I have had my system for over two years now and feel its time to upgrade some components. I would like to start with the RAM memory and processor. I currently have an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard and was wondering what is currently the very best RAM and processor to buy for it. I am new to computer modeing so any suggestions would be greatly apprecated

Hi,For CPU, I have two suggestions: a "conventional" choice and a not-so-conventional one.The former is simply the fastest Socket 478 chip available. Socket 478 is in the process of being phased out so Socket 478 CPUs will be difficult to find. I have the same motherboard and I use it with a Pentium 4 3.40GHz Northwood core (sometimes known as the "C" version). Another Socket 478 choice would be the Pentium 4 3.4GHz Prescott core. Prescotts are run on 90nm technology and have 1MB L2 cache. Theoretically, Prescotts are supposed to be faster and cooler. Reviews on the Web have generally shown the opposite to be true. Anyhow, Socket 478 CPUs will be hard to find and Northwood cores doubly as hard. So if you choose to go this route, get whatever you can find.The latter is get the ASUS Socket 479 adaptor and then buy a Pentium-M 770. The 770 was actually designed for notebooks (hence the need for an adaptor) and so run at a slower clock speed (2.13GHz). The slower clock speed allows less heat output and thus, more appropriate for notebooks. However, the enhancements in the chip allow performance to be on par with and sometimes even faster than some of Intel's fastest CPUs. If you're interested in trying this out, take a look here: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.as...770ct479&page=1As for RAM, check out OCZ and Crucial Ballistix. I understand that the best available right now are the PC3500 Platinum Rev. 2 from OCZ. If you don't overclock however, you won't find much difference between this RAM and other brands. IMHO, it pays to go with a reputable brand but within that brand, it may not always be necessary to go with the top-of-the-line.Hope this helps.Edwin

Thanks for the information Edwin!I have been looking around at Newegg and other sights since deciding to upgrade, and was focusing in on the Prescott 3.4. I was not aware of the similar performance to the Northwood. Also, thanks for the link on the Pentium M 770 I did some reading up on it. Very interesting product and implementation concept. I was actually thinking about trying it until I saw the price! Given that my current motherboard is a ASUS P4C800e I figure I will need to update it in a year, so an investment in a Prescott or Northwood looks much more attractive. I currently have a Pentium 3.0 800MHZ FSB (northwood?); do you think going to a Northwood or Prescott 3.4 would give me a significant improvement?Lastly, I will do some reading on the OCZ Platinum Rev 2. In area of RAM I've been recommended the Corsair XMS (2 x 512MB)(PC 3200. If you have an opinion on these RAMs (vs OCZ platinum) I would be interested to hear your thoughts.Thanks for your comments....Aston

Hi Aston,I doubt going from 3.0GHz to 3.4GHz would give you significantly better performance. On clock speed alone, the differential would only be 13% (3400 divided by 3000) and benchmarks usually show FPS performance improvements to be less than the clock speed improvement, unless you are jumping from one family of chips to another in which case you cannot equate performance with clock speed.As for the RAM, I am using the Corsair XMS TWINX1024-4000PRO myself. Corsair is great but I have heard OCZ and Corsair are better. Unfortunately, I live in Hong Kong and neither of those brands are available here, which is why I got the Corsair instead.Frankly, if I were you, I would either not upgrade at all right now or make a (much) more significant investment and upgrade CPU, RAM, motherboard and graphics card altogether. You seem to already have almost the best of everything that can be supported by your motherboard. Perhaps I could tempt you into buying an AMD Athlon64, nForce4 SLI motherboard and PCIe graphics card?! ;)Hope this helps!Edwin

Edwin:I have been thinking the same thing myself, on second thought. I think I will just update RAM and try to learn some about overclocking my CPU. (I hear ASUS is overclock friendly. Maybe get some better cooling. I will keep an eye on the Pentium-M 770 though and if prices come down a bit......well you never know :-).I got a good price quote on some Corsair RAM although I must say the OCZ's are peeking my interest. Is it possible to mix RAM's. I have an opportunity to get 1gig of Corsair now (two sticks), and might like to try some OCZ later.One last thing, do you know of any good resources where one can learn about over clocking? Any resource will do, but if I can get one that deals with the ASUS Pentium 4 combination that would be great!Again, thanks a lot. I am very, very new at this in your information has been very valuable.RegardsAston

