Good Overclock?

[Stringent]

Hows this doing for an overclock? Its quite stable ... although I do remember it exiting out of 3DMark 2003 on one of the CPU tests. I'll try again with my heatsink fan blowing a bit more.

Think I can get it up a bit more?



Thing is my AGP is only running at 2x. I think the bus settings are:

160:100:33

Any other settings one could try it on? Suggestions?

[Austin]

AGP2x will not hurt your perf at all. PIII at 1.2ghz with 160FSB will easily take on a P4 at 1.5ghz or P4-based Celly at 2.0ghz. Your PC is still capable of playing games well with a decent gfx card like a GF4TI4200 128MB, ~ £70 new.

[Stringent]

Heh I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4600 128MB so that ain't a worry 512MB RAM

[Austin]

NICE! Your CPU will still fail to get the full potential out of your powerful gfx card so I'd suggest always forcing 2xAA+8xAF in the driver settings in order to help use up some of the untapped gfx card power. You should also find upping the res and/or details can help that too. It makes a LOT more sense to have more powerful gfx with slower CPU than crappy gfx with top notch CPU (for gaming). If you're running Win9x be sure it is handling your RAM properly as you need to set that manually.

[Stringent]

Got Win XP pro, oh the bus settings are actually 160:120:44, cos I checked them. Seeing as the multiplier is locked at 7.5 can only change that.

It says that AGP is 4x in the BIOS cos its set to it, but CPUID reports 2x. Must be because of the overclock and the way its done?

I am thinking of upgrading. Maybe joining the elite NF7-S club with an XP 3000+ or save a bit more and go to Chipzilla. As soon as I notice any degredation in frame rates and stuff and its seems to get slow, then probably I'll change.

To be honest, I have put it through quite a lot, and its still shining! Been scared to turn on AA, but will give it a whirl.

Cheers for noticing me Austin!

[Austin]

160:120:44? 160FSB I get but using the 1/4 divider PCI would be 40mhz (36mhz is the rec'd maximum), if you can set a 1/5 divider then it's strongly rec'd ... is 44 meant to be PCI speed? Is 120 the RAM? Not sure what penalty there's be from running it slower but I guess there isn't much choice with SDR as PC133 is as high as it officially gets. Your AGP speed (speed out of the slot more accurately) is 2x double the PCI speed, so PCI=33mhz AGP2x=133mhz and AGP4x=266mhz ... if PCI=40mhz then it's AGP2x=160mhz and AGP4x=320mhz (again the rec'd max is 144mhz for AGP2x or 288mhz AGP4x). That could be why you're BIOS/mobo is falling back automatically to AGP2x mode as it can't handle 320mhz+ of AGP4x o/c'ed. Check both SiSoft Sandra and 3Dmark03's diagnostics reports to find current AGP speed as well as RAM, PCI, AGP etc. Hey, if it's stable that's all that really matters LOL!

NF7-S v2.0 (£80 Komplett) is a great deal and top notch for o/c'ing really. However Dabs do a non Dual Channel nForce2 mobo for £40 which seems amazingly good value, missing DC-DDR only hits about 5% so is not bad esp considering it's half the price! Any TbredB (£40+) or Barton (£70+) tend to o/c to XP3000+ to XP3200+ speed with little trouble, very cost effective. Of course you would probably need to upgrade the case, PSU, HSF and RAM which all begins to add up. Perhaps you could find a good dela on a 2nd hand mobo with an XP1800+ (or better) as that would still be an immense boost. If your kit does what you need don't worry of course!

GF4TI excel at 2xAA but suck at 4xAA so leave that one well alone. You can try the QxAA mode, close to 4xAA with only 2xAA slow down BUT it is VERY blurry and not suited to many games. AF is well worth trying, GF4TI do take a medium sized hit but quality of it is top notch. Hitman2 was where I noticed AF as you can enable it while the game is actually running and see those textures really sharpen. Anyway for an idea of what AA and AF can do for you look below, just rem that they should come with virtually no perf hit for you because of your fast card and under-powered CPU.

PICS OF AA & AF:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzQ0LDI=
(just me or have the pics vanished?)

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...rhelia-06.html

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/d...i-3dmark2.html (disable ad stopping sw)

[SilentDeath]

ur pc is fine for now, id wait for amd64 before upgrading tbh.