Time to speed things up

Hi all,

This is my first post on OCForums :-] I've had a trawl about and can happily say that I'm gonna be spending some quality reading time here.

I'm about to break my overclocking cherry and would like to ask a question or two if you don't mind.

My base system is this,

AMD FX-57 (stock cooler)
Asus A8N-SLi mobo (still on original BIOS version)
4x 1gB Corsair XMS2 Pro (I now realize my error here, only 2gB seen in Windows)
2 x BFG 7800GT (SLi'd ok)
2 x WD 10K 74gB (RAID 0)
Seagate 650W PSU
Antec P180 Case (with more fans than Man U)
Windows XP Pro
All BIOS settings left at default.

Before I start I need to give the whole thing a good clean, she's a lil on the dusty side inside (temps still fine). She's nearly 2 years old now.

My first questions are -

1/ CPU. It's a cracker of a single core, but is it worth sodding about with or shall I just find me a dual core replacement? 3DMark 05 really struggles throught the CPU tests, a system I just built for a friend monstered it with it's Intel Duo.
Shall I stick with the stock cooler? I'm not looking to go liquid cooled.

Socket 939 CPU's seem quite a small family so any recomendations?

2/ OS. I've been thinking about a Vista upgrade. Is it worth it? Which to go for, 32 or 64bit? As you can see from above I have 4gB of Ram, will 32bit Vista see all this or is it a job for a 64 bit OS? What experience do you peeps have with backwards compatability?

3/ Is it worth it? How much more speed should I expect? The reason I'm thinking about overclocking is games are now exceeding my rigs performance (World in Conflict mainly).
And it's cool. And I do have a bit of a geeky reputation to uphold.

Thanks for reading, any assistance greatly appreciated.

Feeling like he's on a very slippery and extremely steep downhill slope........ Matt

you still have a very capable rig with plenty of useful like in it. even the cpu isn't bad and definitely has some good room to OC if you get a different heatsink. i think your best and cheapest upgrade would be to do just the processor.
put in one of these for ~$70
x2 4200+ toledo
x2 4200+ manchester

i don't know which core is better so if someone wants to make a recommendation, thanks.

you could go to a new intel(775) or amd(am2) rig but you'd need a new motherboard and ram. there's a tweak to make xp recognize more ram. google away.

Thanks for coming back DJRussel :-]

I will look into the XP tweak without a doubt. Thats a right 'lil gem you've just chucked me, Ta.

I'll agree that it's still a capable rig. But I've started really looking into how it's setup and I think there's a lot of optimization to do even before overclocking. For a start my memory timings are way off.

The main motivation for getting me off me ar5e is that I've just built a new system for a mate. Was a Intel Duo 6400 (I think) based system and it kicks the cr4p out of my machine in the CPU tests of 3DMark05. Mine struggles along at 1-2 FPS whilst his runs more like 6-10 easy.
Me thinks I have a big CPU bottleneck. But I think a lot of things, I get them right every nown again.

I'm off to look for this XP RAM tweak.

If anyone has any suggestions about increasing my CPU/RAM please plop 'em down.

Cheers, Matt

In any cpu test, the max fps is 2fps.

I\d get the toledo 4200+, toledos > manchesters.
However, if you can find a opteron 165, i'd chose that over the 4200+

If you are NOT overclocking, choose the 4200+

Get the 64bit vista, you need a 64bit os to see all your ram.

Also, nice 7800GT SLi setup, but switiching to a 8800GTS/8800GTX will yield a huge performance increase.