New to Overclocking, advice please..

[miseryguts]

Hello to all here (great forum & very informative)

I have recently inherited what i think is a fairly decent system, but i don't know what all the components are (or how to identify them) what i do know is as follows: i7 920 2.67 (o/c to 3.2GHz) 1GB HD 5870 o/c, 6GB DDR3 Ram, pretty sure there are no extra coolers or fans etc.

Would it be possible with this current set up to get a little more performance on the more demanding current games and imminent ones (R.A.G.E, ARMAIII, Battlefield 3 etc) i play at 1920x1200 with mostly high/max settings on most current games Crysis 2 etc.
Could this processor be overclocked any further..? would adding more Ram or another 5870 provide significantly more performance..? what i am looking for is the cheapest way of getting the most significant performance boost in the short term, as i am not able at the moment to afford any major hardware upgrades or a new system.

Thanks for listening.

 

[geon106]

Hello to all here (great forum & very informative)

I have recently inherited what i think is a fairly decent system, but i don't know what all the components are (or how to identify them) what i do know is as follows: i7 920 2.67 (o/c to 3.2GHz) 1GB HD 5870 o/c, 6GB DDR3 Ram, pretty sure there are no extra coolers or fans etc.

Would it be possible with this current set up to get a little more performance on the more demanding current games and imminent ones (R.A.G.E, ARMAIII, Battlefield 3 etc) i play at 1920x1200 with mostly high/max settings on most current games Crysis 2 etc.
Could this processor be overclocked any further..? would adding more Ram or another 5870 provide significantly more performance..? what i am looking for is the cheapest way of getting the most significant performance boost in the short term, as i am not able at the moment to afford any major hardware upgrades or a new system.

Thanks for listening.

If the CPU and GPU is overclocked you could overclock the RAM.

However, those specs should run those games at max settings. I have similar specs except my GPU isn't overclocked(see sig) give or take and have no issues and neither should you.

You could try and push the CPU further but you wouldn't get much improvement with those games. A better GPU would but the 5870 is more than sufficient and a GPU better would cost an arm and a leg

 

[miseryguts]

i tried to overclock just using the following settings in a different thread:

multi = 19
bclk = 180
voltages auto
however i have no idea what my CPU Vcore should be at the moment it's 1.26875V [1.200000V]

When i try to boot with these settings my PC will either start the boot process & immediately restart multiple times or it seems to hang indefinately whilst booting (black screen) after manually switching on & off several times it will then boot with the following message:

The system has experienced boot failures etc..
Last settings in bios may not coincide with current H/W states

Current CPU Speed: 2.53GHz
Current BCLK: 133MHz
Current Memory Speed: 1066MHz

Any ideas..?

Thanks.

 

[!TIMMY!]

I would search about to see what the recommended vcore is for your chip. Never put too much in because it will shorten the life of it. Also when you add more vcore, it will run hotter, so download some temperature software like CoreTemp to monitor the temps. Don't exceed the maximum rated temp that Intel states is the max safe temp, which can be found on their website.