Sometimes you have to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. I was recently faced with a situation like this with my computer. I came up on a decent price for a quad core processor and even though my dual core processor worked just fine, sometimes when an opportunity presents itself you have to take it. And with video encoding and post-processing 10.2 megapixel size photos from my DSLR  being processor intensive activities, I figured it might be time to look into upgrading, with Intel just releasing a new line of processors, causing some of the older processors prices to drop. So, with all my monthly obligations paid, and not knowing when I’d again have an extra few bucks, I took it. And, threw in a RAM upgrade while I was at it.

So now, I’m rocking a quad core computer with 4 GB of premium memory from Crucial (Crucial Ballistix). I upgraded to an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 CPU. That’s four processors each running at 2.5GHz. Actually, as of a few minutes before I started writing this post, each core began running at 2.7GHz. Yep, I overclocked this bad boy as far as I could get it on the stock heatsink/fan without the CPU temperature getting too high. When I get an “aftermarket” heatsink/fan, I will be able to get over 3GHz per core without running into temperature issues. Overclocking for the first time was kind of nerve-wracking, but it wasn’t hard, especially since I didn’t try to do anything fancy.

When I went into my motherboard’s BIOS, I noticed that both my CPU and RAM were running at lower speeds than their supposedly “stock” settings. That’s called being underclocked, and what’s a trip is that at a whole half a GHz slower than what it was supposed to have been running, my computer was still FAST as lightening, compared to my dual core. At the higher 2.7GHz it’s virtually flying, so I definitely can’t wait to get a new heatsink/fan and max the speed out. That’s going to be freaking insane!