[Zaine7673]

Hi, I've just formatted my HDD and reinstalled XP on my desktop because it started being really slow. Now it's better but it's not as fast as it first was when I bought it. Now, I have a few questions:

1) If you format then reinstall the OS after a while, would your PC run as fast and smoothly as it did when you first bought it or are there going to be losses in speed and performance which cannot be regained?

2) When overclocking a AMD Athlon XP 1800+, up to what percent of overclocking is safe and what should be a safe temp reading for it?

3) Right now its shows AMD Athlon XP 2100+ / 1.73GHz with the temp being 35-37C. Is this ok?

4) Also How would this overclocking effect the DDR SDRAM?

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1) Yes but if performance is going down because the hard drive's getting old, wiping it won't help it.

2) Most processors you can't be sure how far they will overclock because they are all unique. In many cases all a slower processor is is a faster processor that's unable to run at the faster speed so AMD/Intel stick a lower rating on it. Therefore if you can't push it beyond a certain value, that's your limit.

3) I personally don't recommend overclocking as it drives the hardware into an early grave, because of the extra heat the CPU is generating. That temperature is fine.

4) As it stands now, it probably wouldn't affect it, as that CPU probably can't go fast enough to affect the memory. But all sticks are different, all sticks are unique and some don't like bits running faster than they should be.

[Neil Jones]

1) Yes but if performance is going down because the hard drive's getting old, wiping it won't help it.

2) Most processors you can't be sure how far they will overclock because they are all unique. In many cases all a slower processor is is a faster processor that's unable to run at the faster speed so AMD/Intel stick a lower rating on it. Therefore if you can't push it beyond a certain value, that's your limit.

3) I personally don't recommend overclocking as it drives the hardware into an early grave, because of the extra heat the CPU is generating. That temperature is fine.

4) As it stands now, it probably wouldn't affect it, as that CPU probably can't go fast enough to affect the memory. But all sticks are different, all sticks are unique and some don't like bits running faster than they should be.