Tip # 3

A lot of us have gotten into overclocking here. It is important to understand the "why's" otherwise we may wind up spend tons of cash and get little return. There are two types of overclocking:

1. Getting more bang for the buck.
2. Overclocking for its own sake.

The Hardcore:

I will discuss the second one first. Overclocking is a hobby in itself, and getting the highest overclokc is the purpose. In this case, the costs are not that important. This is why you see people on the overclocking databases using XP3000+ and XP3200's (to get the best wafers), $1000 Prometia cooling kits and the like. Getting the an additional 100-200MHz is worth it.

In this sense overclocking is like competition. Are the costs worth it? Yes, consideirng your purposes they are simply because you wont get the fastest OC without the equipment.

For most of us, overclocking is a mild hobby or done really for the sake of getting additional speed.

In this cases how much you spend is important, because there is a point where overclocking cost so much, well frankly you might as well go out and buy a P3.2EE and run it at stock speed.

1. Components of system performance.

The CPU is only one component of system performance.

RAM

With todays operating current systems (XP and 2K) and games, 512MB of memory has become mandatory IMHO in order to get decent speed. Running a 2300MHz CPU on 256MB will just result in a bottleneck with the CPU waiting for instructions to process.

VIDEO

A fast CPU is good, for games, what really maxes out these days is video. Given the average video card we use these days 440MX, 5200, 9200, Ti200/500, 9100 and running at 1024 or 1280 resolutions, the video card is what hinders performance and not th CPU. So don't be surprised if a friends XP1700+ Palomino with a 9800 blows away your 2400MHz box with a 440Mx or ATI9100.

MOTHEBROARD:

Without a 333/400MHz capable board, an overlock to really high speeds is useless. The FSB is a bottleneck. The difference though between a NForce2 Ultra 400, NForce2 400, KT600 and even the low cost ECS L7S7A2 is rather small. A KT333 board and its 166MHz FSb will max out though somewhere near 2000MHz. At this point the FSB really becomes a serious bottleneck.