Is it possible to overclock ??

i have a asus a7v8x-x motherboard with a athlon xp3200+ cpu and 2gb of ram. i made the mistake of buying this cpu over a year ago, then realising that the motherboard would not allow it to run as its full speed ! The mobo will only recognise the cpu as a 2500+ as i think the fsb only runs 333mhz instead of 400mhz ( i think thats right, forgive me if i am wrong as i have never overclocked before ) i would rather try and overclock the board instead of buying a new one, just because its probably possible to do so. :-D

 

If the maximum FSB of the board is 333mhz there is nothing you can do to change it, you will need a new board.

 

oh well.......if i buy a A7N8X-E Delux, can i use my matched 2X1gb sticks of pc2700 ram ? :confused

 

Yes you can use your current memory but at this point, I wonder if it's really worth it to buy a new motherboard unless you get a good deal. Maybe better to save your money for a dual/quad core and DDR2 memory as it's very cheap right now.

 

I recon i can get a A7N8X-E Delux board for about £35.00 ( unless anyone can advise a better value board ), this will allow me to use my cpu to its full potential. I intend to build myself a new pc when my lad moves up a couple of years in high school, then he can use my old tower, until then i am very happy to just run my cpu at its max speed of 2.2ghz (and possibly overclock ) as i do not play games, so i think a better cpu is not needed at the moment. Many thanks for your help, you are a star !!!

 

Hmm, that's a decent price for the board but your RAM is still 333MHz and would have to be OC'd to match the motherboard. OC'ing is not for the faint hearted as you could have an expensive doorstop for your efforts. Is a possible %15 or more OC worth it for you for the risk of blowing up your machine? Besides, there's also a heat question here.

I see that you are comfortable with what you have and don't game so I, personally, would not even think of OC'ing or getting a new motherboard. Why fool around with what works? I'm sure I'll get some grief from the OC'rs here but so be it.

 

Thanks for the reply, i think i will take your advice and not bother I will probably spend a couple of hundred quid and get a mobo bundle one day :-D One more thing though, how do i know that the bios settings are set to best performance ? at present they are set at default settings