Old Rig needs help!

So I built my first computer around 2 years ago and I have always wanted to overclock but I was scared to damage the hardware because I have very little experience with it. Almost every game seems to run flawless with this setup to date. I recently bought SW:TOR and this seems to be the only game I have trouble with as far as performance and multi tasking while playing. I can play these games as said settings.

WoW: Everything max except Shadows and ground clutter on low 40-70 FPS(I had 4 Games running at the same time before with little to no lag)
BF:3: Everything on high without a single hiccup from explosions or anything.
Starcraft 2: Almost everything on Ultra the only time I lag is when im plating custom games and theres millions of units fighting.
I have also played Kingdoms of Amalur, Mafia 2, Just Cause 2, Dota2, Leage of Legends and various others at maxed settings with no FPS issues at all.
*Note I can multi task music, web browsing and other things while playing all these games except SW:TOR

Now with everything low when I play SW:TOR the moment I log in and for about 10~ minutes I get 30-60 fps with no lag then randomly I will get 10-20 for untill I restart my computer. Also I cannot even open fire fox without there being 5 seconds delaying in screen switching between SW:TOR and my browser.

Now sorry for typing up a freaking storm I'm sure you guys get tons of people coming to you with problems and it gets to be a pain sometimes but I'm just looking for any advice on overclocking my CPU or what I can do to gain max performance with my rig.

My Specs are as follows.

Intel Core i7 860 Lynnfield @ 2.8GHz
Gigabyte P55-UD5
x2 2 Gigs G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 ( I've been told getting 2 additional gigs of ram wont help)
ATI Radaeon Saphire Vapor-X HD 4890 @ 880 GPU 1000 Memory
CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-620HX 620W ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache

Microsoft Windows Vista 32bit. (I also have a 64 bit Vista that I bought a while back but have never got around to installing it, would that help my performance as well?)

Sounds like your GPU starts to idle....or it's reducing it's clocks to prevent from frying it'self. The delay is caused by high RAM usage and hard drive activity.

Darknecron said:

Sounds like your GPU starts to idle....or it's reducing it's clocks to prevent from frying it'self. The delay is caused by high RAM usage and hard drive activity.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the quick reply! Do you think adding more ram would help? Or upgrading to 64 bit vista? Also I just started trying to stream and my streams don't seem to lag but my gameplay is really sluggish! Is that more cpu oriented?

I have also noticed in BF:3 that computers with low amounts of RAM suffer from this as well.

Yes, try picking up a cheap $35 set of Ripjaws from the Egg. You can get an 8GB set for about $35 bucks when it goes on sale. You will have to be running a 64 bit OS though in order to take advantage of that, so yes, you should upgrade.... however if you have Windows 7 64 bit available, I highly recommend it over Vista.

These might be the best NON-Sale bang for your buck. But your UD5 should have 4 slots, this will give you 12GB of RAM.

Until Battlefield 3, I would have said, 4GB was enough for anyone, but since I installed 16GB of RAM, I haven't noticed any more sluggishness. (I swapped back and forth just to be sure from 4GB to 8GB to 16 GB)

You also PMed me about overclocking. I would be more than willing to help. But I do recommend Miahallen's write up for a good read prior to attempting any OC. It will help explain the terminology. It will give you other tips as well. This way we won't be starting from scratch. This forum is very interactive, so anyone with a few stars in their profile will be able to help.

Brutal-Force said:

I have also noticed in BF:3 that computers with low amounts of RAM suffer from this as well.

Yes, try picking up a cheap $35 set of Ripjaws from the Egg. You can get an 8GB set for about $35 bucks when it goes on sale. You will have to be running a 64 bit OS though in order to take advantage of that, so yes, you should upgrade.... however if you have Windows 7 64 bit available, I highly recommend it over Vista.

These might be the best NON-Sale bang for your buck. But your UD5 should have 4 slots, this will give you 12GB of RAM.

Until Battlefield 3, I would have said, 4GB was enough for anyone, but since I installed 16GB of RAM, I haven't noticed any more sluggishness. (I swapped back and forth just to be sure from 4GB to 8GB to 16 GB)

You also PMed me about overclocking. I would be more than willing to help. But I do recommend Miahallen's write up for a good read prior to attempting any OC. It will help explain the terminology. It will give you other tips as well. This way we won't be starting from scratch. This forum is very interactive, so anyone with a few stars in their profile will be able to help.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much I will pick up some ram and read over that write up!