Poor performance in games — should I overclock?

Updated on 01-Oct-2008

Here’s my PC configuration — Motherboard: Intel 945GC- M7 TE; Processor: Intel Celeron 1.80 GHz; RAM: 512 DDR2
Recently, I bought a NVIDIA XFX GeForce 8400GS 512 MB graphics card. But I haven’t got the desired performance from it. I cannot run games like NFS: Most Wanted and NFS: Carbon beyond the resolution of 800 x 600 with a few settings in medium. The games slow down. Even F.E.A.R. with a resolution 640 x 480 with settings like anti-aliasing at 2X and medium shadow quality give around 40 fps. Please tell me what should I do to get good performance out of it? I have heard that over-clocking a graphics card boosts its performance. Should I over-clock my card? I have no idea how to do that. Please explain its procedure.
Parzan

DIGIT ANSWERS: The 8400GS is an entry level graphics card and the processor you are using is also very outdated. Overclocking the card would only bring a marginal improvement. Besides, there’s a bigger risk involved which means you could damage the card and the processor if you overclock it. A better processor would probably add an average 10 to 15 fps more to the performance but a completely new system is highly recommended if you wish to play all these games with all the details and resolution turned up.
 

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