If I change my CPU frequency from 200 to 214 which gets it to 3.21Ghz, will I see any good improvements in games like in BF2 or World of warcraft? I also notice that my memory which is PC3200 400mhtz will overclock to 428Mhtz, and I want that to happen. Will I see any improvement, or will I have to push it higher?

That's a mild OC, if anything. I doubt you'll see any noticeable difference. You'll probably have to push it a bit.

It's nothing signifagant I say go for 3.4GHz then you may see a small difference.

It will not make a difference in my opinion. To be completely honest, overclocking is never worth the risk for the following reasons:
- You may experience system instability and lose data
- you will void your warranty, perhaps even on other hardware
- the lifespan of your CPU will be significantly shorter
- unless you know what you are doing, there is a good chance you will screw up
- more heat
- more noise
- minimal performance increase.

Regards,

Korrupt

I agree with korrupt.. its by far more easier and less risky to find out what your bottleneck is on your system and getting a replacement thats better than the existing one

Other than more noise and 'minimal' performance increase; I completely agree.

As for the temperature and "severely" shortened lifetime, is it not only if you increase the voltage, yes?

If you want to improve performance, I think you should upgrade your video card

That should make more difference.

Ok, the only option for you is 2 7950GX2's in SLI, that should run you about 1000$ Save up.

Or two 7900GTX, or even better, 2 X1950XTX's.

But, if your budget is low, a X800GTO, or a X850XT are very good cards. You can get one of these for under 130 bucks.

No overlclocking?!!!!! You call yourselves PC enthusiasts!!????? Ashamed.

I think Overclocking a CPU can be worth it sometimes. Video cards IMO are never worth it. Had too many die on me.

With your OC however I do not think you would see much of a gain. And while the 6xx series is alot cooler than the 5xx series, the heat increase could easily decrease stabiltiy and the life of the chip.

well you did ask the question if it will be a substantial improvement on your current situation.. which most of us said yes and/or no to with some opinion or reason...

Although in all respect if you wish to go ahead with the OC then its well, up to you in the end

Usualy 6 general factors that determine your OC ability:
-Tolerance and accuracy of each of the gear involved
-Power and stability output by the PSU
-temperature
-the goal (max speed + stable or optimised + stable etc)
-experience
-having some backup parts or money incase a worst-case scenareo rears its ugly head..

Games on the otherhand not only rely on the speed of the cpu but also on the ability of the PC to output the pictures smoothly as well as having ample ram and power among the rest of the gear.

As its been said, aim higher (but need to watch those temps and stability) or easier finding and reducing the bottleneck, then look at your OC after, which would at least give you something you'd notice.. more-so than the first, even if its just a small OC..

There wont be hardly any difference...I had a 2.8ghz p4 overclocked to 3.2ghz and i saw none when playing games and rendering videos...But as far as the downsides to overclocking its his cpu..let him

Lolz your just sayin that cuz u have a GTO and ur getting the XT no im jk ur right they are good.

all you saying that ocing makes little diff... i managed to increase my RAM bandwidth from 2.1gig/sec to 3.2gig/sec... try and tell me thats not a difference!! lol (seriously, startup time is many seconds faster and i am noticing a real difference in gaming) yea it may be an odd case, but it DOES make a difference imo lol

every pc's gonna be different..

We were merely saying a 200ghz overclock on a P4 will simply yield virtually no noticable gain; which remainds true regardless of your success

LOL uhm are you sure about that? I dunno about you, but to me 200 GHz sounds like a pretty damn nice overclock

Oh boy.

I meant 200mhz lol