Overclocking and Bottlenecking - need advice

first thing i would advise, is not to look at your setup as so outdated. you have alot of ram, a decent cpu, and a good video card (an old one yes, but hardly useless). the first thing i would advise is to do some general cleaning of windows (defrag, run some apps like spybot/adaware/clamwin, and in general clean house) as an old windows installation does tend to get cranky after awhile.

if you want to overclock your cpu (im sure you that a 300-500mhz overclock is attainable likely without overvolting. if your mobo supports overclocking), i would encourage you to look in your bios, tinker some, and look for some good overclocking guides (toms has some stickys with good guides last i checked)

i dont think any one of those components are "bottlenecking" your system, overall it seems well balanced.

alright thanks, yea, the ram was only at 1k up to 2 days ago, and it is defintily noticeable. BTW, my windows is up to date, XPSP2 (auto updates), and i defrage ever 3-4 months and run my adaware, spybot, and avg vs every 2-3 weeks. (idk what clamwin is)

But i am kinda uncomfortable tinkering, just due to lack of any experience doing so. im currently trying to decipher some of those stickies.
i also dont know what a lot or a little is in reference to cpu over clocking.

my mobo is also from same era, had to buy a slightly older one to fit my older graphics card cause of the connection type, but it was a good one in its prime, not sure how to look up the name, all i can read on the board is gigabyte, but that has to refereeing to my NIC.

clamwin is an anti virus app (not active, you have to actually scan your hard drive with it, and it takes forever, but at least its thorough, and open source).
when is the last time you reinstalled windows XP ?(if at all). often windows just craps if it hasn't been reinstalled every year or so (depends on how good or bad you tinker, i like to edit my registry alot. in vain attempts at increasing speed and usability. as such my windows tends to crap every 6 months or so)

honestly as far as tinkering goes, i remember my first vehicle, (an isuzu amigo) not a great suv, but it went forward (and backwards too double deal   ) and i loved it, and it died as a result of my tinkering, but i did learn alot from killing it. computers i have found are much more forgiving then transmissions and engines. as long as you dont overvolt (much), keep heat to a reasonable level (most people say that athlon64's should be kept under 50C at all times, i agree with that in general). your tinkering should at worst result in you having to reset your bios. something you would accomplish via a jumper on your mobo (should be labeled). my opinion is just that if it can be a learning experience, it is probably worth getting burned a little.

if your looking to improve performance, i would look at your video card first, if you are limited to agp, then i would (speaking about how i would spend my money) go for something from asrock, they make some mobos that have agp and pcie slots, so you can use your old video card, then get a newer one if you want. i have an athlon64 3700 (so identical to yours, but with 1024kb cache as opposed to 512kb, no real difference as far as gaming goes), with 2GB of ram, and a 7900gs, i have no problems running fear, or oblivion (just as relative points), with oblivion i play at 1280/1024(not insanely high, but i only have a 17" screen), all settings maxed, with no issues or "lag" , i forget what fear was (was a couple formats ago) i dont recall any issues with performance with it tho.

sry for my long messages, just my way.

well i noticed in my bios that i do have little fail safe's it looks like, if my cpu or whatever gets over 50C it clicks to lower or something, idk what it does actually, but appears to be a failsafe. my power supply is 500 watt, another friend says that might be on the low end for this computer esp for the GC to run all out, but idk about that.

For me it more of a fear to loose my hardrive than anything else, i got alot of movies and pictures from my digital cameras on here, i have 2 HD's so i can back up, but id just really like to not ever have a chance of loosing some of this stuff.

you suggest tinkering, which im open to learning, it seems i have to actually adjust my ram and my cpu just responds to it.
Do you have any initial suggestions to bump things around a bit? and what increments i should adjust the things at?