Overclocking and Raid

Replies

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  Kaustubh Katdare

  Hey Saurabh. How about a short article on overclocking & RAID? By the way, could you tell us about overclocking of GPUs? Is it different from overclocking of CPUs?
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  saurabh2486

  ya im upto it and get back to u soon😀
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  saurabh2486

  yeah thats true the gpu's overclocking is very much different than of cpu's as i will be mentioning here in brief:
  
  The heart of a video card is its graphics chip, also known as GPU, Graphics Processing Unit. It works at a certain clock rate, also known as “core clock” or “engine clock”. When we think of overclocking a video card, usually the first thing that comes to mind is to increase the GPU core clock
  
  
  The GPU is connected to the video memory (which is physically located on the video card) using a dedicated memory bus. This bus also works at a certain clock rate, also known as “memory clock”. We can also increase this clock rate in order to increase the performance of your video card.
  
  The GPU is connected to the motherboard thru an I/O slot such as PCI Express and AGP. This connection is also done at a certain clock rate (100 MHz for PCI Express and 66 MHz for AGP) and some motherboards allow you to increase this clock rate, giving a third option to overclock your video card. Notice that this option depends on the motherboard and not on the video card, as it is the motherboard that controls the I/O slot where the video card is installed. Some overclocking-oriented motherboards also provide an option for you to increase the I/O slot voltage (i.e. the video card voltage), which can make your video card to achieve a higher overclocking.
  
  So we can set up three kinds of overclocking: increasing the clock at which the video processor runs, increasing the clock the video processor uses to communicate with the video memory and increasing the clock the motherboard uses to communicate with the video card. You can even perform these three options at the same time in order to explore the maximum performance your video card is able to provide you. The first two overclockings are done configuring the video card and you can change these two clocks on any video card, while the third one is done on the motherboard setup and it will depend whether your motherboard provides this configuration option or not.
  
  Sometimes you will find that your video card is factory-overclocked, meaning that the manufacturer has already set it to run at a higher clock rate. Even if this is your case, you can try to overclock your video card even more.
  
  Overclocking is a boring trial-and-error process. Raise the GPU clock a little bit and run a 3D game under benchmarking mode. If the system ran fine, increase the GPU clock a little bit more and repeat the process, until you find the exact GPU clock that your system can run without crashing. After finding this out, you will need to repeat the same process for the memory clock. And then with the I/O bus, if you want to overclock it as well.
  After finding the maximum overclocking spot of your video card, we recommend you to run more than one game on its benchmarking mode, at least three times each, so check if your video card overclocking is really stable.
  There are some tips on improving your overclocking chances. Let's talk about this.
  
  
  Sometimes the video card's memory chips are running at speed lower than their maximum. For example, you have a video card with a memory chip capable of running up to 500 MHz but the memory is being accessed at 450 MHz.
  If you were lucky to get one card like this you will find that the memory is highly overclockable. This happens because you will be able to put the memory running at a higher clock rate but still under its specs, and then push the memory over its specs.
  First you need to know the maximum clock rate of the memory chips of your video card. You can find this out by taking a close look on the chips. The speed grade is marked on the chip's body after a dash (ex: -40, -50, -5, etc) as a number. This number is the memory clock, in nanoseconds. To find out the maximum clock rate in megahertz, divide one thousand by this number. In case of a two-digit number like 40, 45, 50, use a decimal dot between the two digits. So, for the calculation you would use 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0, respectively. There is one exception: memory chips from Samsung labeled as 2A actually are 2.8 ns chips, not 2 ns chips.
  Pay attention because the number you will find is the real memory clock, not its DDR speed, which is the double of the number you will find.
  
  
  A way to increase the video memory overclocking potential is checking the cooling system used by the memory chips. If you improve the memory chips cooling system you will probably achieve a higher memory overclocking. You can find three situations here:
  
  

  • The memory chips are cooled down by the same cooler used by the GPU;
  • The memory chips use an independent passive heatsink;
  • The memory chips don’t use any cooling device at all.

  If your memory chips already use passive heatsinks on them, great. You have already a good cooling solution for your memory chips.
  
