Low Benchmarks, Please help the overclocking noob

Hello all,

Was reading the forums seems my benchmarks are rather low in comparrison to what some people have been gettign even though i thought they were initally preaty good.

This is the mashine i got

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology 2.8GHz 800MHz FSB 512KB Cache
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe - Intel 875P Motherboard
512MB Corsair XMS DDR SDRAM PC-3200 - 2 x 256MB Module
NVIDIA GeForce™ FX 5700 Ultra 128MB 8x AGP
80GB Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA 7,200 RPM 8MB Cache
Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy 2 - 6.1


Now i got 3980 in 3D Mark 2003 didnt actually get aroudn to tring the 2001 version however 2003 should give me a good idea either way. Used it with the default settings . Now a couple questions any tweaks people could recommend either to overclock the CPU or the video card??

And if so how far can i overclock it with the cooling i got are those ~5 fans enough to keep the video card and potentially the processor cooled?

Furthermore when does it get to hot for say the video card\processor at around 40-45 degrees or lower then that...

Would appreciate any help and tips you could give regarding this.

First, I would say benchmarks are not the greatest way of gauging performance, though they can be useful for comparison. 3dMark is mostly based on the graphics card. You are getting about what I would expect with your setup, compared to mine and others I've seen with different cards.
Overclocking is one of those things where if you have to ask how, you probably shouldn't be doing it, but Powerstrip is a good utility to OC your graphics card. Cooling wise, the heatsink/fan on the CPU is more important than the case fans, provided you have some. If you are going to do much on your graphics card, you'll want to look into gpu cooling as well.