Effect of a memory upgrade from (stock) 1066 to 1600, and a bit of OC questions

[AKJohn]

Hi all

I (thanks to some great help here on this forum) have Fsx running very nicely, but I'm always in the market for just a bit better performance in fsx. Like to pick your collective brains a bit if I may

Memory: I have 6gb of Crucial 1066 (@ 1186). What effect would going to 1600-labeled mem  have on fsx, all else being the same? I think that would end up at 1730 or so.

That's it for my memory. Now ... what else was I wanting to ask .... (just kidding)

This is the first pc I have overclocked, and I have conservatively overclocked this 3.2 to 3.84, and it made a noticeable improvement in FS. All I did was - in bios:

cpu ratio from 24 to 26

BClock from 132 to 148

Dram core volt to 1.5

- left all dram timings @ the default Auto.

Any tips wrt the above are welcome

Affinitymask: I went 254, as in a cpl of the FSGO profiles I looked at. Sure didn't hurt-and may have helped. Perhaps the placebo effect. But why not 15 - I understand fsx cant use virtual cores anyway. For that matter why not 7, so Norton can buzz away in the background on its own core without having to wait its turn?

Anyway - thanks. I'm getting to rambling a bit. To supliment my siggie below - a bit more info:

Asus P6T x58 mobo

Liquid for the cpu, Asetek "LCLC"

YHBA area with ALL cp options ON except static vehicles, very flyable at 15 fps or so, in the densest spots. in my carenado 152. Hiccups now and then but not bad.

Totally fluid in fsx default areas, and FTX areas out in the boonies.

1900x1200x32 res.

Thanks

[Guest J van E]

One quick tip: get rid of Norton: it's the worst possible AV-choice. Get NOD32 or make a FSX-specific boot without any AV on it.

I am not a real OC'er so I haven't got any tips, but when you got liquid cooling, you really should be able to OC a lot more than 3,84: most i7 920's can get 4.0 with a good air cooler, let alone a i7 965 with liquid!

For expert advice, try the forum here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/

[Sniper31]

I agree, with an i7 965 and liquid cooling, you are definately being conservative with the O/C'ing. That CPU is built for overclocking. But then, if your'e not comfortable, by all means don't rush into it. That said, I would push your CPU overclocking higher before I looked  at upgrading the RAM (even though the RAM you have IS a bottleneck compared to the rest of your system components). I've pushed my i7 975 to 4.3 on AIR cooling and that was just be adjusting the CPU ratio and the QPI....no RAM adjustments at all.