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Elder III · Jul 15, 2009, 01:33 PM // 13:33

The 5200 is not known to be a great overclocker - while you might see some gains, the amount that would (likely) be stable on stock cooling is not going to really be worth it... imo. The Phenom series from AMD, esp. the Black Edition series is much better for Overclocking. Feel free to try abit, but as Quaker has pointed out it's not always worth it.

funway ftw · Aug 15, 2009, 04:33 AM // 04:33

ok so after some consultation from you very knowledgable people here I have build my new pc with the following stats.

x4 phenom II 955be ( with stock cooling)
gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mobo
powercolor radeon 4890 HD 1 gig GDDR5 gpu
thermaltake v9 gaming case
600w seasonic M12
4 gig kingston 1333 DDR3 ram
1 terrabyte sata WD HDD
sata dvd burner
vista 64 bit premium

Its been running with a 19 inch monitor atm as i havnt had it hooked to the net yet.

I have a quick question for you knowledgable people as i tend to panic when i spend a fair bit of cash

There is a hot smell when its running (is this normal?)
I opened the side of the case and put my hand in and the only place generating any heat is the GPU on the side closest to the case back.
now its not hot so you cant touch it but it is fairly warm. I dont have anything on the comp using the gpu at the moment except vista.

Is this normal (am i pannicking for no reason?) and if it isnt any tips?

thanks in advance.

Quaker · Aug 15, 2009, 04:49 PM // 16:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by funway ftw

its about 2.5 years old and what yield/benefit could be achieved by overclocking it?

Results will vary and it depends a lot upon what you want to achieve.
In most cases these days, games are more limited by GPU power than CPU power. If you are mostly looking to play games, you may not notice any real performance increase. If the game you are playing now runs at 80 fps with overclock, as opposed to 78 fps without it, you won't "see" any difference - especially if you peg it at 60fps with vsync on.
If you are running some heavy duty CPU intensive apps like video/audio encoding or editing you could see a difference.
If you are just running benchmarks for the e-peen you will get better numbers.

Overall, if you mostly play games, surf the web, watch youtube, and the other stuff most people do - you won't see any real benefit to overclocking.