ASUS M50Vm-B4 ? from a newbie

i plan on ordering this in the next few weeks, (ASUS M50Vm-B4) from xoticpc.com and ive been reading info on overclocking the cpu & graphics card, but i cant find any overclocking specs on this processor. i pretty sure i can follow the guide on how to overclock but i would like to know what to overclock it to.
other then the specs below i only plan to add the, artic silver 5 compound from xoticpc. but i do plan on buying vista 64 bit elsewhere & maybe a 7200 rpm hard drive. xoticpc seems a little high on these. also i'm not a hard core gamer but i do like to play, and if i'm gonna replace my desktop i'd like the comfort of knowing that if i wanna play one of those cpu & graphics hungry games i should be able to! this is gonna replace my desktop so gaming is not the only thing i will use this for (school, internet, blu-ray, ect) so any insight will be appreciated. heres the specs.
thanks bob



Processor & Cache Memory

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T9400 2.5GHz 6MB 1066MHz FSB
Operating System
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
Chipset
Intel® PM45 + ICH-9
Main Memory
4GB DDR2 800 MHz, expansion up to 4GB
Display
15.4" WXGA+ (1440X900) glossy
Video Graphics & Memory
nVidia GeForce 9600M GS 1,024MB DX10
Hard Drive

32

0GB 5400RPM

Optical Drive
2X Blu-Ray Reader/8X DVDRW Super Multi
Card Reader
8-in-1 Card Reader
Video Camera
1.3 Mega Pixel swivel web camera

 

OK -- what on earth are you planning on doing that is going to require or benefit from overclocking a 2.5G 9400 cpu? Hard-core encoding, maybe, but little else is going to work any faster on anything but benchmarks .

As for games, the gpu continues to be the bottleneck, not the cpu. And in the case of something at the level of the T9400, it's always going to be the gpu. The 9600M GS is roughly equivalent to the 8600M GT in terms of performance, so it's *not* going to play something like Crysis or AOC at the highest settings with decent framerates, regardless of overclock settings (which are potentially going to kick up the internal temps a fair bit). This is a midrange notebook gpu, nothing more, and is thoroughly outpaced by most mid-level desktop gpus, esp the current ones like the amd 4xxx.

My advice, honestly, is to first see what this system is capable of doing for you, and I'll bet that it will be adequate for your needs . Overclocking for the sake of that alone doesn't accomplish anything if the gains are only minimal.

One other point -- you are unlikely to gain much in the way of tangible benefits from the ASilver, and doing that *VOIDS* your 2 year Asus warranty (overnight 2way prepaid shipping, usual NA turnaround 1-2 days, etc) and perhaps your 1 year ADP as well - everything will have to be provided by Xotic directly themselves. You may wish to reconsider that option.

 

clearskies....
thanks for the info. as far as overclocking first ive heard of it was when i started looking at laptops. i have a Tim Allen disorder,:twitcy: ( i always want more power) and with the ASilver voiding warranty, you would think it would say something on the website. but it dont? So theres two things i dont have think about anymore. I do have one more ? i run across people saying that it dosent reconize the 4GB of ram with 32bit vista, will this change if 64bit is installed?
thanks agian
Bob

 

Yes it will - else it's between 3.2-3.7GB usually, but Vista 32b is supposed to have a hotfix that now actually tells you it's there even though it can't fully address it.

You don't necessarily gain much in terms of function or performance, however, and few software programs are written to take advantage of the 64b anyway, so again one point of view is that it's spending money and worrying about potential software/driver conflicts that you likely don't need to.

 

What are you going to overclock a T7250? Please the T9400 is one of the 100 Powerful CPUs in this moment. Is not that power?

 

I must confess I don't understand the sentences in this message...

 

E.B.E. What do you mean? The syntax.

Ok lets go again. The T9400 is powerfull processor is not needed to overclock it like others processors.

 

A-ha. I'm not sure about the syntax, but I didn't understand the meaning, they were unclear.

In any case, I agree (and that's also what ClearSkies explained extensively in his first reply).