Figured I'd post here since I'm practically building a new PC. So I don't have much money right now, but I'd like to put together a decent PC for mostly playing RTS's with decent graphics and good performance. I am a PC tech, but my knowledge when it comes to performance, graphics and particularly over clocking is extremely limited or non-existent... Here is what I've got to work with: Celeron 420 1.6 ghz CPU - I've read that this CPU can be OC'ed nicely. Stock Lenovo MB - I figured if I'm doing any OC'ing I'll need to buy a new one - I'm just not sure what I'm looking for when it comes to OC'ing. Any suggestions? 2 GB DDR2 Plenty of peripherals like DVD-RWs, HDDs, etc... So I figure I'm looking at getting the new MoBo, decent PSU, decent GFX card, and good cooling solution (fan/heatsink), I just need some advice because I have no idea what to get. I suppose there are some decent bang-for-you-buck MBs and GFX cards out there that will enable me to OC, but I've been away from the PC game for too long (outside mundane tasks like win installs and data recovery) and I just need some advice and to be pointed in the right direction. Thanks for any help.
I would look for a used 775 mainboard on ebay; no reason to buy a new board for such old tech. Gigabyte, DFI, and evga all make good overclocking boards...but generally, Gigabyte is the best if you can get the features you want in one of their boards. I don't know what cooler you have...if it is the stock cooler for that processor, you will need a much larger one to push that chip to the limit. You have a lot of options on 775, and I would go with ebay here as well.
thanks for the advice. Yeah, this might be kind of a joke trying to OC this CPU but I got kind of excited about it when I heard people were getting 3+ GHz out of it. Any suggestions on cooling brands? I've gone with thermaltake in the past, I'm not sure how they stack up anymore... I might not OC it at all, the MB I've got now has a PCI-E 16x slot, so I might just grab a sub $100 GPU - any suggestions? I'm not sure if the slot is 2.0 or not, it doesn't say in the service manual or on the board itself so I'm sure it's probably not...
A 3ghz celeron single core is still a celeron single core. If you're after decent games performance, you ought to get a new platform for your system. There's plenty of decent value stuff in the graphics market for PCI Express that will play modern games on low settings OK, but for the CPU you're probably a bit stuck until you get a new board as well, you may as well make an upgrade of it.
good luck gaming on that... my system died and i had to get a new pc(emachine) on credit from best buy and it came with that celeron 420 but i droped my old dual core Pentium d in it and a 4850 but it still is terrible.
care to explain why it's terrible? With hardware like that if you can't play games you're probably doing something wrong!
well in truth it worked decent until the new catalyst 10 drivers.... then i suffered a major fps drop 40-50%.. on left 4 dead which is the only game i had installed untill i'm done upgrading. i guess they must be alot more cpu/gpu intensive or maybe memory hogs. On the pentium d is about 6 years old now? at least 5..
well it it's been all the 10.x... since i updated from 9.x i'll try the .5 though even tried the 10.x on fresh install of xp
ah, I don't know what XP drivers are like these days, nobody really uses XP any more of the gamers I know.
yeah i tried vista but i ran into a 3 way compatiblity problem with no solution between my ati card , vista, and my monitor... it wouldn't support dvi out in vista so i went back to xp. but i got rid of it. it was on the first gaming lcds that didn't ghost.
