hi guys (and girls). i have am xp2200+ with a stockl cooler. an a7v8x-x mobo and radeon card. i clocked up the radeon card and also clcoked up the multiplier to give me 2gb instead of the usual 1800mhz on my cpu. my temp is only 41 so i wanna clock it higher, can someone tell me the best way. i think i need to lower the multiplier and clock up the fsb. i tried putting the muliplier up higher but the computer crashes on boot. is this because of the vcore thingy. is my ram going to be a problem.... cheers fellas and gals!!!

Hi Having a higher FSB and a lower multiplier is the best way as you gain more bandwidth, im assuming you have got PC2100 (ddr266) ram or 266 SDRAM then this is going to cause some problems,if you provide us with some more details, about your system then we might be able to understand what you are asking, depending on what quality ram you have got aswell, you might get more performance out of relaxing the memory timings, i have to relax memory timings to oc from XP2800 to XP3200 or i get a corrupt file, soon as i change that i can get it to boot succesfully. To start with try upping the FSB steadily, dont just rush into it as you might smoke the ram or the cpu or both, make sure you lower the multiplier aswell. All too easy to put too much load onto the chip, if you start getting instable then you can up the vcore slightly and the ram if the vcore doesn't seem to be doing much, but really getting higher spec ram will help you run more efficient. DLB126

ok heres a detailed spec of my comp. xp2200+ @ 1800mhz with stock hsf 256mb 2100 ddr ram asus a7v8x-x mobo audigy platinum sound card radeon 9600 pro 128mb ddr (400/400mhz) i have clocked the radeon to (486/432) where it is now stable. i hope to increase this with some ramsinks to help with the heat. i have upped the multiplier and the fsb on the bios from (13.5 x 133 = 1795.5 mhz) to (15 x 134 = 2010 mhz) stable. if i push the multiplier or the fsb any further windows wont boot. the problem isnt heat as the processor is only at 44 degrees after a 30min burn in at full load when clocked at 2010 mhz. next i think i need to up the voltage but i would like to know how to go about this as i know mistakes can make holes in computer components. also if i was to invest in a gig of 3200 ram how could this affect my abilities to overclock. and how would i do it with the new ram? thanks again...

Well i have 512mb of Kingston PC3200 Valueram but 2 sticks in dual channel on the nforce 2 board, im not familiar with the overclocking of the xp2200 so long as its not locked you will probably get a good overclock from it with pc3200, the pc3200 option depends if you are going to upgrade to a 333fsb cpu eventually and overclock that aswell, but you shouldnt have any problems overclocking the cpu with that ram. How to go about overclocking the cpu and getting it stable, is to get some higher spec ram which is a more suitable option, but depends on how much ur wallet is buldging really, More than mine i suppose lol. Have you yet tried relaxing the timings on the 266 ram , for example from 6-2-2-CL2.5 to 7-3-3-CL3 or depending on your ram, you can get extra benefits from your ram if you can find out the timings they work best at, i managed to get 200mb/s extra bandwith from the cpu by relaxing the cpu timings from 6-2-2-CL2.5 at 333fsb to 9-2-2.CL2.5 at 333fsb, and just go to 9-3-3-CL3 when stepping up towards 200fsb, using the relaxing technique to help the memory be used without corrupting the files as its reading. If you have got a N-Force 2 motherboard download the NVIDIA System Utility but make sure your motherboard will support it first, and this will only work with N-Force 2 motherboards, and download AIDA32 and do memory read benchmarks, while adjusting the memory timings in NVIDIA system utility, you will need to apply the changes with the tick button. I think you will get a certain overclock but if you reduce the multiplier and push the fsb up then you will most likely see a gain in performance in AIDA32 providing you do it correctly.