boiler February 1, 2006 Share boiler Member February 1, 2006 Hey guys, thanks for providing these great forums! I'd like a little input regarding my processor situation. I built a new system in november (my first!), and didn't have boatloads of money sitting around. Since I knew absolutely nothing about AMD, I went with the Intel P4 630 (3.0GHz) and a 945P mobo. Here's my system as it stands: Intel P4 630 (3.0GHz, 2MB L2 cache) (stock cooling) ECS 945P mobo (cheapish, but good features/stability) 1GB (2x512) @ 533MHz Corsair eVGA 7800GT CO 200GB WD Caviar (SATA 3.0GB) When I'm running CS:S or HL2, I'm getting around 60fps, dipping to ~23fps on militia w/ heavy action. This is running at 1280x1024 with EVERYTHING maxed out. I have heard that, especially w/ my gfx card, I should be getting much higher. I know my cpu is the bottleneck, but I don't exactly have $300 sitting around to buy some kick-butt AMD cpu and mobo. If I overclock my cpu from 3.0 to 3.2 or 3.4GHz, will I notice a big difference in performance? (after of course upgrading my heatsink... I'm running 36C idle, 48+ load) To be honest, I need good all-around performance... this is not just a gaming rig, I work on it too! It's just slightly annoying that I get choppy at times on max settings with a near-cutting-edge graphics card. Maybe in a couple of years I will consider upgrading the CPU and mobo, but right now I'm trying to make do with what I have. Thanks for your input folks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo February 1, 2006 Share Cujo Member February 1, 2006 your fps still sounds low. i'd make sure you have all the right drivers installed and nothing taxing running in the background. maxxing your settings could be causing some problems but i wouldn't expect performance this low. an easy way to check your bottleneck would be to turn down your gfx settings. you didn't mention your powersupply? are you having any stability issues or prolonged hang ups? btw, i'm surprised by your 48c load. that's actually a really good temp on stock cooling. don't bother upgrading your heatsink until you know the stock one is limiting you. 3.4 is probably an easy overclock on stock volts. fraps runs in the background are your best way to do testing. just test for one setting at a time. post back here your results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 1, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 1, 2006 fraps runs in the background are your best way to do testing. just test for one setting at a time. post back here your results. Sorry for being mega-n00b here, but I'm not sure what you're talking about here with the "fraps in the background" As for my PSU, I am starting to get skeptical about it. It's a 400W unit that came with my case (Coolmax). I have had a problem come up over the last month with my computer randomly restarting or shutting down. I can go days without it happening, but I have also had days where it's done it to me three times in two hours. I initially thought my CPU was overheating (mobo set to shut down when temps >70C), but speedfan 4.27 and your comments make me think otherwise. Could this stinkin PSU be the cause of my troubles? Not sure how else I can test for that. I'm updating to newest forceware drivers right now and will test again to see if it made any improvement by itself. Will post back with results. Thanks so much for your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 1, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 1, 2006 Ok, no change w/ newest drivers. I'm newegging possible PSU replacements if you think that might be my prob. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vovik February 1, 2006 Share Vovik Member February 1, 2006 I have a 2.8E overclocked to 3.36Ghz (max I could do). Your 3.0 bottlenecks the heck out of your system. If you want better performance turn off HDR, that'll improve it somewhat. Then, you'd want to OC yours past 3.4Ghz (which I'm sure is possible). Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX February 1, 2006 Share NOFX Member February 1, 2006 I would look into gettin a decent PSU, since you said you have a el cheapo that came with your Case. As far as your processor goes...You shouldn't be hitting that low of numbers with yoru current rig. And the amount of FPS difference between your Intel and a 3200+ is not worth 300+ dollars. I have a 3200+ 1 gig and a 7800GT. I get alot more FPS than you do, I drop minimum into the 60 I have a couple of suggestions for you... first is overclock that sucker.. oh wait I see you have an ecs motherboard... hm... i dunno how good of an OCer it is, with my experience with ECS, its not very good. Anyway, I had a 2.6 P4 which I just sold and I could get my bus speed up to around 240 stable, running at 3.2Ghz, which gave a good boost in my FPS and smoothness. Next is a sound card. I just went through a big problem with my sound. If you have a card, it takes a load off your CPU, hence more FPS. I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. I recently upgraded to this AMD 64 with onboard sound. I orignally disabled it, but somewhere in the mix of reseting the bios it got turned back on. this was causing conflicts and my machine was crashing as