  
  If the memory chips from your video card don’t come with any cooling device, you can buy memory heatsinks and install on them (Zalman ZMHRS1 and Thermaltake CL-C0025 are good examples of this kind of product). The installation process if very simple.
  
  
  If on your video card the cooler used by the GPU is also used to cool down the memory chips, you can improve the video card cooling by installing a better GPU cooler, like the ones from Artic Cooling. These high-end coolers will help you to increase both the GPU and the video memory overclocking potential.
  
  
  well i think this will be helpful for u hope u like it and also there are softwares for gpu overclocking like Riva Tuner and nvidia ntune and also u can use #-Link-Snipped-#.😀
• 

  saurabh2486

  see this:
  
  My Gaming PC JAN 2009 - YouTube
  q6600 oveclocked on stock intel cooler - YouTube
  My Gaming PC October 2008 - YouTube
  
  For any queries post it see u soon
• 

  just2rock

  clock frequency varies as par algorithm used...generally 8KHZ is nominal for monostable multivibrator.So you have to check that first.
• 

  Bishorgors

  Cosmetics
  
  
  #-Link-Snipped-#
• 

  saurabh2486

  and for RAID my friends here is the thing all u need to know:
  
  More attentive users may have noticed that for some time several new models of motherboard have been turning up on the market with a new feature called RAID, meaning Redundant Array of Independent Disks. But what does this mean in practical terms and how can this feature be of use to normal users?
  The RAID system consists of a set of two or more hard disks, with two basic purposes: provide a faster disk system (i. e., speed up disk data loading) through a technique called data stripping - or RAID 0 - and/or set up a safer disk system by means of a technique known as mirroring or RAID 1. These two techniques may be used either separately or jointly.
  Lets have a look at data stripping first. Picture a computer equipped with two equal hard disks. In a run of the mill machine – without RAID – each disk is accessed independently from the other. With data stripping, the pair of hard disks will make up a single set, leading the computer to believe that it is dealing with a single, larger disk. If each disk has a 20 GB capacity, the computer will then believe that it is fitted with a single 40 GB disk. Upon storing a file on disk, the RAID system will split it between the pair of hard disks, writing half the file on one and the other half on the other. This takes place in a user-transparent fashion.
  But what is the advantage of all this? Let us assume that you are working with a 200 KB file. In a conventional disk system, this file will have to be entirely written on a single disk, using the single existing communication channel. With data splitting, this file will be split into two 100 KB files, each written on one of the disks at the same time. Well, seeing that a 100 KB file takes half the time to be written than a 200-KB file, the disk access speed will be doubled!
  To give you a clearer idea, imagine you are working on a really big file, for instance, 100 MB – quite big for normal users, but in professional audio and video editing, files this size are relatively common. If your hard disk (and motherboard) uses ATA-100 standard, it means that it theoretical transfers data at 100MB/s. We stress theoretically because this rate is lower in practice. So in our theoretical example, it will take 1 second to transfer (write or read) our file. Now, if we are using a RAID 0 system on our computer, i. e., two equal hard disks with data splitting and assuming that they are ATA-100 disks, the said file will be split into two 50 MB files and, according, it will only take 0.5 sec to write (or read) each disk. As the access rate to each disk has fallen to half the time (0.5 sec), it follows that the performance has doubled!
  But the RAID system is not restricted to using two hard disks. In principle, we can set up as many disks as we want. Following the same example, if we use four equal disks instead of two, the computer will believe that all four are a single disk and will automatically split the file into four parts, multiplying fourfold the file's R/W rate. In the example, the 100 MB file will be split into four 25 MB each file and, according, it will be written at a mere 0.25 sec if we assume that ATA-100 disks are being used.
  It goes without saying that the more disks we use, the more expensive our system will be. But with applications handling extensive files, such as professional audio and video editing, the system becomes really attractive seeing that the machine file R/W rate is much faster.
  We stress that all this splitting takes place out of sight, and the user is not aware that his file has been split into pieces.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mirroring – also known as RAID 1 – consists of automatically copying the entire contents of a hard disk to another one. In other words, if you equip your computer such a system, the second hard disk will be the spitting image of the first. If your main hard disk goes up in smoke, the second will automatically activate.
  It is amazing: mirroring is automatic backing up via hardware, enhancing your computer's safety factor. It goes without saying that this system eliminates the need to backup (seeing it is possible that both hard disks collapse together – an extremely remote, but real probability) but it really provides a feeling of safety to people that cannot, under any circumstances whatsoever, lose data stored on their hard disks. The best thing about mirroring is that it is carried out automatically by hardware on the motherboard or controller card, not requiring any #-Link-Snipped-# set up for backing up (as the system believes that the computer has a single hard disk).
  And better still: mirroring does not have to be implemented at the time you format your hard disk and install the operating system. You can take a disk with years-old data and start mirroring it. Upon configuring – done by a self set up – the contents of the main hard disk will be copied to the backup hard disk (a procedure that takes some time, of course).
  Data splitting and mirroring can be set to work at the same time through a set-up usually called RAID 0+1. This set-up requires at least four hard disks. Data splitting will be used on two disks, to increase the speed, while the other two disks will provide backup the first pair. If one of the disks goes down, the system starts acting like a RAID0 system, i.e. just data stripping. Another system for putting RAID0 and RAID1 together is called RAID10. It works like RAID0+1 but if a had disk fails, the RAID10 the system becomes a RAID1 system, i.e. just mirroring.
  Modern systems allows the use of RAID0+1 using just two hard disks. This setup is called JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) and works using only half of each hard disk capacity, thus simulating four #-Link-Snipped-#. For example, using two 40 GB hard disks with JBOD RAID configuration, the total available space will be 20 GB (the other 20 GB space will be used for backing up the data from the first half of the disk). Of course this system is slower than RAID0+1.
  
