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This is a serious problem. I want to speed up my compilation process. I have never been especially fond of overclocking, however my current compilation time for my project makes my crazy!

I found information about which parameters I should change to overclock and which values are safe. However, I have one basic problem. I don't have the ability to change this option in my BIOS. It is possible that these options have been blocked by the system administrators? Getting a faster processor is not an option.

How do I edit the proper values to overclock my CPU. Do I need to flash my bios to another version?

My specs:

  • Entium Dual-Core Cpu E5400 @2.7GHz
  • Asrock motherboard
  • 4GB RAM
  • Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
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it's possible that you'll need to update your BIOS, although not every motherboard supports overclocking. Also, was it nessecary to post two questions? – tombull89 Jun 27 '11 at 15:28
Is it the compiling that's a problem, or the linking? You might be running out of RAM instead of this being a CPU issue. Also, going multicore would be better for compilation (though not linking), if you can compile multiple files at a time (which Visual Studio can do). – Mehrdad Jun 27 '11 at 16:26
I would agree with Mehrdad, and add that I/O speed can have a huge impact on compilation as well. Moving your compilation process to faster disks will likely have a more significant impact on the compilation process than overclocking your CPU. You could do this by moving to an SSD for compilation, or even just RAID1 or RAID0. – Flimzy Jun 27 '11 at 18:37
Are you recompiling everything each time? Visual Studio is usually pretty good about reducing recompiling. – tjameson Jun 27 '11 at 22:15
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To answer the question "How do I overclock a dual core processor?", I believe the only good answer you'll get is "Get a mothboard that will let you".

Back in the day, the CPU was clocked through some hardware on the motherboard that users could configure through jumpers, dip switches, etc.. In the last decade, I haven't seen a single motherboard that offers that kind of functionality. I believe overclocking must now be done entirely from BIOS. As you said your BIOS doesn't give you access to these kinds of features, you may get lucky with a newer version of your BIOS firmware. Go look up the product page for your motherboard on the Asrock website. If they have newer BIOS revisions, read the change logs and see if any of them introduce this functionality. If so, look in to the process on upgrading your BIOS.

Another option, though unlikely, is if your board is supported by "Coreboot" (an open source BIOS firmware project), then you may gain this functionality by switching to that.

In your question you did say that getting a faster processor isn't an option.. I'm going to assume that means that replacing your motherboard is also out of the question?

Finally, depending on your compiler, you may be able to configure distributed compiling. "distcc" is what you'd use for GCC to that end. Using that you can get multiple machines working on compiling a project and thus build something big faster.

Hope something in there helps you.

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