the same config. You turn it on and it asks for username and password. It connects to the internet and there it is, YOUR desktop, your software, your 50GB of mp3s. You can play your games, work on your documents and then simply logout.

All and everything you have on your PC right now will be dispersed between servers around the world.

And this is cool because you can change hardware every 6 months without reformatting, copying files over, etc. Plus, you can work literally anywhere in the world, given you have a good internet connection.

And just today, I saw a first concept running. I shall say no more.

But you might taste something similar with Cloud Gaming. Head over to http://www.onlive.com/ and create an account. You don't even need to put a valid e-mail. Download the small program and try one of the demos.

I was just running Dirt 2 on max settings. On a $200 netbook.

Some of my latest renders

This are just a few of the renders I've done this year (so far).
I use 3ds MAX 2010 and vRay 2.0, and for the fire effects, FumeFX (except for the first render).
All models are made by me.

That's it for now!

Linux: Wine, joystick hatswitch and IL-2 Sturmovik

If you’ve been trying to get your hat switch (POV) to work under wine, you’ve probably lost most of your hair (partly by pulling them and partly by growing old while waiting for a patch for Bug #12220).
I’ve found a solution. It’s called rejoystick and it does wonders.
So, install by either using the .deb, the .rpm or by compiling (it’ll complain when you don’t meet the dependencies of ./configure).
To configure it, run “$rejoystick” on a shell and check which of the events are your hat switch, and promptly assign them a key. Now, here’s the tricky part: the program will halt if any other axis or button is unassigned. So pick one key in your keyboard you hardly use, and assign every other event to this single key.
To run it, type on a shell “$rejoystick -d” and to terminate it, “$killall -9 rejoystick”
So, you can create a script containing:

#!/bin/bash
rejoystick -d
wine “/path-to-your/IL-2 Sturmovik 1946/il2fb.exe”
killall -9 rejoystick

Ta-daa! Fully working joystick under IL-2, under wine, under linux, with a key capture-binding layer.
Ah, computing is fantastic…
So, that’s another linux annoyance fixed. I’ve still have to find a good lyrics plugin for my audacious (I’ve translated from chinese and compiled one, but still doesn’t convince me. If you want it, contact me) and get .gifs to animate under Eye of Gnome. You lazy developers, have to do everything by myself.

Later I'll be posting some renders I've prepared.

ReactOS overview

I've been an passive ReactOS developer for a while now. While its slow (yet steady) pace can be frustrating, with every version it starts to look more like a decently done Operating System and less like a bad win95 copy.

So, what is ReactOS exactly?

I could post more screenshots, but you'll say it looks just like Windows 2000, with some weird added icons.

What ReactOS actually is, is a completely win32 binary compatible OS. So in short, you can use it instead of Windows with all your programs working, while that's impossible with linux or MacOS without an emulation layer (or virtual machine).

What does it mean for the OS world? Well, not much, for now, since it's still in alpha stage and some important things do not work well. Almost all new computers already come with some version of the latest windows installed, so you don't really need an alternative.

But when it'll be compatible enough that there will be virtually no difference when running the two, I'd safely bet that ReactOS will takeoff and the development of patches / security holes will be as fast and efficient as any community-based linux distro. That means it'll be faster and safer than its current windows couanterpart.

And at the end of the day, a stable ReactOS will be the OS of choice for POS, terminals, internet cafes or any other usage that wants to avoid an expensive license.

And who knows, maybe in some years we'll all be wondering why people still pay for Windows...

If you want to try reactos, download the version preloaded with QEMU, a free virtual machine. In 10 minutes time you'll be running it on a window on your Windows OS without installing or modifying anything.

link: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/reactos/ReactOS-0.3.13-REL-qemu.zip