System Upgrade

[Stormhammer]

Hey guys, this is my first post so be nice. Im considering upgrading my current computer to be a little more graphics orientated, so I thought I might as well ask for some advice. Its a stock-standard acer (my sister got it for me for my birthday, mainly for uni work, but I want to give it a crack as a decent multimedia engine).

My Specs:

Its a standard Acer M5630...
Core 2 Quad Q6600 running at 2.4ghz (343FSB x 7multipliers), it seems to think its maxing out at 2.4ghz and is currently around 1.2V, but im not so sure about this as the tool im using doesnt seem to be too accurate (AIDA32). again want to point out it has been very inconsistent on the Everest home edition its saying im at 11.5 multipliers and 208.19mhz FSB
Running an Acer EG31M v.1.0 MB, which i believe is a intel bearlake g31 chipset, not so knowledgeable about MBs though
2 x 512mb DDR2 at 667mhz
running an ATI Radeon HD 2400 pro 256mb.
partitioned 320gig SATA2 HDD, but thats fine im not looking to upgrade that.

Basically wat im curious about is why is my FSB so slow, according to intel their g31 bearlake is supposed to sit alot higher then that, i thought it might be because my RAM is so low. Basically i no what needs to be upgrades, but what path would you guys take, and can you recommend any tools to improve my performance dramatically. Any advice would be more then welcome,
regards,
SH

 

[amplid]

Welcome to the forums! We're always nice...

Upgrading your RAM to at least 2Gb will boost your performance in Vista and DDR2 really isn't expensive these days...

Try overclocking your CPU, here's a good guide: Cyb3rGlitch Tutorials | How to Overclock CPUs and RAM
There are monitoring programs in that tutorial also.

As for graphics, if you really wanna game a lot and good, also depending on your budget..., go for a 9800GTX or GTX+, if you have a lot of bucks to spend, get a GTX260.

Amplid

 

[Stormhammer]

Well being a uni student i never have cash haha, but im saving for some upgrades. really all i want is a new GPU and RAM, and maybe some advice on some basic tweaks as i dont wanna destroy my sisters gift lol (considering im not a world renowned OC expert).

But yeah its a pretty decent little computer, wasnt expensive and its letting me tweak alot if i want, seems to be fairly flexible, but suffers from the usual manufactured computer issues (support, acer specific etc etc).

On the issue regarding OCing, my FSB bandwidth maxs at 2.7gb, is this the theoritical limit on my CPU OC. Disregard my noobieness as im really more of a programmer and play less demanding games (was a massive fan of starcraft and warcraft3 and AOE2 for a very long time), but this has changed recently, as there are some top class games out.

Final point is would u guys recommend a higher bandwidth RAM or a lower latency RAM, my current RAM is pretty good actually, very good performance, but its too little. Im thinking the lower lag RAM wud be better for gaming (faster loading of objects), and i think my CPU supports max of 800mhz anyway....

THanks Amplid!

Regards,
SH