new pc and overclocking

[mackab24]

first of all merry xmas to everyone now onto the business, i have an amd athlon64 3800, on a nvidia nforce 4 motherboard. can any one tell me is it worth overclocking it i've been doing a lot of downloads and it seems to freeze my pc? and if so how do i go about doing this?

[Mattk]

overclocking wouldnt solve your problem....just add to them !
more info is needed as to why a download would freeze your pc but it sounds to me like you need more ram.Your specs you describe are better than mine and i have no such problems but i do have 3 gigs of ram.

[mackab24]

oh i see, i only have one gig
i do want two but with xmas and all that i couldnt afford too

[fo3nix]

1gig is enough for that sort of thing though. Your computer should be flying!

What anti-virus do you have running? If you have Norton, I'd recommend uninstalling it and putting AVG free on:
http://free.grisoft.com/

Also, what do you mean by 'freeze my pc'? Can you be a bit more specific?

[Mattk]

as said above 1 gig should be enough.more info please on the 'freezing'.

[mackab24]

basically when i try to open up another page such as explorer or even my documents it can take to 3 minutes which is very annoying?

[fo3nix]

There's something definitely wrong then.

Do a full virus scan.

Also, press ctrl+alt+del and then click the processes tab. There should be a column title that says 'CPU'. Click it twice so that the highest numbers in that column are at the top, and then let us know if there are any really high numbers (above 20 or so), and if so, what are the program names associated with those numbers? (the names are to the left of the numbers, in that window).

[mackab24]

their is one really high which is system idle process and thats 95???????

[fo3nix]

That's fine. That's any background stuff that windows does while you aren't looking, and it's meant to be that high.

Any others a bit lower than that?

[mackab24]

no their isn't its doing my head in, i built the system myself , my first time, i wish i had gone for core duo

[fo3nix]

Run your antivirus. What programs do you have running on your computer right now? Your processor you have is perfectly fast enough.

Does it start up fast too, and is it fast in other ways? Or is it always terribly slow?

[mackab24]

no its normally ok im thinking of getting rid of it ive done a full system scan and everything is ok

[fo3nix]

When does it seem to freeze then?

It could be some hardware incompatability.

[mackab24]

when downloading and when im opening a new program

[fo3nix]

The downloading will be limited to your connection speed, not your computer.

[mackab24]

i know i have a 4 meg connection with blueyonder, but i never experinced this freezing when i had my old pc, which was a mucher lower spec

[The Mack]

Install the Windows Hotfix for dual core processors