Hi Aston,I am glad you found the info I gave useful. I don't have any links off hand that I could share with you but there isn't much to overclocking. I'll see how much I can share here.The basic principle is as follows:Processor clock speed = Front Side Bus (FSB) speed x multiplierSo for example, with your 3.0GHz CPU, the above equation would be 3000MHz = 200MHz x 15(Technically, your P4 is quad-pumped meaning that the FSB is actually 800MHz and the multiplier lower but you can ignore this as usually, the motherboards show FSB to be 200MHz.)With CPUs you can buy off the market, they are usually multiplier-locked (i.e. the 15 stays fixed) so in order to make your processor clock speed higher, you have to bump up your FSB. The problem with bumping up your FSB is that your RAM runs on the same FSB and so, your RAM has to be able to run as fast or else your system becomes unstable. To find the FSB that your RAM supports, divide the PCxxxx number by 16. For example, PC3200 RAM supports (the standard) FSB of 200MHz. My PC4000 RAM would support (4000 divided 16) 250MHz.Now, voltage. With both RAM and CPU, an overclocked chip can sometimes become more stable with increased voltage. That's why some (pretty much all except Intel-manufactured boards) motherboards allow you to vary CPU and/or RAM voltage. However, higher voltage has two risks: 1) increased heat; and 2) frying your CPU/RAM. So, you should make sure you have adequate cooling, which means a good heatsink (or perhaps water cooling) and good thermal paste (e.g. Arctic Silver).That's pretty much all there is to overclocking. The more advanced would then go into talking about better and better heatsinks and experiments into water cooling and phase change cooling. But those are all derived from the principles I have mentioned above.Hope this helps.EdwinPS. Mixing RAM from different brands would work but is generally not advised. Try to stay not only with the same brand (in the same machine) but also with the same type of RAM.

Hi Edwin, Great summary of over-clocking. I was looking for some orientation on the subject, this was perfect. What with all the different values being thrown around,(clock speeds, DDR, multipliers, PC values etc) I was getting a bit confused :-hmmm. I printed out our excellent summary, thanks for setting me straight :-) . Now I'm off to go shopping. What do you think of this list?:RAM: Corsair =1GB|PC3200XLPRO CORSAIR (i'm stuck with this since a pre-ordered, but isn't too bad)COOLING: Thermalright 120 heat sink Thermaltake Thunderblade A1926 Fan Artic Silver 6OVER CLOCKING SOFTWARE: For now, I'm using the AIBooster program that came with the motherboard. One additional question:: What is more important a higher PC numbers as in PC4000 vs. PC3200, or a lower latency as in 2-2-2-5 vs. 2.5-3-3-8 etc..Thanks, hope all is well in Hong Kong!Aston

Hi Aston,The weather in HK has been terrible lately, lots of thunderstorms and rain. In fact, I just looked at the HK International Airport Web site and many flights have been delayed and/or diverted to Taipei (about 1.5 hours away by flight).Anyhow, back to your hardware. Let me start with your "additional question". In the perfect world, you want BOTH fast clock speed and low latency. However, CPUs respond differently to clock speed and latency so the answer all depends on your choice of CPU. Intel CPUs benefit the most from higher clock speed so the higher the clock speed your RAM can go (i.e. the PC number), the faster your system will be. Latency matters less on Intel CPUs. With Athlon64's, it's the opposite. It's been proven on Anandtech that the CPU scales less with clock speed and runs best with low latency RAM.Now to your shopping list. With your Intel CPU, ideally, PC4000 RAM (or even higher) would have been better to drive higher CPU speeds (through higher FSB). However, I have heard the 3200XL are quite overclockable so you should be fine. You might have to make some adjustments though. The 3200XLs were meant to run at the standard FSB (of 200MHz) and ultra-low latency of 2-2-2-5. You want to change it to the opposite (high FSB and you can sacrifice the latencies a bit if necessary). So, if I were you, I would manually set the latencies to higher figures (2.5-3-3-8 if necessary) and then find the fastest FSB at which your system remains stable. Then, you can try to lower the latencies a bit until your system no longer remains stable. Then, up the latency back up a notch to where your system was still stable.I have heard great things about the Thermalright XP-120 and even though I don't know about your fan, it should do fine. I use Arctic Silver 5 myself (is there a 6?) and love it.Overclocking is about patience and trial and error until you get the perfect balance. Good luck and hope this helps!Edwin