  
  We've seen the basics: RAID0 means data stripping, RAID1 means mirroring and they can be joined together as RAID0+1, RAID10 or JBOD. There are more RAID options, but they are not common in IDE RAID, i.e. RAID systems available on the motherboard target to the average user. These other RAID functions are:
  
  

  • RAID2: Similar to RAID0, but with error correction scheme (ECC);
  • RAID3: Similar to RAID0, but using an extra hard disk for parity information storage, thus enhancing the system reliability;
  • RAID4: Similar to RAID3, but faster by using larger data chunks, i.e. the files are stripped into larger blocks;
  • RAID5: Similar to RAID3 and RAID4, but saving the parity information inside the data disks not on an extra disk, so you won't need an extra disk;
  • RAID53: Similar to RAID3 but using at least 5 hard disks, to enhance the system performance;
  • RAID6: Based on RAID5, it saves an extra parity information on all hard disks of the system, enhancing the system reliability;
  • RAID7: Trademark from a company called Storage Computer Corporation, it uses an extra disk to save parity information. Its main advantage is its speed, because it uses disk cache technique. It can be considered a RAID4 with disk cache.

  😉
• 

  Kaustubh Katdare

  Are these articles authored by you? If not, please mention the source.
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  saurabh2486

  no they r not but they r from multiple sources
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  markk

  Very, very interesting and helpful. Thanks
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  saurabh2486

  but i have experienced these things so i could be a better judge
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  saurabh2486

  ur welcome my friend
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  vnvnvn2000

  I have a Logisys PS550AC12 ATX 550W, which has very stable outputs and a Sapphire Radeon x850 XT overclocked to 545/580 and seems completly stable as well. And regardless of weather or not it is clocked that way is irrrevelent, also power is definatly not the issue considering all was well when a raid was not set up it seems to me that once a raid is set up then I get some sort of malfunction which forces the computer into a continious system reset.
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  saurabh2486

  well what type of raid you have performed?
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  NAVALJIT SINGH

  saurabh2486

  if you wanted the solution to any of the above mentioned thing then u have come to the rght place and also i help other problems also 😀

  i m in 4th sem in branch it nd now i have 6 weeks training........
  suggest me in which field or for which cource i will try...........