Need Advice

[doozis]

Hello Folks !
I have an Asus M4A785M motherboard with a phenom 955 BE processor , 4g DDR2 dual channel 800 ram and a gtx 280 video card. I also have an after market air cooled fan for the processor.
I wanted a little more speed for my games so I overclocked my multiplier in the bios
and my cpu is now running at 3.8 and seems quite stable with max temps in the 40 to
50 range.
My question is , should I just leave it as is or am I missing a lot of performance by not
going into a lot of other adjustments for overclocking. It seems like it was almost too
easy to overclock it from 3.2 to 3.8 and when I read all these other forums they talk
about changing FSB and memory timings and voltages etc. I can't afford to fry my
system , so I'm not interested in pushing it to the max , but if there is more I SHOULD be doing I need to know about it.
Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Steve

 

[drums101]

Steve, I will gladly give you advice......there really isnt any other adjustments that need to be made....you could look into overclocking your ram....or maybe overclock the 280 but I know those run hot so there might not be much gain in doing that.....one thing I would reccomend that you do is torture test your OC before you get too comfortable with it....sometimes the quick and dirty overclocks cause pain down the road...to do this download Prime95 and run a small ffts test for no less then 6 hours if it passes then you are good to go.....by passes I mean none of the cores fails and your system doesnt blue screen or lock up....goodluck with the new found speed

 

[jsc]

One of the things an overclocker needs to know is when to stop. I think that it will take a lot more work and experimentation to get just a little more performance.

Although I have been overclocking CPU's for more than 30 years, I do not like overclocking GPU's. I think they run hot enough already.

I also think that you have reached a good stopping point.
----------
Overclocking since 1978 - Z80 (TRS-80) from 1.77 MHz to 2.01 MHz

 

[doozis]

Many thanks !
My mind is more at ease now
I will run the test as recommended and if its stable I'll just leave well enough alone.
If it fails, I'll back down the multiplier until it is stable.

This is the best forum I have ever seen , the people and nice and very helpful and
I don't see the rude trash talking jerks you find in so many other forums. Although I'm an old guy I still love my computer and my games as much as any teenager

Thanks again !

Steve