Hey I would like to overclock my Dell Dimension 8400 with a Pentium 4
3.6 GHz, and I have tried a few things but nothing seems to work, I
understand that b/c it is a factory computer that they probably locked
out whatever it is that I need to change to overclock it, however, I
am hoping that maybe there is a way to get around it, If anyone has
any idea how to do this please let me know, greatly appreciated.
There is a picture of the motherboard here. First, turn the picture
90 degrees clockwise, to get a normal viewing angle. (I use Gimp,
a free picture editor, for simply rotate and zoom functions while
web surfing.)
http://www.shinyplastic.com/reviews/dell-dimension-8400/dimension-8400-motherboard.jpg
The Northbridge is in the center of the picture. It has the black
heatsink on top of it. To the left of it, and a little bit down,
*appears* to be a clock generator chip. There will be a part
number on the top of it. There are thousands of different types
of clock generators, which is why finding an overclocking program
to drive the registers in the clock generator is so difficult.
This web site, has a program for controlling the clock generator
chip. If the BIOS doesn't have an option to set the CPU clock,
you can use a program like this to overclock while in Windows.
This is not without risks, as if the computer crashes right
after you do a big bump of the clock, your Windows install
can be corrupted. So, *if* the program reports that it can
drive your clock generator chip, I would immediately exit
the program, and find a "sacrificial" OS boot disk, to use
for testing. Using a spare hard drive for overclock testing,
takes the worry out of busting your good drive.
http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php
The odds are low that clockgen can control your motherboard, but
it is better than nothing. The left sidebar on that web page,
has a list of part numbers that the program knows about. Generally,
the enthusiast community suggests chips to add to the list, so
retail motherboards are usually the ones that get added to the
list.
Some chipsets have frequency synthesis built into the chipset.
And that is why for certain chipsets, all motherboards using
the chipset are supported. But your 925 is not one of them.
Your 925 relies on a separate chip.
HTH,
Paul
