Well that was a lot easier than I was expecting – I managed to up my CPU from 2.6GHz to 3.2GHz.
Running at Stock
With the new cooler (a Coolermaster Hyper TX3) and very little effort (I unlinked the RAM from the CPU and increased the bus speed)
Overclocked to 3.2GHz
I’m sure with more fiddling (such as adding more clock speed and over volting the CPU) I could add more to the speed but I’m quite happy with where it’s at currently.
The extra oomph is slightly noticeable in games. I’ve seen Dawn Of War 2 loading times decrease slightly and Command and Conquer 3 loads a level almost instantly. My days of serious distributed computing over but I’m sure the extra 600MHz shouldn’t be sniffed at. I no longer run any DC project at home on the machine as I no longer agree to much with Folding@home (they seem to be all about the serious DC’ers who run graphics and SMP clients 24/7 – something I cant compete with due to running costs) and there’s barely any other projects I like the look of (BOINC’s verification system is a joke – only half of the work people are doing is actually scientific – admittedly you know it’ll be correct.) I do like the idea of code breaking using distributed.net but seems a waste of electric. Maybe that’s the “eco warrior” coming out again.
Regardless the extra oomph is appreciated during LaTeX compiling of my documents, MP3 ripping and other day to day tasks. Beats the Atom I’ve been using for a while anyhow!
