hi there i have the following pc:

- e8400
- asus p5k-e wifi/ap
- 2 gb crucial ballistix trace @ 1066
- palit 9800gtx
- corsair 620 watt psu

and recently ive been wanting to overclock it to see realy what the perfomance gains are but whenever i do i get stuttering sound in games followed by fps drooooop. ive reached 3.6 and 4.0 ghz both stable but with the issue i mentionded. any help apreciated. it happened in both vista and xp

Sounds like your CPU and/or GPU are overheating.

i wouldnt bet on it since ive a got a pretty big case (stacker 830 w/ 7 fans) and a zalman 9700 cnps for the cpu, ive checked the temps and they report 45 on idle 55 on load and the gpu is similar

Are you running your ram 1066 or underclocking it?

im running it at 1066 and 2.2 volts as rated

Make sure you set your PCIe speed to manual in BIOS. It should be 100 or just over.

i did that and still get the same problem, worse performance than it is w/o overclocking

I believe I had the same error! I believe its a driver thing. It happened to me, only in crysis, but since I was just waiting to upgrade to vista 64, I left it alone and just swapped OSes and it was gone, soo...

Its a loud weird crackle sound that fades louder and junk?

Try a different Bios or look for a different version of the audio drivers.

--Lupi

ive tried that currently running latest bios and audio drivers. ive tried even with a sound card installed but its still there. im quite sure its something to do with a bios setting im not getting right

Interesting that simply swapping to vista 64 would correct it for me.

What program and settings did you use for your "load" testing? Have you run memtest86+ and Orthos(or similar)?
Also, since you're using a Zalman 9700 instead of a downdraft-style cooler like the 8700/7700/7000, there's a good chance your northbridge and/or PWM area radiator are not getting enough air cooling. To test this, add small fans to blow on the northbridge and PWM area radiator, or use the stock Intel CPU cooler or similar downdraft-style cooler.

ATI tools to stress test vidcards. You should stay under 85C.

ive tested the memory with memtset86 and its working fine, ill try adding fans to the n/b and post back thanks

i noticed something pretty strange recently. first i set my fsb to 440 so my cpu runs ay 3.9. but when i open cpu-z i saw this crazy thing it was showing my core speed as 2.6 and suddenly jumping to 3.9 and back to 2.6. it was doing this every 5- 10 sec... any ideas what might be causing this

Its speed step! Disable that in the bios!

--Lupi