EggXpert

I just built myself a new Gaming PC and Ive been playing around with over clocking it, but first Id like to know what my major bottlenecks are likely to be.  Ive already moved the multiplier on the CPU up to 15x, and its stable there.  Where do I need to concentrate with this rig?  if I upgrade it whats my first priority?  aside from that any general comments/advice for a first time over clocker are appricieted, including anything to the effect of ZOMG WHYD YOU BUY THAT COMPONENT ITS HORRIBLE BUY THIS.  I think I did enough research ahead of time but better to know now then never.  Thanks in advance.

Well, hmmmmmm.

You say you're running your CPU around 3.0ghz or so? I think with that multiplier it would make it around that right? Correct me Im wrong.

Your 8800gt is an awesome card. It would be the piece of hardware angry at the OTHER hardware for bottlenecking it. So thats not the bottleneck.

I have to ask.......are you somehow experiencing choppy framerates or slowdowns in gameplay? Or do you just want some better performance?

Anyway, honestly, at the moment, I dont see a real bottleneck, as long as your CPU is OCed. Even if you upgraded your CPU to the X2 6000 3.0ghz or even the X2 6400 3.2ghz, you would see a little increase in performance, due to the slightly higher L2 cache. You MAY experience a LITTLE better performance with 2 more gigs of ram.

Heres my suggestion, especially if you're trying to gear up for the next-gen video games coming out-
Get a quad.
SLI your 8800gt (ofcourse, buy a better PSU to manage it)

Actually, wait a minute until the Tri-cores from AMD come out. They perform VERY slightly under the quads if not exactly the same. They're cheaper as well, but will provide more cores to manage bigger and better games.

I think you need to add a couple more cores to your system IMO. Another CPU core or two (Tricore or quad) and another video card if you have the budget. I think your real bottleneck may just be your budget.

Otherwise, honestly, switch to Intel. You'd see a performance gain in doing that alone. You'll also see a dollar incresase as well. :)

First, as to choppiness, a little, when playing Crysis, with most settings on high, when I zoom in or in a few huge battle scenes.  I'm actually mildly disappointed, while its a very good looking game, it hasn't totally blown me away.  As to Intel, when I was doing the research it seemed that going with an AMD black would give me far more bang for my buck, and I was trying to stay around 1000 for my budget.  One of the things that seems strange to me at the moment is the memory.  I know its rated for 2.1 v but its defaulted to 1.8.  Should I just raise it up?  Would the associated performance gain even be meaningful? (Or is there even one, do I need to increase the FSB first?)

I don't believe that increasing the power to the ram will increase performance at all, you have to up the FSB and/or timings to matter

choppiness in crysis is normal, given that it is crysis, I would just be happy you can run it on high (what res btw?) 

How many hard drives do you have?

I've noticed systems with Crysis installed on separate drives from the OS play Crysis better than those using the same drive.  

Also Your using Vista, did you disable the indexing services? Also check for other activities in the background as well, your system should play Crysis on high just fine.

You might also consider 2GB more RAM.