can somebody please help out a newbie?

[damac]

Hi I am looking into purchasing new guts for my home computer to be used for work and mostly games within the next 2 weeks. I have never overclocked before and haven't a clue but I want to try it.

Anyway basically I was hoping some people who have had good results can look at what I want, what parts I already have, and please suggest the best bang for the buck and MOST importantly a rock solid stable system. I'm not in it for pushing things as far as they can go, I just want some reasonable gains through overclocking which would be cheaper than buying a full speed cpu.

I want a system that is stable using win 98 se and would like my cpu to run atleast at 900mhz. I don't care if its an intel or amd system as I'm basing everything around the purchase. I need to simply find out and buy the right cpu, ram and motherboard to achieve the best bang for the buck. But I definately don't want to skimp on the motherboard or ram, so money isn't an issue their. I want the best when it comes to the guts, but just don't want to go nuts on the cost of the cpu like 1ghz for the amount of money they are currently.

I currently have these parts that will go in my system:

450 watt power supply
creative labs geforce ddr
kenwood 72x cd rom drive
memorex cd burner
seagate ultra 66 20+ gb hard drive
I also will be purchasing a new full tower case and have 6 case fans(large and small)


So hopefully that made sense? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have to buy the main guts to the system anyway so my lingering question is if a newbie can set it all up fine to overclock, and which cpu/mb/ram to get so its stable and of high quality parts. From looking around it would seem I could get around a 700mhz processor and hit 900+ but I just don't know what setup would be most stable, intel/amd, etc. thanks for any info!!

 

[xtreme2k]

700E with VIA 133A mobo seems 'safe' for ur AGP

if feeling 'hardcore' run 700E at 133 with a BX mobo

 

[garrison]

if you read the posts of the last 2 weeks you can easy understand that 700e cb0 IS the processor of the moment.
everyone seem to want one.
if you want to reach the ghz this IS the right cpu.

i'm running my 700e+iBX stable at 970/139 with standard cooling, but i'm probably limited by my micron pc100 (139!).
clock it at smthing in the 900-933 range, use good cooling, and you will probably have an absolutely rock stable system.

buy a good VIA133A board if you REALLY want to pass the giga.
or buy one of the best iBX board if you want the FASTEST system.
(but as xtreme2k said...700e+iBX is a hcore solution, so be careful).

before you buy a bx be sure yr geforce is stable at high agp speed (test with 1/1 multiplier).


sorry for my english. good luck.

 

[veryape]

Right now there are so many awesome cpus out there that overclock well at a good price that it is hard to recomend just one. I will say that if you want to overclock,don't skimp on these few components or you will be sorry:VIDEO CARD-get a G-Force of some sort,MEMORY-get at least PC133 memory,preferably Mushkin,Micron or Infineon ram. They are currently top of the line memory. CPU and Motherboard-obviously don't skimp here,get either a Duron 650-750 or a Celeron 533-600,preferably the 566 for the oc bang for the buck and for boards,look at others posts,do a search and make a decision from there because a board is probably your most important component and that is what will sway your decision for which cpu to buy.Just make sure to at least get a board that supports a 133 memory bus(VIA makes boards that support seperate memory buses). For the celeron a BX board is ok but not suggested because even though you can push the fsb you have to oc the pci and agp to do so.
Hope i di not confuse you further and helped a bit.

 

[birddog]

Try to find one of the new p3 650e's or 700e's with the new steppings -- they seem to clock extremely well from what I've read. For overclocking, you definately want to go with a P3 coppermine. Though it is possible to overclock an origional athalon with a 'gold fingers' device, the off-die cache of the athalon really gives you a performance hit as compared to a coppermine. The new athalon thunderbirds don't have this problem, but they are too new to have reliable OC data.

As far as motherboard, I'd go with the Asus P3V4X. If you look at the stats of the people in the forum, you'll see a lot of us are using this board for overclocked systems. It is probably the best overclocker out there (though some will disagree). It is true that a BX board will beat a VIA board on all the memory benchmark programs, but in the real world, you won't be able to tell. When you overclock on a BX board, you are really pushing you video card due to the lack of the 1/2 AGP divider on BX boards. Some cards can handle it, others can't. The new intel 815's are just starting to come out so there is not much of a history on them yet. I plan on giving the 815's some time to 'mature' before I'll consider using one.


------------------------
system 1
------------------------
Asus P3V4X
P3 550e @ 733mhz (will do 794 stable, but its hot!!)
golden orb cooler
192 MB Micron PC133 memory
Visiontek GeForce DDR
SB Live Value
WD 20 GB 7200rpm HD

-------------------------
system 2
-------------------------
Tyan s1854 Trinity 400
P3 500e (won't OC to save its life -- on either board)
128 MB Micron PC133 memory
Voodoo 3 2000 (OC'ed to 175mhz)
SB Live Value
Maxtor 10GB 7200rpm HD