Edwin, Thanks. Great info as usual. I received and installed my Corsairs today, and although I have just be using them for about 2 hours, it is obvious the you are correct on the over-clocking. They became ustable with a 5% over clock. Maybe its just that they havn't broken in yet. Any how I'll try those timings you mentioned as soon as I get the chance. I'll be getting an additional 1gig of RAM and the thermalright in the next couple of days, and I wanted to ask about power supplies.I currently have a stock Alienware power supply that time with my unit purchased 2 years ago (I belive it's 420W). Do you think it's worth it to upgrade to a Antec NeoPower, or a PCP&C 510 Deluxe? Or, if you have a recomendation, I would apprecate it.Hope the weather has brightened up for you over there in HK. You need to come visit us here in sunny Florida USA :-) As always, thanks for your time.

Aston,Ah yes, sunny Florida! I used to go to school in Pennsylvania and I heard that the weather in Philly now is pretty darn good too. I am looking out the window now (at nearly 4pm local time) and it looks like it's 10pm. :(I have never fully understood why but yes, my gut feel tells me that CPUs, RAMs and motherboards, like cars, need some time to break in. But you should definitely try to relax the timings (i.e. up the latencies) before you try the higher clock speeds. With the ultra-low latencies, even a 5% overclock is actually pretty good so it's only with relaxed timings that you would be able to reach the high clock speeds. And as I mentioned in my previous post, latencies don't really matter with Intel CPUs anyway.Now to your question about your PSU. If you open up your Alienware, do you see any brand name mentioned on the PSU? 420W sounds like it should be sufficient but I would place more emphasis on the brand name because that's indicative of the *quality* of your PSU (which dictates the stability of the current delivered to your components). My gut feel however, tells me that you should be fine with your current PSU since Alienware is a well-reputed system builder (from what I've heard although I don't live in the US anymore) which means they should include decent PSUs with their systems. Of course, you can afford a new PSU, then by all means get the Antec NeoPower but I doubt it's a high-priority purchase for you at the moment.Take care,Edwin

Thanks Edwin, and sorry for the delayed replay. I have been traveling all week!Well today (and for the last couple of days) Florida isn't so sunny anymore. Thunder showers for the past few days all over the state. I think you might be better in HK after all :)By the way I did received my Corsairs,(2 gig) and have been able to clock the system up almost 15%. to just short of 3.45gig. I haven't installed the Zalman fan a bought, so I hope that I will be able to get up a bit higher once I do. For now though, I have pretty smoooth fly bys, which really add to the realism. I can wait to do a full upgrade with an SLI system next year!Do you have any thoughts on my 9800Pro video card? Is it good enough, or can I get a nice increase by upgrading?Thanks and all bestAston

Good work on the overclock, Aston!I'm using a 9800 Pro myself and I've been repeating my praise for it. It's quite amazing that even two years after its release, it still works fantastically with even the more modern games like Far Cry and Half Life 2. As for FS9, it is said that FS9 does not scale much with video cards, more with CPUs (incidentally, this is the *opposite* of what happens in most games where they scale more with video card than with CPU clock speed). Thus, I wouldn't expect much of an improvement with a graphics card upgrade. Of course, it can't hurt though! (I'm planning an upgrade to a 7800GTX myself!)Hope this helps and take care,Edwin