Need Advice?? Opteron 146 Or Pentium 930 D setup??

[barney_2k]

Hello all, ive been thinking

at the moment i am running an Opteron 146 on an asrock dual sata II sli e-sata motherboard @2.85ghz. Im using corsair VS ram, which is undoubtably holding back my clocks. Im also only using a TR2 cooler that is not much better than OEM.

So i wondered, it would be possible for me to flog this for around £300 on ebay

I already have a 450W mercury PSU and case + optical drives etc. and i am using a 6600GT PCI-Ex

Would it be worth me upgrading and overclocking on this setup

Pentium D 930 "LGA775 Presler"
Corsair® 1024MB TwinX XMS 5400 DDR2 Memory Kit (2 x 512MB)
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI
Aerocool Gold-Tower GT-1000 cooler

i would be using the 6600GT with that as well and the old drives / PSU.

i will be using the PC for photo editing, gaming, surfing, music production and general word proccessing use.

what do you think?? which one would provide better performance? are the specs above gonna be ok for overclocking n what kind of speeds are we talking?

Let me know

Thanks

Barney

[herulach]

not worth it even slightly, at 2.85ghz you arent being held back by anything i wouldnt say, especially not as youll be running it on a divider to get that high (i assume). Buy a better graphics card and stop wasting money on pointless chip upgrades (assuming the stuff in the my system link is your old rig)

[Agent]

Im using corsair VS ram, which is undoubtably holding back my clocks.

What divider are you running on ?

You'd be silly to swap that system. Honestly

[barney_2k]

ive tried all the dividers, and eventually left it at auto

whatever divider it is on, as soon as i get past 295/296 on the HTT it refuses to boot, ever at 133mhz

im pretty sure its as high as i can get.

if any1 could help me get to 3ghz that would be awesome, but i dont think 2.85 is too bad really!

Its my first attempt at overclocking so sorry for being stupid

lol

let me know

Barney

[MantisCSS]

give this link a read, may give u soem gd tips on how to get to 3ghz http://www.short-media.com/review.php?p=1&r=300

[Dark Horse]

ive tried all the dividers, and eventually left it at auto

whatever divider it is on, as soon as i get past 295/296 on the HTT it refuses to boot, ever at 133mhz

That won't be anything to do with the Ram then, it means you've reach the HTT limit of your board.

Ram overclocking is seriously over rated these days so don't worry about overclocking it unless you really want to. Just run a divider and keep it at stock.

At 2.85ghz you really won't notice any difference in clockspeed above that, especially with gaming and especially with a 6600gt. Almost all of the games you play are likely to be gpu bound so extra cpu speed own't get you anything. Bear in mind that you're running it at the same as and FX-57 and then it doesn't sound nearly as bad.

[barney_2k]

@ Mantis : Thanks man, that whole article is quite enlightening lol

@ Dark Horse : Yeah when you put it like that i suppose

Barney

[barney_2k]

although you know what

the mobo i have is meant to do :
150MHz ~ 400MHz in 1MHz increments

so i dont have any idea why it would be topping out at high 200s :s

ideas?

Barney

[arthurleung]

I doubt you can push the 930 to over 4Ghz without burning the chip.

The chip runs so hot that even I'm using a CNPS9500-AT at max speed it (920@4Ghz) still full load at mid-60s

The game will probably run faster with the 146.

[barney_2k]

ahh ok then

well it seems to me like i should somehow try n get this opty to 3 and then upgrade my graphics card

Barney

[Dark Horse]

This chipset used by the Asrock dual sata boards isn't renowned for getting massively high htt clocks. A good NF4 or crossfire chipset will get you up to 350 but from what I have heard you're pretty lucky to have hit 285 with your board.

It may be worth looking around on the internet for some modded bioses which could help you get a higher htt.

[barney_2k]

@Dark Horse : yeah maybe you are right, ill start googling

Barney

[MantisCSS]

ive got a 3200 m8, and ive got a 146 here from scan on wednesday, looking forward to it might i add, tbh u should eb able to get 3 but 2.85 is pretty good! look for a nice new GFX card!

[kalniel]

Agreed - main thing is to update that graphics card!