Sometimes in order to get a more enjoyable experience of listening to a favorite music or watching an exciting movie whilst running some other large programs smoothly, many people are likely to overclock the CPU. However, to their disappointment, things come out differently. They find that after CPU overclocking their music and movies have no sound out at all, but reduce the GHz rating of the CPU to the original level, everything turns back to normal. Then they wonder is there any way to keep their sound card working while CUP overclocking in this case. Here are some instructions.

For one thing the CPU overclockers need to know that the speed in MHz of the CPU is the result of the FSB (Front Side Bus) in MHz and the multiplier. Thereby we can overclock the CPU through the FSB or the multiplier, but the multiplier is only reserved for the top of the range CPUs which is usually costly for ordinary PC users. Therefore, the FSB is the most common way to overclock the CPU. Nevertheless once the FSB is altered, the speeds of other components that communicate with the CPU are changed. Overclocking the CPU through the FSB possibly may make other parts of the computer system unable to keep up. Components like PCI or AGP devices may after are slowed down to come up with an overclocked CPU, or even be corrupted, which would probably give rise to no sound problem.

If you must overclock the CPU, don't increase the GHz rating too high. You can enter the BIOS and find out a similar term like “Auto Detect PCI Clk” if possible, and set it as Enabled, after that set the parameter behind “Async AGP/PCI CLK” to 66/33MHz. In doing so, no matter how the CPU external frequency is changed, the AGP/PCI bus frequency is locked at 66/33MHz, thus the sound card is able to work in regular again. In case the PCI frequency can not remain unchanged, you can shut down your on-board built-in sound card and use an external sound card with a USB port on it instead.

Finally, I want to remind that though CPU overclocking can enhance the performance of your PC; it also may bring about a number of problems. Especially when the CPU is working in a non-standard frequency, many PCI devices like network card, built-in ac97 audio card would also be overclocked, which is prone to problems easily. Therefore if overclock the CPU, you should try to avoid the system working under a non-standard external frequency. By the bye, now in the market there are many motherboards comprising the ability to divide the PCI frequency, which can evade the impact from CPU frequency on the PCI devices working, keep your eye open when you are purchasing such products.



Source by Molly Smith