Graphics you can speed up. RAM speeds are tied to the FSB however, which is linked to CPU speed, so you'd have to do some jiggery pokery there, with severely limited Overclocking options. Honestly however, that silent knight hasn't been the recipient of many good reviews, and has caused a reviewer or two several cut fingers. In all honesty, Heres my opinion on heatsinks right now. For Extreme no holds barred overclocking: Scythe Ninja Thermalright Ultra 120/ 120 Extreme with an at least 60CFM fan. Enzotech Ultra X For silent operation: Zalman 9700 Noctua UH12F For light weight (IE, doesn't need an alternative motherboard bracket. I'm no expert on this market segment though, so other heatsinks can be recommended here by pretty much anyone) Thermalright Ultima 90
I suggest the Scythe Ninja, Ultra120 extreme, and Ultima 90. They're silent And provide the best cooling around.
Thanks for the opinions. Are there any advantages to "pre-overclocked" GTX cards made by BFG or eVGA? I'm aware of eVGA's "Step-up" program.
there just an overclocked graphics card with a warranty and quite often don't have the nvidia reference cooler
OC'd graphics cards = Not worth it. It doesn't yield enough performance benefit. Unless your idea of a good time is repeatedly running 3Dmark. Basically by the time your stock clocked card is out of date, overclocking it won't actually give you enough of a performance difference to stick with it. Besides, theres nothing a GTX wont play right now anyway.
Depending on the game and how far the overclock is, you can yield some more FPS by a noticeable amount if you are cutting it close with the settings, but with a GTX you really won't be anyway.
...theres nothing a GTX wont play right now anyway. What about games that will come out in 12-18 months time? For playing at 1600x1200, max settings on a 21" CRT monitor.
not sure if this has been mentioned? but intel chipset at the moment is more reilable over the nvidia 680 series. so... Q6600 G0 stepping Gigabyte P35C-DS3R 4GB Corsair DDR3 1066 8800GTX X-Fi Xtreme Audio My Gigabyte board is such great value for money, and i cant fault it at all. 8800 Ultras are just hand picked 8800GTX's and dont clock much better than standard 8800GTX's so there not worth the cash at all. quad cores love bandwidth and DDR3 gives them what they want! I am now waiting for DDR3 to drop in price like DDR2 has....
I have to point out, the 8800 ultras, while prohibitively expensive and so completely not worth it, they are NOT just cherry picked GTX models with a new cooler. I'm not sure what silicon revision new GTX cards are using, but the Ultra was designed to take advantage of newer A3 revision silicon when it first came out, hence the higher clocks and increased OCs. As for the intel chipset, I honestly haven't heard of much difference between the two. While upon launch the 680 chipset was plagued with problems, subsequent BIOS refinements have rendered current boards just as stable as anything else on the market, with few if any flaws.
In rare cases. But 90% of the time, running an OC card against a stock one won't yield more than 4 fps as a general maximum improvement. Rare cards with huge oc headroom can do ore than that though (Although unless you plan to phase change your GTX, I think we'll all agree the G80 doesn't have that much headroom. 90C load? Youch!)
Thank you all for the input. If CPU is QX6850, memory 4GB DDR2 1066 and card standard 8800GTX : Asus P5K or Asus P5K Premium WiFi ? Might overclock only the GTX at some point. .
True, G80s are pretty hot, most of the very high-end cards don't have overclocking headroom enough to get a significant increase without additional cooling. Just making a point that overclocking a graphics card isn't always pointless, especially on mid-range and low high-end where those 4-5FPS can actually make a difference.
Please dont waste your money on a QX6850! A Q6600 G0 stepping available at scan will OC to 3.6Ghz, for only £170 using a £15 arctic cooler. save your money and put it else where in the machine!
Burnout21 - Appreciate what you're saying, but: (1) Not familiar with overclocking. (2) The QX6850 apparently has certain extra internal features over the Q6600. (3) Want a "future-proof" system. .
They both have the same technologies, you can compare the two specs here. Only difference is Clock speed, FSB, and that the Q8650 has an unlocked multiplier. The Q6600 will overclock to 3ghz with 1333mhz fsb at ease for a fraction of the price. EDIT: ah yes.. and it also has TXT A technology of which i have mixed opinions about, staying clear of it for now.
TXT technology isn't really going to be useful, and isn't on the QX6850 anyway, from the bit-tech article: "With this in mind, Intel has opted not to include TXT in its flagship Core 2 Extreme QX6850..." So the only difference is going to be the stock FSB speed and the unlocked multiplier on the QX6850. Both processors will probably top out at the same speeds on air cooling anyway, so the unlocked multiplier won't really help.
Thanks for the links. For a novice, what does overclocking a Q6600 GO entail? Would a Thermaltake "Blue orb" be sufficient for overclocking it to 3+ ghz freqs?
The blue orb might do it. With the max orb I have been almost able to get 3.2ghz. One thing to keep in mind is that the oveclocking results will also depend on the chip that you get, as some chips go farther than others. Oh, and I'm almost getting 3.2 on the older stepping, not the newer G0 that you would (most likely) get.
