CPU usage issue.

[bahador]

Hey guys. I’m using buzz in windows XP SP3 and that is my cpu usage going higher than a hundred percent and truth to be told anything higher than 97% makes your life as hard as hell cuz you can barley hear your song and all you hear is clicks and interrupted rushes of a song.

My cpu is Intel core2due e8400 and I’m running windows through 4gigs of memory (which as I have heard and seen on the forums, windows XP 32bit is not capable of using any amount of memory more than 3.8gig or so.)

So basically I have three questions:

1. Will upgrading my cpu to an Intel core-i7 help this issue to be fixed (still on Windows XP SP3 - 32 bit)?
2. And if I upgrade my Mother Board, CPU and Memory, should I reinstall windows and all of my stuff or the previously installed version will detect and adopt the hardware changes, on its own?
3. Is buzz compatible with windows 8?

[UNZ]

1) Yes, but i suggest Win7 or 8 (64bit)
2) Yes reinstall. No, previously installed programms etc will have to be reinstalled again. But it's pretty much your only choice because its not possible to upgrade from XP to 64bit win7/8.
3) Yes.

[bahador]

thank you so much unz.

[bahador]

I forgot to ask something, as mentioned I have an Intel Core2Due E8400 and I want to over clock my cpu from 3.0 to 3.6Ghz but I have not done this before and I’ve heard some rumors that it will harm your system and cpu. I was wondering if

1. It’s true and is it kind of a threat to the health and performance of your system?
2. If so, why they have spotted the overclocking option in the first place?
3. And how it can affect the performance of my system or cause it any issue?

4. my main board is asus p5q combo with 4 gigs of memory installed (DDR2 1333) and an external cooler master sphere fan. I want to over clock it to 3.6Ghz, is there anything I should be mindful of when overclocking as an stable approach? like adjusting the fsb, memory timing and basically anything related. I'm so new to this whole thing and I really need some advice before blowing my system off.

thank you so much.

[UNZ]

i personally prefer a stable system to one that runs slightly faster, so i don't overclock.

If you really want to overclock, i'd make sure you have good cooling, the stock fans that come with the cpu will probably not be good for this.
But if you have to invest in good cooling, then the question becomes: why not spend that money on a better cpu in the first place...

There's always the possibility to damage your hardware with tweaks like this, you may get lucky and your cpu/ram runs perfect while overclocking, or it could just be unstable, maybe it will shut down itself when it gets too hot etc...but you could also end up with an expensive brick...or just shorten the lifespan of your components. I've seen systems that ran great when overclocked, and others that immediately became unstable if you pushed the clock just very very slightly beyond the standard.

btw modern CPU like the i7 already kind-of-auto-overclock within a save range of values. They dynamically adjust the frequency of individual cores to distribute heat better (and save power) and give you optimal performance for the task at hand (multi-threaded vs single-threaded loads etc). Of course you can push it further still but yeah..its a gamble.

[Mu_]

[...]
2. And if I upgrade my Mother Board, CPU and Memory, should I reinstall windows and all of my stuff or the previously installed version will detect and adopt the hardware changes, on its own?
[...]

You don't need to reinstall windows at all. All you need is upgrade registry information about chipset and particularly for HDD chipset drivers.
So you can keep your configuration.
You may need a standard (not USB) FDD controller connected to your machine and prepared 1.44 MB floppy diskette for SATA/RAID drivers and you will need original installation disk for windows.
Cheers
Mu.