I have:
MSI K7N2-Delta-ILSR
AMD XP3000+ Barton 2.17 333FSB
1 Gb TWINX LL PC3200 Corsair RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128 DDR
2 Seagate 120GB (on SATA RAID 0)
480 Watt Power Supply
Thermaltake Xaser III Case 7 case Fans
Volcano 11 Cpu Cooler

I'm wondering if this can be overclocked, and if so, should I bother?

The multiplier in the bios will only go as far as 13X. Isn't that what It's running at now?

If I increase the FSB past 166 Mhz the system won't boot....Why?

The only reason I ask is I'm getting a score of 16643 in 3DMark2001 and I see scores alot higher than that for a comparable system... A little jealous maybe...

The score for 3DMark2003 is 5653...Not sure how good that is...

Any advice or comments would be great...
Thanks, Jeff

That system is incredibly powerful, and unless you feel the need to enter race of benchmarks etc, I would keep with your current combo for the time being. BTW a score of 5653 on 3dmark2003 is practically godly, so you really have nothing to worry about. Others may get higher scores in 3dmark2001, but who cares? They are both synthetic benchmarks and if your games / applications perform well you really have nothing to worry about.

6000+ for 2003 is what the very very very best systems get. 5500 is like holy s---! I wish i had a system like that! Btw, no use in overclocking you will see minimal improvements.. Err.. Notice

Thanks for the quick replies..! I did some tweaking with Powerstrip and ran 3DMark2003 again and scored a 6115..

I also went back and ran 2001 SE and ended with a score of 17276.

From what you guys are telling me these scores are pretty good and I should be happy with them. So I will take your word for it !!

BTW, the card is overclocked to 425 Engine Clock and 370 Memory Clock with a Stock ATI cooler, I figured I shouldn't push it without some better cooling.

Thanks, Jeff

New goal in life,
Steal jeffs computer..
:P

Aint that fast.. i have a p4 3.06ghz with 1gb ddr400 i found jeff's 3dmark2k1 score and i get more fps in some tests like

Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail
(FPS) 226.1 (mine)

225.3 (jeff)


Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail
(FPS) 85.9

75.5

Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail
(FPS) 201.3

196.5


Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail
(FPS) 93.5

87.5

and that's with a ti4600 not even oced to max. but the rest of the tests i get owned BIGTIME ..

Game 4 - Nature
(FPS) 77.6

146.0

can't wait to get my 9800pro.

If you want to overclock your Athlon 3000+. I suggest that you get a watercooling system. Regular fan won't get you too far from 2.17Ghz. Overclocking your Radeon 9800 PRO, you only notice the difference in extreme high resolution and with FSAA + Aniostropic filtering on. Otherwise, in regular 1024x768, is slim to none.

Hey TMP, why are you so cautious about oc'ing. unless your temps are already high there's room for anyone to oc..as long as the temps stay ok. that's all that really matters. the max temp i get with my 3.06@3640mhz is 52c with an ambient temp of 20c at 30c it would be around 60c which would be getting to the limit for my intel cpu. then i would just turn it down to 3.5 or 3.4 and the temps would be ok again.

And if you oc your 9800pro and run it at 1024x768 you probably won't notice a difference but there will be one. you'll get more fps and when you start playing games like doom 3 your going to probably wish you had those extra fps at 1024x768 and even more at higher rez.

I agree that you should be content with your current setup. In a year or more, when faster CPUs are out there, if you feel that your Athlon 3000+ is no longer top of the line, then you might consider overclocking to keep up, but I think it would be just greedy at this point. Enjoy.

The reason why i overclock is cause i can get the performance of next gen cpu's ect. for free. and i can afford to replace anything that gets broken in my pc within the same month so i don't care. plus i'm really carefull cause i don't want to go and waste my money and break something by going too far just cause i can afford to replace it!

If i couldn't afford to replace anything i would just overclock it very slightly for cpu like 100mhz, gpu core 10mhz, ram 20mhz. there's no risk in that unless your temps are really high already.

Thanks for everyones input, it's nice to hear that I finally got a decent "BOX".

The last one that I build was kinda "budget" and I wanted to go ALL-OUT this time.

Saved up for a LOOOOOONG time to build this one and I'm pretty happy so far.

One more question, Anybody got any thoughts on the ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe compared to the board I'm running? (MSI K7N2-ILSR)

It was a hard choice, but I ended up with the MSI. (I'm a REAL ASUS fan though)

BTW...Timbo 101..Do I have to post a gaurd at night??

As long as you have money to burn, sure, go for overclocking. Sure your Pentium 4 3.06Ghz can o/c to 3.6Ghz. But you know a Pentium 2.2Ghz can o/c to 3.6Ghz as well? So why waste more $$$ to buy the top of the line and o/c?

OK now we know where to steal good machines.

Thanks guys.

A p4 2.2ghz @ 3.6ghz will generate more heat at 3.6 therefore you will have a much harder time getting to 3.6 and will have to spend money on water cooling and when you have the fsb that high you have to relax ram timings and end up losing more performance it goes on and on. it's just easier to oc if you have a 3.06 rather then a 2.2ghz.