I just equipped my pc with some new stuff!! an antec 550watts psu and a Coolermaster cavalier case.
now my pc has the following stuff:
cpu socket 939 AMD opteron 175 dual core stock-2.21ghz,1mb L2 x2(2mb)
motherboard- Asus A8N-E nvidia nforce 4 ultra chipset
ram-transcend ddr400 -2gb(512x4)
harddrives-seagate pata 120gb(master),samsung pata 80gb(slave) hitachi 160gb SATA 2
optical drive -sony dru 810A dvd writer
monitor-philips 107e5 17 inches CRT
graphics card- XFX 6600gt 256mb ddr3

the cpu cooling fan is the stock AMD fan with copper(look like copper) cooling pipes.i've applied artic silver thermal paste on my cpu.

(1)now how fast can i safely push my cpu?? i dont plan to get any fancy cooling solution now(outta cash!)
the last time i overclocked my cpu i touched 2.47ghz on air without artic silver thermal paste on my terrible 400watts psu(some local brand) and my sytem crapped up after i tried going any faster.i blame the psu i had.
can i touch 2.7--2.8ghz safely now??

(2)Does the antec 550watts psu have enough power to support the nvidia 8800gts 320mb as well as my overclocked system??

(3)if i plan to keep my 939 dual core opteron and the current setup and add a 8800gts 320mb as well as a viewsonic wb1912 widescreen tft,how well would it serve me as a gaming rig for the next 2 years?? i want to play crysis.i cant wait to see how well the current generation dx.10 cards perform in the crysis benchmarks before i end up buying one.

Thanks in advance!http://img.tomshardware.com/forum/uk/icones/smile.gif

1. I would actually advise you to go with a better cooling solution, rather than a PSU. However, given the situation, I would say that you can hit 2.7~2.8Ghz, IF you can keep your case flow clean. Try to bundle up the PATA cables, and tie them together with SATA cables. Try to keep your case flow as clean as possible, so that your CPU cooler gets maximum airflow, and maximum cooling.

2. You can use the eXtreme Power Calculator to find out. I just imputted some of your specification, and came out to be 513W, including OCed Opteron and 8800GTS. So the conclusion is yes, it can handle it well.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com [...] orlite.jsp

3. It should be sufficient, although might not be able to catch up with the newer games in about a year or so. However, as time goes on, you should be able to add more components to your computer to improve its performance.

As for 8800GTS, if you can wait a little bit until Nov, I suggest you to wait for the RV670. From the specification, the card may perform on par with the current R600, but runs a lot cooler, and consume less electricity.

Hope these helps

rv670? would that be a finely tuned ati x2900 card? with a more efficient gpu?
also switching to an ati card on my current nvidia nforce 4 ultra chipset would cause some problems,i think.
i do remember tomshardware had this article about nvidia chipsets with ati cards and vice versa with the performance and compatibility being perfectly ok on both platforms but my friend who has a similar setup as mine barring the opteron 175(he has an athlon 64 3500+ mounted on an A8N-e the same board that i have) switched from his geforce 6200 to a sapphire radeon x1950 pro 256mb card and none of his games would work.that's something that made me stick to nvidia cards only or else i would definitely love to own a x2900 pro.it seems like an awesome card!

I think the incompatibility will only exist if you do multi-card configuration (SLi vs. Xfire). Other than that, I don't think there is incompatibility. I'll fish around a bit, then give you my final answer.

EDIT:
It appears that 2900 worked with nVidia 680i. I would say, unless you use multi-GPU configuration, you shouldn't encounter any problem with ATi cards on nVidia chipset.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/431/16

RV670 is not only a more fine tuned 2900, but also cooler and more efficient one. 2900 is built on 80nm, while the RV670 would be built on 65nm, or even 55nm. This will significantly decrease power consumption. Think of it as a 2900XT with the power consumption of 8600GTS.

