dorkismaximous

Hello,
I am a bit concerned with my gaming capabilities. I have read plenty of threads about people playing games on higher settings with inferior graphic cards. I understand that playing games requires more than that of a beefy graphics card and a plethora of ram. With anyone's willing help, I would like to find what is the bottle neck of my system. The majority of my system is OEM however, I upgraded a few key components and it still seems like something is wrong. The specs are as follows :
HP
PCU: AMD athlon 3800+ dual core
Ram: 1.5 gigs ( 1g OEM, 512 PNY) pc3200
G card: radeon x1900xtx 512 mb (connect 3d)
Sound: generic onboard
PSU: over 500 watts ( I do not recall exact watt / company)
MOBO: OEM asus
HDD: 250g sata 7200 rpms

I generally do not have trouble playing games but by no means am I capable of playing something like F.E.A.R. at 1600 x 1200. I was reading in a computer magazine that so and so was playing fear comfortably at 1600x1200 with an ATI card with 256mb of on board ram. Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated ( i.e. upgrades, tweaks, things to check etc) Thanks for your time!

Yousaif

It looks like you have a mixture of technologies there. Kind of a hodge podge of last gen and gen before last gen.

Is that a socket 754 processor or socket 939? The reason I ask is that you are running DDR3200 RAM. If it is a socket 754, then it is most likely an AGP card, and while it wouldn't be holding things up I am just trying to get a feel for your upgrade possibilities.

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Yousaif


Isaiah 1:23

dorkismaximous

The socket is 939. I looked up the processor to make sure. AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 3800+ to negate any ambiguity I failed to mention the graphics card is pci express x16, not sure if that helps.
Thanks

Malus

The cores on a 3800+ only run at 1.8 GHz, which really isn't that fast in the grand scheme of things. My single core Opteron at 2.2 GHz beats the crap out of my 3800+ X2 when running processes with only a single path of execution, such as when I build ports/world under FreeBSD or run intensive single-threaded simulations. Dual core is nice, but I think it will not yield a significant benefit for mast games at this time. I think the 4200+ X2 is available in a 939, though I don't know if it is worth the cost to upgrade.

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quad (FreeBSD/amd64 8-CURRENT): Intel Q6600 - Asus P5E-VM HDMI - 2x2 GB Kingston PC6400 DDR2 Ram - Seagate 320GB 7200RPM HD - 2xSeagate 1TB 7200RPM HD in RAID 1 via ZFS - Lite-On 20x DVD Multi Recorder - Coolermaster Centurion 5

router (FreeBSD/amd64 8-CURRENT): Intel E4500 - Intel D945GCNL - 2 GB PC6400 Mushkin Ram - Lite-On 48x24x48x16 - Seagate 320GB 7200RPM HD - Silverstone SST-SG02-F

wanderer (FreeBSD/i386 7-CURRENT): Lenovo Thinkpad T61p

mini (OS X 10.5): Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.8Ghz, 4 GB Mushkin PC5400 Ram - Headroom MicroDAC

Portable sound: Rockboxed iPod Video -> Westone UM2's
Not-So-Portable Sound: Headroon MicroDAC -> Singlepower PPX3-SLAM -> Grado RS-1's or Beyerdynamic DT-880's
Very-Not-Portable-Sound: Squeezebox v3 -> Denon AVR-1507 -> B&W 683's & Sunfire HRS-10

Dyre Straits

I have both an AMD system and an Intel system.

My AMD system is listed in my profile at the left. The Athlon 64 X2 4800+ has given me some mighty fine performance in such games as OBLIVION (usually at 1280x1024, Ultra High Settings, etc.) with FPS between 35-60. This system is also a 939 based system. If you were to upgrade your CPU, I'd go with at least the 4800+ if you can swing it. I'd also advise going to 2 x 1 GB Dual Channel RAM with the lowest CAS latency settings you can find and afford.

I've also played F.E.A.R. on this sytem but usually don't go with resolutions as high as 1600x1200 as the text is too small to read and I need the captions due to my deafness. So, 1280x1024 is my usual selected resolution.

I don't see any reason at this moment to upgrade your video card. My own X1950 Pro 256 MB card works just fine.

Good luck!

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Zelig

It actually runs at 2.0 GHz. The slowest X2 is the 3600+, which also runs at 2.0 GHz, but with only 2 x 256 KiB of L2-cache. The fastest is the FX-60, which is 2.6 GHz with 2 x 1024 KiB L2-cache.

Upgrades for S939 are getting more expensive to do, I'm glad I got all of my stuff when I did, as S939 CPUs are hard to find, and DDR1 ram is significantly more expensive than DDR2.

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Lelisevis

Im kind of gutted that the bottleneck in my system is my AMD X2 5200+. Hardly a slouch of a processor but still enough to hit my benchmarks big time. The difference between stock and 2.9ghz is bad enough but I just know that if I risk overclocking any higher on air the scores would keep on rising and rising.
Technology is an bottomless moneypit.

BlueMak

Which exactly is your motherboard?

My guess for any bottleneck would first go to the memory, if it is exact same specs and timings of the dimms.

Then the CPU.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

temeteus82

I say it's your RAM since you don't have DualChannel config ...

