I recently bought a Leadtek Winfast A7600 GS AGP to upgrade my ancient P4 system. I was just wondering whether i would see any performance increase in games if i overclock my gfx card. I suspect that I wouldn't notice any difference in performance due to the fact that I'm running a P4 processor at 133 x 19.0 = 2.53Ghz. At such a low FSB will overclocking my GPU give me an increase performance or is my GPU already bottlenecked by my CPU due to the low FSB. Is this true or do you beg to differ? I would really appreciate informed opinions on this matter, thank you very much.

You should have got the GT version instead. The GS aren't good performers to begin with and overclocking it may benefit in slight FPS increase. The video adapter isn't the bottleneck, the CPU is. If you decide to install a card like the x1950 PRO then you might decide that the AGP is the bottleneck instead of the CPU. How do you jump to the conclusion that the AGP bus is the bottleneck when the card doesn't perform well to begin with?

Maybe I mistyped but what I really meant was whether the CPU would bottleneck my card, thank you for confirming my suspicions, pgckkwvdzm. I know the winfast 7600GT operates @ 560/700MHz with DDR3 and 12 pixel pipelines while the winfast 7600GS 400/350MHz with DDR2 and similar 12 pixel pipelines. I read somewhere that the difference between the 2 cards is the RAM DDR3 Vs DDR2 and that the 7600GS is just an underclocked 7600GT, strictly comparing the 2 leadtek AGP cards. Since DDR2 is effective up to 450MHz +/- memory clock. I was wondering whether overclocking to it's maximum potential(with a new cooling solution), will give a boost in games such as Doom 3 or Fear and whether the boost in FPS does justice to do so. Thanks =)

First of all, you have a P4 2.53ghz with 133Mhz FSB so getting the 7600gt is kinda waste for your setup. The 7600gs fits ok for your system but overclocking it won't be much difference. What I would do is to check the RAM timings for your GDDR2 RAM. It should be labled on the card itself... i.e xxxxxxx-2 or xxxxxx-14... Suppose you have 2.5ns GDDR2 RAM, the theoretical max frequency for the RAM will be 1000 / 2.5 = 400Mhz x 2 (DDR mode) = 800Mhz... As for overclocking the core, you can always do a BIOS mod to raise the vgpu voltage in order to get to 7600gt level but I do not recommand you to do that. The best thing to overclock your video card would be download "coolbits" and do a 10Mhz increment on core and memory until you see artifacts on the screen...

TMP-Man

Asus P5P800 PAT
P4 506 @ 4009Mhz 1.3v
Thermaltake CLP0024 w/ 1700RPM 92MM + AS5
2GB OCZ 2-3-2-5 DDR400
120GB/300GB 7200RPM HD
Leadtek 7600 AGP 590/1600 VF700 ALCU AS5

Thanks for the advice TMP-Man, I see your using a Leadtek Winfast A7600GT with the Zalman VF700 AlCu, i thought of getting the cooler, i have stock overclocked my GPU from 400/700 to 437/868, with the stock cooler, it's extremely stable with no artifacts and approved by coolbits,i know that the GS operates on DDR2 just wondering if my getting a VF700 AlCu would allow me to overclock further with further performance gains or is this the furthest that it can go? If you dont mind my asking, I'm new to overclocking, is heat the only issue in overclocking or can I still get artifacts @ high clock rates even if the gpu is cooled at a resonable temperature, i would really appreciate your advice and explanation on this matter, thank you very much. :)