Well, after I got the new motherboard and did a successfull reformat, Im pleased to say my computer is up and working. I am now experimenting with OCing, as Im dissattisfied with my shoddy and unstable fps in games such as counterstrike source, oblivion, etc.
Ive read up a bit and tried a few things on my own, I assume since Im able to type this post, that I didnt seriously mess things up. First a couple of pics of my cooling setup. Please, try not to laugh. Its the new "poor man's cooling." My mean buddies.... they dubbed it "ghetto cooling" and thanked me for the hilarious picture. -_-' Jerks.



Alright, now, I took these while running two instances of Prime95 for about 15 minutes, one instance on each core. Setting both instances to both cores didnt really make much of a difference. Mainly , Im worried about the temp, is that bad? I didnt do anything to the ram, as I have no idea what Im doing, RAM wise.



What I want to do is get the best performance I can out of what I have right now, on fan cooling, which you see in the above. There arent any truly multithreaded games out right now , so if I want good performance, I guess I need to OC a bit. Socket is AM2 btw. rest of the info is in the screenies.

Can you guys help me get the best out of my system until I can afford an upgrade? Its a crossfire motherboard, and Im afraid all I have for now is the x1900. (I do know the x2900 is coming out, Im so stoked , going to start saving for that and amd's 2008 release)

Are they idling temps?

If so they are pretty high tbh. Do you actually have any case fans? - really you need some especially when overclocking.

those temperatures are under full load, from prime95, I ran it for another 15 minutes, and it stayed at 55c. Right now, it's idling at 40c :s , before I pushed it from stock, it was 35c idle I think. I dont have any case fans, just what you see above. Only fans in there are the cpu fan, Powersupply fan, gpu fan (which doesnt do it's job well at all) and those two box fans.

The case is circa 1995 atx... I think. Its really old, the mobo in it held a pentium processor.
Im planning on adding on more later, new case maybe, case fans, etc. My upgrade path at this point is

1. Second x1900 crossfire edition graphics card (unless the x2900 is released soon)
2. New powersupply (will use the old one to power case mods, like neon lights, extra fans, etc)
3. New case
4. Misc. Mods (fans, liquid/gas cooling, UV lights, etc)
5. 2008 AMD processor release (hope its not too expensive...)

I took a leap of faith with AMD. It would have only cost me 20$ more for a core2duo... but after dealing with p4 and celeron for so long, Im sick of intel. So far Im happy with my new AMD, and I want to give it the best config I can.