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Upgraded video card, wondering if OC on e8400 is worth it for performance

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Godinster

Registered
Joined
Nov 24, 2009
So I finally got my XFX HD 4890 today and replaced my HD4850 that overheated, and I'm surprised but I actually notice a difference with 1920 x 1200. GTA IV is actually playable and runs at higher settings than the 4850 did at medium settings. Plus it doesn't overheat as bad. Still gets quite hot.

Would overclocking the e8400 provide much of an increase in overall performance as well? Right now I'm running it at stock 3.0 GHz but I've got an Arctic Cooler 7 Pro so I should be able to get around 3.6 easily I imagine. I'm not so much interested in bragging about my overclock results as I am interesting in taking advantage of something that may be beneficial.

My full system specs:
E8400 Processor w/ Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
EP-35 Gigabyte Motherboard
XFX HD4890
4 GB DDR2 RAM [Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X4096-6400C5 4GB DDR2 2X2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 5-5-5-18 240PIN Memory Kit].
24" Samsung SyncMaster 2433 Monitor -- 1920 x 1200

I'm considering just bumping the FSB up to 400 MHz for an easy 3.6 GHz. I tried it a while ago and it idled around 47 degrees in RealTemps but I switched back after, deciding to worry about it later. This was a month ago or so, I've since cleaned the case a bit and installed a better case which may or may not make a difference.

It's really hard to find benchmarks of e8400 stock vs e8400 overclocked in real word results aside from a silly FutureMark score. I'm mostly using it for gaming and a bit of browsing and BluRay watching. I just would rather not bottleneck the 4890 with a stock e8400 if I can get some extra performance out of the computer.
 
from stock to 3.5Ghz on my e8400 i notice quite the difference in loading screens for games, dont have exact numbers inhand for ingame performance, but i seem to recall getting a higher fps, and then from 3.5-4.5Ghz, i see a minimal (1-5fps) increase for in game performance, but levels load up much faster again.
 
OC it, GTA4 is cpu intensive like mad, every little bit will help.
 
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