Yet Another Newbie With A Question...

I'm fairly new to this game and brand new 2 this forum.

Hi.

I just purchased a new system that consists of:

ATI Radeon 8500 Retail 64 MB
P4 2.26 GHZ
Samsung 256 MB DDR RAM 333 mhz
ASUS P4S533 MB

I have the CPU o/ced to 2.60 currently.

I have the Radeonator 2.0 to o/c my v/c.

Basically I am trying to find the right combination of o/cing for BOTH my CPU and my v/c.

Does anyone have the same combination of CPU and v/c that I do? If so, PLEASE PLEASE help. I will forever be in your debt.

Thank you very much for your time.

I'll bet you can do better.

try riseing your fsb a little higher...

run some benchies to see if it's still stable.

then go for some more.

good luck.

micamica1217

Welcome to the forum...not a bad little setup you've got there and a nice start too. Since everything is new I would say first leave the video card at stock speed and see how high you can overclock your CPU testing stability using Prime95, Sandra burn-in wizard, and 3D Mark 2001SE. Raise the FSB in small increments and check your temps and stability frequently. Also make sure you have a good CPU cooler and some thermal paste like Arctic Silver3 and you should be able to hit 3Ghz

After you get your CPU as high as it will go then start with your vid card overclocking testing stability using 3Dmark2001SE and your favorite 3D games making sure your system does not crash and you dont have any artifacts or distortion.

Then once you get both as high as you can go you should have a pretty nice dose of the OC fever and you will try like a madman to squeeze all of the performance you can out of your stuff hehehe

I've heard people mention Sandra burn-in alot, is this really necessary for slowly incrementing your oc? Like you should burn-in after each fsb jump? Or is it just a stability program like Prime95?

Also, what are artifacts? Just images left on your screen for a bit?

Sandra burn-in is a stability test that simply puts your CPU under full load kind of like prime95. its not necessary to run burn-in after each jump but if you get to a point where stability is questionable then its good to do so. There is a looping option and you can just select CPU burn. I generally run it for 100 loops if something is questionable

Artifacts are basically distortion from running your vid card too high. If you notice notice snowflakes, streaks, spots etc... then its time to crank it down a notch or get better cooling.