Built My System, help me tweak it

[j13jjs]

I want to squeeze the most out of my setup, here is what I use it for
Gaming (Crysis, COD4, Unreal Tournament 3, almost everything on Steam)
Occasional Video editing of high def media
Using almost everything in Adobe Master Collection CS3
Also running Flashget just about 24/7


Here are the parts I have

Intel core 2 quad 6600 775
Asus p5k-e
evga nvidia 8800 gts 640mb sli
4 gig's of Patriot 6400
(2) seagate sata 750 gig hd (1.5tera)
seta cd/dvd
coolermaster 500w extreme.
coolermaster elite rc330 mid-tower

Running Vista 64 to utilize the 4 gigs of ram. I already have Riva Tuner but no real experience using it so I've left it alone.

I ran 3DMark06 of around 10k on default settings. For some reason it didn't save my results and I can't stop the applications running right now to run 3DMark06 right now. I have seen people getting 12k plus scores with similar configurations and thats what I'm going for right now.

I'm new to overclocking in general and have been trying to learn as much as I can from hardforums and ocforums. From what I gather 3.2 is very reasonable for this processor and would make a great improvement. I'd like to know what my best bet is with this mobo/proc combo on the air cooling I have.

What can I do with the ram to get the best performance out of it?

And of course I think I can squeeze a lot more out of my video card.

What configuration with all these components is going to give me the best performance but keep everything reliable.

I def need this to be stable, the computer is almost never turned off and is almost always under load.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Roguestar]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=28&threadid=2057083
'Tweaking' your RAM won't give you much of a performance boost. The stuff you'll notice is CPU speed, RAM size and GPU speed increases.

 

[Slugbait]

Drop your 6G permanent swap file on the clean secondary hard drive.

I once read something months ago, I believe it was at MSKB, about how Vista will actually have a slight perf boost with the addition of a small permanent swap file on the primary drive as well. Something like just 128 megs. Couldn't find it again, tho'.

 

[Denithor]

You should be able to push that Q6600 to ~3GHz (or higher) but I wouldn't do it on the stock cooler. Go for the Tuniq Tower 120 ($50) or the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme ($70 and somewhat better cooling performance than the Tuniq).

EDIT: You will see much more improvements in your gaming experience from overclocking your video card than your cpu. Use Rivatuner and/or ATItool to squeeze a bit more power from your GTS.

 

[j13jjs]

i've already got a pretty good cooler for the processor; just need to OC it now. I also haven't been able to find a good OC guide for the 8800 GTS specifically, just a bunch of stuff for the GT.


What about my two 750gig Seta drives? How should I run those?