No. To be honest with you I am scared to overclock since my last episode, it was some time ago but I fried my chipset. I would like to look into this as an option, is it safer to do now?
You should really start a thread in the overclocking section for the GPU and do a little light reading. I use MSI afterburner and I've had 900Mhz from my GPU although I do confess to having owned it a while. It has been disassembled cleaned and better TIM applied which helped temps.
Temps are what you need to watch really. GPUs can get hotter than CPUs. Mine is 80 degs max under heavy load and the noise is ok so I'm happy with that. As you up the overclock eventually it becomes unstable (ie crashes the rig), you can then up the voltage a little and see if it helps. AB only lets you set the max safe voltage, then only side effect is more volts is more heat. So you want to be sensible with the voltage anyway.
The software has a GUI which can show you in game your FPS, VRAM used, temps, GPU load etc etc. You can set custom fan speed profiles to tame the noise from the GPU too. All in all it's just handy kit to have
To be honest it sounds like you need to troubleshoot the components with a bootdisk and verify what's ok. Hirens bootdisk can boot from USB memsticks or ultimatebootcd is another you could burn to disk. These give you the tools to test your RAM, HDDs (not SSDs!!), stress test the CPU etc etc, again handy kit to have. It could even be your PSU relating to the rig locking up, I don't know for sure, you will have to do the checks bud.
Upping the GPU will help, you'll have more VRAM to play with for a start. For £300 you could toy with a 128GB SSD for a fresh install and a decent GPU like the 7870XT or pushing it a 7950. Maybe even a B grade bargain, there have been 7950s at £180 believe it or not. You can use Afterburners GUI to confirm wether the GPUs are being used to their fullest I doubt they will be. Although I do find the 7870XT much more tempting than settling for a 7850.
Haswell will have a better IGP. I'm interested to see wether LucidMVP comes in on the new socket and how much gaming boost is given from the CPUs IGP. A better CPU and RAM would still help a lot to be fair it just depends when you want to upgrade them. You can always flog off your old kit to recoup some cash whatever you do.
YOUR BASKET
1 x
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x
Asus P8Z77-V LX2 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x
Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CW) - Blue Light £40.00
1 x
Thermalright Macho 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £29.99
Total : £329.96 (includes shipping : FREE).
I don't think anyone would blame you for upgrading the GPU coping some games and having a new start on a SSD and wait on haswell....
YOUR BASKET
1 x
Sapphire HD 7870 XT rev2.0 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games £209.99
1 x
Samsung 128GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD128BW) £109.99
Total : £319.98 (includes shipping : FREE).
Might as well have a little go overclocking the 460 since you have it once you have the rig running stable though......arrrrgghh I don't know you choose....... have you got a coin?
