thanks for reply, y is that? limit of the board? from what I read online, I should be able to get to close to 3GHz, but that was through BIOS.
Well, the 945GC chipset isn't really set up for overclocking to begin with, since it doesn't have any way of locking the PCIe frequency... meaning that when you up the bus speed, it also ups the PCIe speed, causing problems for your hard drives and such if you try to go too high.
What's more is that ECS boards, especially the older budget-level ones, are
really finicky for some reason... even the ones that have clock speed adjustments in the BIOS, you generally can't get 'em to work more than a few mhz off from stock. I have a modded BIOS on one of my 945GCT-M boards, where I unlocked the overclocking features, and it just craps out if I up the bus speed more than about 15mhz, even though it
should be able to do more.
But you're right, if you're just going for an HTPC, then you really don't need an overclock anyway. The 8600GTS
will do hardware acceleration... quite well, I might add... IMO it seems to output better video quality than the newer generation cards. And even at stock speed, the E2140 should be able to handle most stuff in software mode anyway.