Okay, I'm a real software guy and hardly touch the hardware in my beauty. The only things I've done up 'till now is tear apart a comp, install/rip out a cdrom and hd a couple of times, same with pci/agp cards. Not much interesting voodoo there.
So I was going to ask some questions as I might just dare enter teh dark corners in my case.
First of all, I'm not completely satisfied with my motherboard (Gigabyte 8SG667, based on a SiS 648 chipset). It works fine, agp 8x, usb 2.0, yadda yadda bla bla. The thing is, it sortof limits my tweaking abilities and pleasures. For example, the BIOS is very limited, no temp sensors and (somewhat unrelated) it occasionally has a problem shutting down.
So what would I have to watch out for when replacing a motherboard? Probably a simple question. What's on there right now is a P4 2.8 GHz, which I'd like to keep if possible. The memory in right now is 2x 256 DDR at 333 MHz, I wouldn't know if anything else is important, but do tell.
I'd also appreciate it if anyone could recommend me a brand or even specific a model. (in case of a model, I'd like to keep the AGP 8x support, but USB 2.0 isn't that important. Also not sure what the crucial factors are in making that decision)
Second question would be about under-/overclocking. I have not tinkered with my CPU yet but tried underclocking my Radeon 9700 Pro before. Unless the apps I used for that are malfunctioning, I didn't notice much difference.
I set the core and mem clocks from the default (324.0/310.5 MHz) to the lowest it went (290.3/279.0) and forgot to reset it at some point. I didn't really notice much difference while playing XMP at the low clock rates.
So my question is, is overclocking really worth it to get better performance in games?
What do you think would be the best way to gain performance ingame? (including upgrading or overclocking components?)
And last but not least: Are there any good sites to get a hardware n00b like me started?
Thx.
So I was going to ask some questions as I might just dare enter teh dark corners in my case.
First of all, I'm not completely satisfied with my motherboard (Gigabyte 8SG667, based on a SiS 648 chipset). It works fine, agp 8x, usb 2.0, yadda yadda bla bla. The thing is, it sortof limits my tweaking abilities and pleasures. For example, the BIOS is very limited, no temp sensors and (somewhat unrelated) it occasionally has a problem shutting down.
So what would I have to watch out for when replacing a motherboard? Probably a simple question. What's on there right now is a P4 2.8 GHz, which I'd like to keep if possible. The memory in right now is 2x 256 DDR at 333 MHz, I wouldn't know if anything else is important, but do tell.
I'd also appreciate it if anyone could recommend me a brand or even specific a model. (in case of a model, I'd like to keep the AGP 8x support, but USB 2.0 isn't that important. Also not sure what the crucial factors are in making that decision)
Second question would be about under-/overclocking. I have not tinkered with my CPU yet but tried underclocking my Radeon 9700 Pro before. Unless the apps I used for that are malfunctioning, I didn't notice much difference.
I set the core and mem clocks from the default (324.0/310.5 MHz) to the lowest it went (290.3/279.0) and forgot to reset it at some point. I didn't really notice much difference while playing XMP at the low clock rates.
So my question is, is overclocking really worth it to get better performance in games?
What do you think would be the best way to gain performance ingame? (including upgrading or overclocking components?)
And last but not least: Are there any good sites to get a hardware n00b like me started?
Thx.