Finally overclocked my cpu

[Cantacuzene]

Anyway, I've always kept my cpu at stock. However, ever since I got this 6800GT I've noticed how cpu bottlenecked it is. I was going to upgrade to an A64 box in January, but my upgrade paths are less than stellar. If I go A64 I'll have to get an older mobo (to keep an AGP port) and that means if I ever buy a new 3d carc I'll need to get a whole new mobo AGAIN, and chances are a new cpu. So that is out.

So I slowly increased my fsb from 166 to 200 while scaling back my normally very aggressive RAM timings to 2.5-3-3-6. Well now I'm up and running at 2.2ghz. Only benchmark I ran was 3dmark01 and it got me an extra 3000+ points which is about what I expected. I'll run Half Life 2 benchmarks tonight to see how the cpu scaling goes, I expect it to be fairly dramatic.

My temps are pretty good for using the stock cooler, although I did apply Ceramique. Idling in the 40's C and low to mid 50's under load which is acceptable I think.

Anything you overclocking guru's see that I'm missing, other than OCing my video card for a mega bench?

[Showtime]

Bios tweaks?
Slight increase from increasing ram voltage and trying more agro timings.
Both of these can take time, but will yield a little performance. Check for bios guides online for your mobo.

Raptors are dropping to around a $150. Great upgrade imo.

-j

[Cantacuzene]

Eh, I wasn't asking for upgrade advice, but thanks. I saw a 74gb Raptor at Fry's for $119. It was tempting. Couldn't justify it though. The day my hard drive becomes my performance bottleneck I'll be darn happy.

[Showtime]

You can lead a horse...

Harddrives are a bottleneck on all systems. When you wait for windows or apps or games to load.... Load times, etc are noticebly faster with a raptor drive. How many other upgrades can you say that about. I have yet to see anyone not be impressed by going from a regular 7200 drive to a raptor.

Anyways, bios tweaks and windows tweaks will yield you some free performance. Some common tweaks will hurt performance on some boards so it takes some time to test. Benchmark with the games you play becuz 3dmark and other synthetic utilities don't necessarily translate into better performance for all games. I would search various forums/tech sites for people with the same mobo as yours and compare notes. Tweaking windows can make everything faster. Fresh installs are nice. Side door fans work really well imo. Lower temps almost always = better performance.

Your welcome,

-j