soon as I would get into a game. After troubleshooting, I figured out it was my sound card. I removed my sound card and the game no longer crashes, however, the Frame rate is significantly lower and I get alot more stuttering. I think I was running an Average of 50 on cs_office. More tweaking tonight and hopefully can get my santa cruz stable again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 1, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 1, 2006 I would look into gettin a decent PSU, since you said you have a el cheapo that came with your Case. I have a couple of suggestions for you... first is overclock that sucker.. oh wait I see you have an ecs motherboard... hm... i dunno how good of an OCer it is, with my experience with ECS, its not very good. Anyway, I had a 2.6 P4 which I just sold and I could get my bus speed up to around 240 stable, running at 3.2Ghz, which gave a good boost in my FPS and smoothness. Next is a sound card. I just went through a big problem with my sound. If you have a card, it takes a load off your CPU, hence more FPS. I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. I recently upgraded to this AMD 64 with onboard sound. I orignally disabled it, but somewhere in the mix of reseting the bios it got turned back on. this was causing conflicts and my machine was crashing as soon as I would get into a game. After troubleshooting, I figured out it was my sound card. I removed my sound card and the game no longer crashes, however, the Frame rate is significantly lower and I get alot more stuttering. I think I was running an Average of 50 on cs_office. More tweaking tonight and hopefully can get my santa cruz stable again. Ok, my ECS mobo overclocks pretty darn well as it turns out. American Megatrends BIOS (same as in more expensive Asus boards I have installed) does it. Upped my bus speed up from 212 to 224 and am getting 3.37GHz at around 38-40C idle and 50-55C load (with stock cooling, mind you). I hopped in militia w/ 6 ppl playin, and I was gettin at least 15 fps better. I turned off HDR, but it didnt give much of an improvement (maybe 3 fps max). V-sync settings only netted another few fps. Changing AA from 6X to 4X didnt make a noticable difference. I am willing to bet that my gfx card might not be getting all the power it needs... my "el cheapo" does have 2 12V rails, but total amperage is slightly less than recommended by evga as minimum for my card. I spose if this were the case, I would be getting decreased performance (duh). I'm lookin at an Aspire 500W deal on newegg for $40 (can't drop $90 on an antec). That might be the way I need to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX February 1, 2006 Share NOFX Member February 1, 2006 I would look into gettin a decent PSU, since you said you have a el cheapo that came with your Case. I have a couple of suggestions for you... first is overclock that sucker.. oh wait I see you have an ecs motherboard... hm... i dunno how good of an OCer it is, with my experience with ECS, its not very good. Anyway, I had a 2.6 P4 which I just sold and I could get my bus speed up to around 240 stable, running at 3.2Ghz, which gave a good boost in my FPS and smoothness. Next is a sound card. I just went through a big problem with my sound. If you have a card, it takes a load off your CPU, hence more FPS. I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. I recently upgraded to this AMD 64 with onboard sound. I orignally disabled it, but somewhere in the mix of reseting the bios it got turned back on. this was causing conflicts and my machine was crashing as soon as I would get into a game. After troubleshooting, I figured out it was my sound card. I removed my sound card and the game no longer crashes, however, the Frame rate is significantly lower and I get alot more stuttering. I think I was running an Average of 50 on cs_office. More tweaking tonight and hopefully can get my santa cruz stable again. Ok, my ECS mobo overclocks pretty darn well as it turns out. American Megatrends BIOS (same as in more expensive Asus boards I have installed) does it. Upped my bus speed up from 212 to 224 and am getting 3.37GHz at around 38-40C idle and 50-55C load (with stock cooling, mind you). I hopped in militia w/ 6 ppl playin, and I was gettin at least 15 fps better. I turned off HDR, but it didnt give much of an improvement (maybe 3 fps max). V-sync settings only netted another few fps. Changing AA from 6X to 4X didnt make a noticable difference. I am willing to bet that my gfx card might not be getting all the power it needs... my "el cheapo" does have 2 12V rails, but total amperage is slightly less than recommended by evga as minimum for my card. I spose if this were the case, I would be getting decreased performance (duh). I'm lookin at an Aspire 500W deal on newegg for $40 (can't drop $90 on an antec). That might be the way I need to go. That should be a decent power supply. I have an Allied 450watter. Not the best name brand, but my rails are only off by like .01 or .02. turn off your AA and AF, i usually run with mine off and the smoothness is better. Also, you can just play around and turn your shadows off and see the difference as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 1, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 1, 2006 Ok, I just ordered this PSU to hopefully ease some of my troubles: Aspire 500W Hopefully this will end my "random shutdown/restart" issues , and make sure my 7800gt is gettin all the power it needs. I'm hoping to see a difference in gfx performance, but we'll see. CPU update: I got my 630 OCed to 3.41GHz now, idling as we speak 38-41C and peaking at 56C while running 3DMark05 (free version). Thinkin I might consider a better heatsink/fan in the near future when I get this PSU paid off and get some more money. Scored a 7133 on 3DMark05 versus the 6700ish before I overclocked. I'll play a little CS:S to see how things are goin. Thanks a lot for everyone's help! Maybe in a couple years I'll convert to AMD and join the cult... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vovik February 2, 2006 Share Vovik Member February 2, 2006 boiler, don't come to quick conclusions yet. Although it might be true your 400W is lagging a little bit getting a $30 500W PSU might not solve your problems, actually may worsen them. For good PSU's you should look above or around $100 range. just fyi also, vertical sync (in your advanced options) should be turned off as all it does is sync your fps with the refresh rate of your monitor (which is probably 60-85hz) so you won't get more fps. another thing, as i found out for myself. you should try making sure (when overclocking fsb) that your RAM is synced with it 1:1. That means if you oc'd it to 224 your ram should be just as fast. Get a program called CPU-Z to check if you did it correctly. meh....what else.....when looking at your fps in game look at the LOWEST they get not the average or highest, that's the biggest factor to consider. Have a mental note how low they get on each map. PS. With your videocard turning AA and AF lower than maximum should make NO difference. I have X850XTPE and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo February 2, 2006 Share Cujo Member February 2, 2006 (edited) why do people just pull the trigger on purchases so fast? cancel that order now if you can as that psu is a pos. spend the 90 on an antec and stop thinking you can skimp on some parts. if you increased fps that much with an oc then clearly your cpu is holding you back. nofx, this link is old and i know i've posted it here several times but it clearly shows that you're wrong with your comments. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2 the lowly 3200+ beats even a 3.8ghz intel in hl2. given that source is an even more cpu intensive game based on the hl2 engine i think it would be even more of a factor. going from a 3.2ghz intel to a 3200 gives almost a 10% increase in some cases. oc that 3200 to 2.4ghz (a very easy oc and almost guaranteed to work on any setup) and it goes an additional 10%. i know most of you have seen my post regarding cpu limitations of source but here's a linky again. http://www.gamrs.co/forums/in...showtopic=22907 that's a nearly 30% increase. i would estimate about 25% if stopping at 2.4ghz. Edited February 2, 2006 by Cujo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 2, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 2, 2006 (edited) Thanks for the input vovik. I understand what you were saying about the PSU, but I'm 90% sure it is the cause of my random shutdowns/restarts after talking to a couple other folks. besides, even though the replacement is not really expensive, from what I've read it will be better than "el cheapo" that came with my case. (NM, SEE BELOW) I will try that program to check my ram for sure, but I believe my bios has the timings for the RAM set at something to effect of "automatic" or "with cpu" or something, thanks for the heads up i'll look into that. In the mean time, is not having them 1:1 going to cause major problems, as in I need to put my cpu right back where it was till I get it figured out? As you can tell I jumped into this whole "hey build your own computer, it could be fun" thing without knowing every little in and out. I'm learning though! EDIT: *I just ran cpu-z, says my memory is at 301.6MHz, and my FSB is at 226.1MHz, thats 3:4. According to cpu-z, I think my ram's max bandwidth is 266MHz (box calls it ddr2 533)... does this mean it got OCed too? If this is a prob, them I need to un-OC my cpu cause I can't change memory timings beyond the stock "400, 533, 667MHz" settings in my BIOS. I am so confused.... my newbness is really showing through on this crap, sorry for bothering you pros with this.