Hi all,

I have recently been planning on buying a new pc butI was wondering if i could be given some tips on what components in my system to overclock and why to maybe prevent me from buying a new one. Here is the EXACT spec (not in profile):

Socket 478 Pentium 4 at 3.06ghz - 533FSB
ASUS P4S8X-X
Hercules Prophet 9800 pro
TwinMos PC 2700 RAM at 333mhz
40GB Seagate Barracuda 5400rpm


When looking at the spec it looks good but you can see that some components are up not up to the standard of others. These being memory, fsb on mobo and hard drive.

The area i need most help in is the mobo. My ASUS is only capable of 533fsb and pc2700 ram, but i read a review that this mobo is amazong for overclokcing but how do i do it!? I want to get that low 533 fsb up to allow me to overclock my slow ram to 400mhz.

Lastly, using the best coolers around, how much juice can i squeeze out of my cpu?

Thanks very much in advance for help. I know it's annoying to describe this to any1 lol.

Amd are better for overclocking then intels,

You should read this also. http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic9388.html

A P4 3.06ghz with a 9800 pro is aging?

lol i know you think i'm nuts but i struggle to get 20fps on doom3 with res at 1024x768 and quality at high (not ultra high) and considering that the game was created using a 9700 pro at some point, this is quite bad. Also, i'm not saying that the processor and gpu are slow but the ram, and the cpu memory and cache. I just want specific help in those overclocking areas aswell.

After putting the post down i found some kingston hyperx memory (pc2700 333mhz) which was expensive in comparison to other 333mhz memory. I saw that it has a 2.0 CAS instead of normally 2.5 CAS for normal pc2700 memory. Can anyone tell me if this memory is worth buying and what CAS is?


Thanks for previous answers.

Jonny

What is the amount of memory currently installed in your computer?

You should not be getting that slow of a framerate. I was able to achieve 60fps @ 1024x768 @ high quality with a 9800 pro and a barton 2500+ in doom3

i currently have 512mb of twinmos pc2700 (333mhz) ddr ram, cas 2.5. I've been planning on getting 1 gig for ages but what advantages does this give you?

One of your biggest problems is the 5400 rpm hard drive. A newer 7200 rpm drive with 8mb cache will give you a big performance boost. The Western Digital SE's are great. An extra 512mb of RAM will help too. Id try boosting the motherboard bus speed. Its in the BIOS usually under Advanced Configuration or Advanced Chipset. Do a Google search on your motherboard and processor and you should be able to find reviews where they tried overclocking. That board doesnt support DDR400 so 333 is probably your limit. Theres a chance your processor will run on a 800mhz bus so putting in a new motherboard shoulld give you a big boost.

you might want to take all the ram out and put in a 1gb of 3200.

VEGASGMC, you are speaking my mind! I recently bought A WD Caviar SE 120GB for £50 a couple of days ago and it is loading up windows a hell of a lot quicker already. I can't wait for the game loading speeds. ISATIPPY, my mobo only supports ddr 333mhz not up to 400mhz. So unless i replace my mobo then i can't install pc3200 ram unless there's another way. I think i'm going to get 1gb of ram but by a better brand than twinmos. Most likely Kingston, Crucial or Corsair.

Thanks

sorry I didn't know it only supported 333mhz but i would still get 512mb more like you said.

yeah i'm pretty sure i will now. Thanks for the help.

lol i know you think i'm nuts but i struggle to get 20fps on doom3 with res at 1024x768 and quality at high (not ultra high) and considering that the game was created using a 9700 pro at some point, this is quite bad. Also, i'm not saying that the processor and gpu are slow but the ram, and the cpu memory and cache. I just want specific help in those overclocking areas aswell.

One of your biggest problems is the 5400 rpm hard drive. A newer 7200 rpm drive with 8mb cache will give you a big performance boost.

A 5400 rpm hdd hardly causes that kind of performance drop, especially with 512 MB of RAM.

I think it's something to do with graphics driver settings.

Yeah but i have gone through all catalyst drivers since 3.12 and up to now i still have the same problems. It's one hell of a mystery. The wd drive has significall improved os loading, and game loading speeds but not the fps in games, i wasn't it expecting to.