Some overclocking advice

Darwin

Hi..my current setup is about 1 year old - I have a 3.2Ghz P4 (Northwood, Socket 478), a Leadtek 6800GT and 1GB PC3200 RAM (generic). The P4 is an engineering sample with an unlocked multiplier.
I was initially thinking of an upgrade to an Athlon based system, but then figured I have soom room for overclocking. I was thinking of the following to get better performance on a lowish budget:

1. Upgrade my Akasa HSF to something like a Vapochill micro or a Arctic Freezer 4 with a view to running the P4 @ 3.6 or 3.8Ghz if I'm lucky. At the moment I get about 30c idle, 50c under load @20C ambient room temp.
2. Replace the generic RAM with something better that allows me to push the FSB to 230 or maybe more.
3. Run the 6800GT @ Ultra speeds.

Total cost should be under 100 euro if I sell my existing RAM. In general, do you think it will make that much of a difference to frame rates on the latest releases? Is it worth 100 euro for the extra performance? Thanks...

Inquitus

If it's unlocked you might get upto 4ghz on air using AS5 and a top of the line HS like an XP120 or XP90.

The GPU will benefit from better cooling, and with the combination of the 2 you can expect a BIG framerate boost.

Inqui

gline

Inquitus wrote:

If it's unlocked you might get upto 4ghz on air using AS5 and a top of the line HS like an XP120 or XP90.

The GPU will benefit from better cooling, and with the combination of the 2 you can expect a BIG framerate boost.

Inqui

if its a northwood i dont kno wether u'd get 4ghz on air, but easily 3.4 or 3.6 with a decent air cooler.and as Inquitus mentioned .. you'd probably need a nice cooler for the graphics card, and you would notice a nice framerate increase in games.. more so by oc'ing the gpu

Dman_15

go with a ram divider first to see how high the cpu can go, then buy ram accordingly. you might find its a poor overclocker (hopefully not) but wont waste money in the process.

Slap in an artic silencer and a thermalright xp120 see how it goes

DemonOfTheFall

Yeah, definitely don't buy any new RAM until you know you have a decent overclocker CPU.