* Yeah, I have turned off V-sync. I'm an idiot for not realizing that myself. Surprisingly, turning HDR off didnt make much difference either, even on milita. CUJO: Ok, I cancelled it. I hadn't heard anything negative about that PSU yet, and I'm glad you caught me when you did. Thank you. I read as many reviews as I could and hadn't found anyone saying much bad about it, but then again most have only had it for a couple months at the most when they write glowing reviews. I'll look into antec, I know they're the shiznit in PSUs, if I have to I'll tolerate the random shutdowns/instability until I can afford it. Thanks for savin me a few bucks in the short run... I didnt mean to pull the trigger so fast, I really had been looking at PSUs for much longer than I have been posting here so I thought I might have found a decent one. I just want my instability to go away and be done with "el cheapo" Edited February 2, 2006 by boilersax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo February 2, 2006 Share Cujo Member February 2, 2006 user reviews aren't always the best. post on an enthusiast forum that you're getting that and you'll get 5 posts within 10 minutes saying "stop" and "what teh heck are you thinking". antec, enermax, and ocz are probably the 3 best. the enermax liberty is expensive but awesome. as to the intel ocing, i'm not all that familiar with it but i know ddr2 533 on my laptop runs at 1:2 ratio when my laptop is 133fsb. so if you're cpu is at 200fsb then your ratio should be 3:4 or so i think cause it's 266x2 for ddr2. brb, scrim time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 2, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 2, 2006 user reviews aren't always the best. post on an enthusiast forum that you're getting that and you'll get 5 posts within 10 minutes saying "stop" and "what teh heck are you thinking". antec, enermax, and ocz are probably the 3 best. the enermax liberty is expensive but awesome. as to the intel ocing, i'm not all that familiar with it but i know ddr2 533 on my laptop runs at 1:2 ratio when my laptop is 133fsb. so if you're cpu is at 200fsb then your ratio should be 3:4 or so i think cause it's 266x2 for ddr2. brb, scrim time. that sounds about right. I checked by un-OCing my CPU, and the ram stayed at 3:4. I think my mobo bumps up the ram to keep the ratio the same, perhaps? Last word on the PSU - I found an Antec smartpower 2.0 500W for $63 at newegg, but I'm not gonna drop that much money just yet. I'll give my current crappy psu a couple weeks to redeem itself first... then I'll replace it with an antec Antec Smart Power 2.0 500W Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGeek February 2, 2006 Share TheGeek Member February 2, 2006 Send a personal message to M2, he has drivers that optimize for performance like this one http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=nvidia I noticed a 20 fps boost in some maps. Like cbble, dust, dust2, aztec, and perensi. And i had a graph problem go away with this AWSOME driver Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo February 2, 2006 Share Cujo Member February 2, 2006 with a card like that you shouldn't need tweaked drivers. i prefer stock cause it's just easier and you know what you're getting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vovik February 2, 2006 Share Vovik Member February 2, 2006 boiler, honestly, I'm not that familiar with DDR2 which clocked higher than 400Mhz. I just barely figured what to do with my DDR 400. That said, it looks ok that your ram runs faster than fsb, i dunno. Try figuring your rams max speed and try increasing it along with fsb (so both are at max bandwidth). Again, I'm no expert here. To tell you the truth I'm having a lot of instability and randomness with my current setup. I blame my mobo, ram and cpu of course. If I had extra dough I'd invest into a dual-core AMD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boiler February 2, 2006 Author Share boiler Member February 2, 2006 Unfortunately, my motherboard is slightly limited in that I do not have direct control over my ram timings. I think I can select "400, 533, or 667 MHz, or Auto" on the speed, but I don't know how these translate to the fsb timings that I'm using when OCing my cpu. From what I can tell by reading other posts, I can't screw up my ram by trying diff timings, worst case is my system will be unstable. I'm not sure it's worth screwing around with. I got a pretty significant boost in performance for my 3.0-3.4 OC, and thats with ram timing set at "auto". The auto setting will always keep the 3:4 ratio (fsb:ram) timing. Gee, I'm learnin something new everyday about this stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nut February 2, 2006 Share nut Member February 2, 2006 fraps runs in the background are your best way to do testing. just test for one setting at a time. post back here your results. Sorry for being mega-n00b here, but I'm not sure what you're talking about here with the "fraps in the background" As for my PSU, I am starting to get skeptical about it. It's a 400W unit that came with my case (Coolmax). I have had a problem come up over the last month with my computer randomly restarting or shutting down. I can go days without it happening, but I have also had days where it's done it to me three times in two hours. I initially thought my CPU was overheating (mobo set to shut down when temps >70C), but speedfan 4.27 and your comments make me think otherwise. Could this stinkin PSU be the cause of my troubles? Not sure how else I can test for that. I'm updating to newest forceware drivers right now and will test again to see if it made any improvement by itself. Will post back with results. Thanks so much for your help! fraps=recorder... to record vids ect... i use it for dark age all the time =) maybe i should post some pics hehe NuT- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now