If this is a problem for you, and you would like to stick with nVidia for maximum compatibility, its fine too. However, I would also suggest you to wait a little bit for G92. G92 is not a radical change from G80, as RV670 from R600, but it does represent changes. G92 has been rumored to be 8800GT. However, no clear specification exists as of now, other than it will sports two version, 256Mb VRAM and 512Mb VRAM.

Thanks a lot anyways!
i would rather stick to a nvidia to be safe! :-)
btw for overlocking my opteron the last time i used the nvidia Ntune software and asus sowftware.
was that why i couldn't overclock my opteron as much as i would have wanted to?
i did try the bios options like AI-nos and the other automatic overclocking options provided by asus in the bios.
shall i try the manual overclocking mode this time to get better results?

 
I would suggest you to do manual overclock over utility overclock, because you can achieve better results this way. Although its time consuming, but I believe its worth it.

umm!! i need a quick overclocking primer!!  
sadly i haven't done much of manual overclocking i always releid on software based overlcoking.

I'll PM you a URL for an overclocking guide.

THANKS!

Concerning the Radeon on nForce thing.
 
On my current computer (that I'm changing this week) I put the x1950 GT.
My motherboard is the Asus A7N8X Deluxe (nForce2 Ultra).
 
Before installing the catalyst drivers the system seriously misbehaved, slower startup times and slow refresh during scrolling. Something was definitely off. Installed Catalyst 7.8 and voila. Problems solved.
 
In case you're saying so what, on the same PC my old GeForce 5700 didn't have these problems even before installing the nVidia drivers.
 
Apparently there is some truth to that incompatibility but it seems that all you need is to install proper drivers so big deal...

Also, consider the fact that you friend messed up his PC when he removed the NVidia and added the ATI card. Maybe he didn't do a clean swipe of the old drivers and resulted in every game crushing. Ati is better considering performance/price ratio (not power!!)

Oh yeah right, forgot to say that after I got the 1950 I clean installed windows because the in-game videos would stutter like crazy!!!
(I had slipstrimmed the GeForce drivers in my Windows XP installation CD and couldn't effectively remove them).
 
After the re-installation (using a new installation CD) and the catalyst installation everything worked 10 times better.

well my friend had a new seagate sata 1 160 gb to replace his old seagte 80 gb with windows so drivers or no drivers didn't matter,like you said about the old nvidia drivers messing up with the radeon drivers.
btw i would definitely love to own a radeon x2900 pro but then here in india i can't seem to find one,the vendors have x2900xt 512mb cards from powercolor and sapphire.
here nvidia cards are easily available,you walk into a shop and ask for one and they have it for you.xfx sells the most here along with some brand called galaxy(some chinese brand i guess),gigabyte,asus are also easily available.
the funny thing is that the 8800gts 320mb outsells the cheaper 8600gts card bigtime.
BTW,how's this overclocking tool clockgen?

Sapphire are good in my book, both the 1950 GT and PRO that I ordered are from sapphire. Gigabyte would be the preferred choice but they usually go for way more.
 
Like I said, in my case the GeForce drivers had been slipstreamed into the windows CD. They were part of it and would be installed no matter how many times you installed them on any HDD. Perhaps it was the same case. That is why in my new installation cd I didn't include any display drivers, just the motherboard (chipset/sata/raid/audio/ethernet) drivers.
 
Dunno about the clockgen thing but at least the Catalyst drivers have a built in overclocking function. I think the same applies for the ForceWare drivers too...

i've got myself  - a coolermaster extreme power 600watts psu,a coolermaster cavalier case,a thermalright xp-90 heatsink and a scythe 90mm cooling fan for the cpu,applied artic silver thermal paste on my opteron.all that needs to be upgraded is the graphics card which would probably be a xfx 8800gts 320mb(waiting for crysis to see how the current crop of dx.10 cards fare)  
now with all the stuff that i've put in how much can i push my opteron??