Will I get anything OCing my GPU considering my ancient CPU?

[Wanker79]

I just decided to upgrade my ancient system. I've been running a Athlon 2400+, Radeon 9200, and 512MB PC2100 RAM. I just put in another 512MB of PC2100 (maxed out my board), and I'm replacing the 9200 with an x1550. Is there any point to OCing the x1550? I'm guessing that the CPU is probably already holding it back, so I wouldn't get any benefit from OCing the card.

 

[outlw6669]

Might as well overclock it. Even CPU limited it will let you turn up more eye candy.

 

[SirCrono]

yup, filtering performance (AA & AF), maybe some more shader power too.

My way of thinking is: You won't lose anything so you might as well do it.

 

[Wanker79]

Thanks for the input. My last question is about power. How much could I expect to up the power req. for the x1550 by OCing? I'm probably already pushing the limits of my crappy PSU, so if it's anything like OCing a CPU my first foray into OCing has probably ended before it began.

 

[outlw6669]

Probably not bye enough to affect your system. The x1550 is a prety low end card.

 

[Wanker79]

Well, by PC is even more low-end. The crappy PSU Compaq stuck in it is only a 250W Bestec with 14A on a single 12V rail.

I'm really close to building a new rig from the ground up, but I'm just trying to stretch this hunk of junk another 8-12 months until D3 comes out (and by then Nehalem will have dropped and hopefully I'll be able to get the 775 stuff a bit cheaper than now). So I'm trying to put as little money as I can into this rig as I can.

 

[outlw6669]

Overclocking will probably help you keep it viable until then. The worst that is likely to happen is that your system will become unstable and randomly shutdown or reboot from lack of power. If this happens simply stop overclocking and everything should be working fine again.

A 775 setup is pretty cheap right now as it is. Decent Mb for $80, CPU for $70 and RAM for ~$25. Add a decent PSU and GPU on that for gains on the cheap right now. Personally, if I had the cash now, I would be enjoying the extra performance now and saving for a better GPU a year or so down the line.

 

[Wanker79]

You're right about the 775's. I put together a build wishlist with an E7200, P43 mobo, 9600GSO, 2gig of DDR2 800, a 250MB 'Cuda HDD, case (2x12cm fans), and a 600W OCZ PSU for $600. Unfortunately, that was right at my budget and I realized that I probably can't reuse my WinXP that came with my Presario. So that would mean that I'd have to scale back to a E2180 and a 500W Antec Basiq PSU in order to fit Vista x64 and another 2gig of DDR2 800.

Right now, my old rig is handling TF2 better than I probably could have hoped (and that's before I put in the x1550). So I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that by the time D3 comes out the E7200 build will be down in the range of my meager budget. And that'll still leave me a nice upgrade path to a quadcore in a couple years.

As you can probably tell, being on the bleeding edge of technology isn't really a concern of mine. lol