Intel E6700 2.66(needs mild or extreme overclock)?

Hi I've posted here couple of times regarding upgrades,cooling and overclocking and this site have been helpfull in making some descisions,but I still havent made my move as of yet.reason I havent made my move because I'm currently running E6700 2.66,gtx 8800 ultra.
If I descide to make my move and upgrade I was thinking of getting the ati 5870 1gb,I will not jump into getting it right away,$400 for GPU is apsurd since you know the moment you open the box ur losing half of the price,I will wait little longer for prices to drop down since my system plays all COD games with good FPS and smoothness.

If I descide to get the 5870 1gb will this card be too much for the processor that I have(or the more correct fraze will it bottleneck it)????

I would of not like to overclock it for couple of reasons: I have never dealt with bios,if i try to I might screw things up and then i cant boot the system,they say iven a good cooling system (aftermarket heatsink) cant gurarantee if you overclock it it wont die in 6 months etc etc.

So I descided an easier way I can overclock the CPU trough the OS,I've seen some videos on you tube and people that overclock it with software,I'm sure that its just a mild overclock without raising the voltages in the CPU and its less risky,so if I can get from 2.66 to 3.2 steady and not risky with zalman heatsink than its all good.

question is if I get the 5870 will I have to get the CPU overclocked and what sort of FPS increase should I expect from the 5870 over the 8800gtx?

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Use the BIOS for overclocking. It's actually safer. And even if you screw up the BIOS settings, all you need to do is clear the CMOS and start over,. And if you stay within Intel's recommended (not absolute) maximum voltage and temperature limits, short of a catastrophic failure, your CPU will be obsolete long before it dies of overclocking effects.

What kind of motherboard do you have?

This should be your first stop.
HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - Guide v1.6.1
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] uals-guide

This should be your second stop. You need to know something about thermal management or you can fry your CPU. It's actually kind of difficult to fry a modern CPU, but it is possible.
Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ture-guide

Third stop will be a guide for your particular motherboard. Google is your friend.

With a little bit of luck, you should be able to reach 3.0 GHz. without doing more than increasing the FSB frequency. For anything higher, you will need better cooling. Here are two under $50 heatsinks that are pretty popular (and better than the Zalman's):
Sunbeam
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835207004
Xigmatec Dark Knight
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835233029

They both require a somewhat different approach to applying thermal compound.
Suggestions for applying thermal compound:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] mitstart=5

And they are pretty large, so they might not fit inside your case.

Go through the first two threads. Do not do anything until you have a good idea about what you are trying to do. Once you have definite questions (you will, you will ), come back and ask.

Keep in mind that these are guides, not cookbooks. YMMV. Your Mileage May Vary. Because of all the variables, you may not do as well as someone else with a similar system. Or you might do better.
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Overclocking since 1978 - Z80 (TRS-80) from 1.77 MHz to 2.01 MHz

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to jsc

jsc wrote :

Use the BIOS for overclocking. It's actually safer. And even if you screw up the BIOS settings, all you need to do is clear the CMOS and start over,. And if you stay within Intel's recommended (not absolute) maximum voltage and temperature limits, short of a catastrophic failure, your CPU will be obsolete long before it dies of overclocking effects.

What kind of motherboard do you have?

This should be your first stop.
HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - Guide v1.6.1
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] uals-guide

This should be your second stop. You need to know something about thermal management or you can fry your CPU. It's actually kind of difficult to fry a modern CPU, but it is possible.
Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ture-guide

Third stop will be a guide for your particular motherboard. Google is your friend.

With a little bit of luck, you should be able to reach 3.0 GHz. without doing more than increasing the FSB frequency. For anything higher, you will need better cooling. Here are two under $50 heatsinks that are pretty popular (and better than the Zalman's):
Sunbeam
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835207004
Xigmatec Dark Knight
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835233029

They both require a somewhat different approach to applying thermal compound.
Suggestions for applying thermal compound:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] mitstart=5

And they are pretty large, so they might not fit inside your case.

Go through the first two threads. Do not do anything until you have a good idea about what you are trying to do. Once you have definite questions (you will, you will ), come back and ask.

Keep in mind that these are guides, not cookbooks. YMMV. Your Mileage May Vary. Because of all the variables, you may not do as well as someone else with a similar system. Or you might do better.
----------
Overclocking since 1978 - Z80 (TRS-80) from 1.77 MHz to 2.01 MHz

Thanks jsc,I understand that results may vary especially with me since if I try to overclock I will be extremely carefull,and most important results vary from one motherboard to other.By the way I have Asus 5PN-E SLI,would be much easier if i coult upgrade one more GTX8800 but I cant,at least its what I was told from the Customer care at IBuypower.Havent check the specs but my guess is that cant run 2X8800 GTX because it has 1 16X slot and the rest are 8X's....upgrading to one more 8800 ultra would be cheaper.

Thanks for the reply and I will look into the post and the heatsinks and make sure to take dimensions and check for space inside my case.
By the way do you think I will need to overclock the CPU in order to match the power of the GPU? and yes will there be much of FPS in game difference between the 8800 ultra and the 5870,I read a lot of good stuff about the 5870.

Reply to soli

There certainly should be a difference in performance between the 8800GTX and the 5870. The 5870 is about 3 generations newer.

Reply to jsc

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