If you get addicted to overclocking, you may consider buying special memory modules. You see, as you overclock your CPU you are overclocking your memory modules as well and maybe what is preventing your system from achieve an even higher overclocking is your memory.

Just a simple example. Let’s assume that the maximum overclocking you could achieve with your Athlon 64 3800+ was at 230 MHz with its standard multiplier (12x). Under this configuration, your memory modules will be also running at 230 MHz (460 MHz DDR). If they are vanilla DDR400 modules, they will be running 15% above their standard clock. Maybe (just maybe) if you install DDR500 modules you will achieve higher results.

On the other hand, if you do have high-speed memories but are not being able to achieve its rated speed (let’s assume that you replaced the memory from the above system with DDR500 but couldn’t improve its overclocking at all), this means that what is preventing you from achieving a higher overclocking is your CPU, not the memory. However, since the memory was changed, we would run our overclocking procedure all over again, especially lowering the CPU multiplier.

After you have found the best overclocking for your system, it is time to unlock all items that we have locked, like the PCI Express bus, the AGP bus, etc. The procedure here is just the same, increase the clock rate, load Windows, test stability, and repeat the process all over again. This step is important especially if you want to increase the video performance of your system.