Well, your graphics card is fast enough that your CPU just *might* be the bottleneck to higher performance, but probably not unless you run your games at less than 1024x768- then you're talking about 180fps instead of 200.
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In most systems, the vid card can't keep up. If you look at benchmarks with different cards on 1 system, frame rates for 640x480 and 800x600 are typically identical because the fps are limited as to how fast the PC can calculate what's going on. However, at higher resolutions (like 1600x1200), where the frame rate is lower and the video card is the limit, the processor can be 500MHz or 1GHz and the fps will remain exactly the same. Unless you play games at greater than 1280x1024 resolution, any difference in frame rate will be higher than the refresh rate of your monitor and you'll never even notice it. Applications like SETI, or compiling software or encoding Divx are about the only place you'll ever see the difference between your Athlon 800 and anything faster- you've got a speed-demon right out of the box! Overclocking to 1 gig will give you bragging rights, but it won't perform much differently than 800MHz.
When you overclock your front-side-bus (FSB) you're speeding up the CPU clock, the RAM, and any PCI and AGP cards you have. So, if you run your Athlon800 at a 110MHz FSB, you'll get a 10% gain accross the board- the proc will be 880MHz, and the GeForce2 will be running 10% faster, too. (Of course, if any 1 component can't handle running 10% faster, you have to slow everything back down.) If you look in bios, there is usually a setting there for FSB. Try changing it in small increments until your computer hangs up on bootup/won't start, then back it up to the last safe spot. If there isn't an option in bios, look in your motherboard manual for jumper settings to change on the board.
Overclocking alone rarely damages anything and most overclocked PCs easily remain stable and dependable until the next upgrade. Usually the damage is caused by overvoltage or overheating induced by extreme overclocking. By increasing the voltages going to your processor and motherboard, it's often possible to coax more speed out of it than was possible at the lower voltage. Both increased speed and increased voltage will cause your computer to run hotter, necessitating greater cooling ability. So, put on a larger heatsink/fan and throw a few extra fans in your case, and you should be good for 10-15%, no problem!
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Asus A7V
Duron
[email protected]@1.80V
[This message has been edited by grover (edited 09-15-2000).]
