Funnyperson.. Youve been so incredibly helpful, I cant thank you enough.. Once I start in, Im sure Ill be coming back to this thread many times, posting results, and more questions. Any future users of our mobo/cpu combo should find this Invaluable. Maybe it should be made into a forum stickie, your info has been so thorough, and your technique for explaining so effective.
Have you figured out what our cpu running at, say, 2.9 ghz, looks like in terms of the common benchmarks relative to the other athlon x2 cpus, and relative to the core 2 duos? ie, wrt the latter, does it slot somewhere near the 6300? higher? what about on the amd line?
What do you do with the setting, listed under ' Advanced Chipset Features' under PMU for 'K8<-> MCP55 HT Width'? One setting I saw someone had looked like '[ {downarrow}16 {uparrow}16]'? Do you basically leave the settings NOT included under the 'Overclock Navigator' engine in their default settings as you get them from your downloaded flash?
Seems to me anybody interested in puzzles, electronics, performance, computers in general, would find this whole overclocking arena really intriguing. I bought my bmw M3 new in 1999, and 5 mos later, proceeded to almost double its horsepower by adding a supercharging system and upping the boost.. kind of like overclocking.. you try larger intake, higher boost, larger manifold, valves, etc, etc.. do one thing at a time, take it to the dyno to benchmark, and then try something else.. Eventually, people build up a recognized, most effective, best practices upgrade path for various configs that future users benefit by. Ive had other computers before.. several, but this is the first build Ive done myself, and its the first time overclocking has been so publicized on the net.. I could hardly do any research on my cpu and mobo components as I was planning my build without reading all about overclocking. Thats how big its become.. And its no wonder why, with people able to relatively easy get themselves a 50% bump in cpu frequency like you guys are doing with the 3600+ x2 cpu, going from near 2 ghz stock, to near 3 ghz overclocked. Hell, on our cars, when we get a 30% increase in power, thats considered Huge, and here you guys are, getting 50% boosts on this cpu/mobo combo, without spending any extra dollars hardly at all.. With the cars, I dont have to tell you how many 10s of thousands are required to do what we're talking about!
So, as soon as I solve my little Windows xp pro activation issue, on my new pc, Im going to get started, armed with the info youve given me.