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Matth

Good point, the 1G + 512MB, could be:

1. 512 / 512 / 256 / 256 (the best way, but even that could have a small penalty compared to a single pair)
2. 1G / 512 (bad move indeed, should have paired with another 1G)
3. 512 / 512 / 512 (add another 512, though that also leaves the "two pairs" penalty)

A few other options not worth listing

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Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

cozumel

My suggestion would probably be to sell the RAM you currently use and upgrade to a 2x1GB matched pair for Dual Channel.

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dorkismaximous

Thanks for the replies everyone, I did not have access to the computer all day so please forgive the delayed response. So, the majority of the posters suggest that the ram is a problem. I am still learning things as I go, this is the first time I really took up a serious interest in upgrading computers predominately for gaming. I was not aware of the potential penalty or performance decrease due to lack of paired ram. Come to think of it I made a mistake, I actually have 3 x 512 sorry. Anyone think I should get a new MOBO and processor altogether? Last topic of the night, single or multi core? Thanks again!!

BlueMak

Well, if you have the money, sure get a new mobo and ram and cpu, preferably core 2 duo from intel.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Yousaif

I started a reply earlier but my dig walked behind my laptop (with a bad battery) and unplugged the power adapter. Laptop went dead and I forgot what I was doing.

I was saying that I would definitely be looking at new RAM processor and mobo. The PC3200 RAM really doesn't keep up with the demands of the S939, which is why AMD introduced the AM2- among other things.

I run an AMD dual core on a socket AM2 board. I did the AM2 because it supports DDR2 plus it will support the new processor releases that AMD is releasing in the near future for an easy upgrade.

The Core 2 Duos are great processors. I've built several machines with them in the last few months for clients. Personally I like the AMD solution, probably because I root for the underdogs most of the time.

Best advice is to get the best processor, mobo, and RAM that you can afford, and make sure that there is an upgrade path available to you so you don't get stuck in this kind of situation for quite some time.

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Yousaif


Isaiah 1:23

cozumel

If you're looking at new mobo, cpu, ram for the upgrade then we would need to have an idea of the budget available. I would probably be looking for an mobo that will take a quad core Intel CPU as it is Intel that has the definite upper hand right now. You could get a Pentium D, C2D or Quad depending on budget.

Please advise us of your budget. But remember:

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Matth

An extra 512, of the same type, may be one option, I'm guessing the CPU revision should be recent enough that the RAM only has to shift from 1T to 2T command timing, and not the greater penalty of switching to DDR333 instead of DDR400 - though some BIOSes will apply that as a "safety" setting unless manually set.

Not convinced by DDR2 arguments though, I guess AM2 is maturing, but it initially showed no great advantage over synchronous dual DDR.

AMD had the S939 tuned pretty much to perfection, then Intel threw their weight behind DDR2 and effectively declared DDR obsolete. AMD switched to DDR2 because they had to, not because they needed to - it was just logical that the next platform would be DDR2.

__________________
Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

dorkismaximous

Ah, where to begin ... an extra stick of 512 mb seems like a logical, relatively inexpensive, upgrade. Would this make a significant difference in performance or should I just purchase 2 x 1 gig sticks? I recall a post or two talking about the upgrade to two 1 gig sticks, I will read through the post again after this. So after the RAM upgrade I would start looking at MOBOs and PCUs. If I choose not to upgrade the MOBO at this time, that would allot more money to be invested in a better processor. However, I am a bit concerned after reading an individual's post about their amd +5600 impeding performance and that is nearly 1 gig faster than my current PCU. This also limits my selection to the AMD class. Let's say I have approximately $300-$500 to toy with. I suppose I should do a little research about the AMD and Intel PCU's. So the deleberation of the day... AMD or Intel? It may just come down to budget at this point. I greatly appreciate everyone's thoughts & suggestions!

Da_Jewish_Fonzy

I don't think RAM is your majour bottleneck, although it may be a minor one. Its best to go with two matching pairs and run dual channel. Also the performance difference between DDR vs DDR2 is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things, we're talking maybe %5-%10 increase in performance TOPS. DDR2 clocks are higher but it also has higher latency/looser timings.

IMO your bottleneck is deffo your cpu. I've seen benchmarks and with a higher end card like a x1900xt or 7800GTX etc... you want at least to run your cpu @2.4GHz and yours is 2GHz.

The best thing you can do is actually to overclock your current cpu. Which is great considering its a free upgrade. I have the same cpu as you do and also S939 and I got my X2 3800+ @2.6GHz pretty easily. I'd go out and get a good cooler( arctic cooling freezer 64 pro is what im using) for your cpu and o\c the sucker and you will see some much larger gains from that than you would anything else in sheer FPS boost. You could always get a better video card but you will be in the same position you are in now, it will be held back by your cpu.

So yeah get a 2x1gb kit of RAM but most importantly overclock that 3800. Thats what budget cpu's are for, overclocking.

Yousaif

Problem is that the mobo that he has currently is an OEM version of an Asus. Most likely the BIOS won't have much (if anything) in the way of OC options.

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Yousaif


Isaiah 1:23

cozumel

Which brings us to exactly which mobo is currently being used. Are you able to provide us with a model number for the mobo please.

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dorkismaximous

I looked up the motherboard and discovered the actual model.

• Manufacturer: Asus
• Motherboard Name: A8AE-LE
• HP/Compaq motherboard name: AmberineM-GL6E

Yousaif is correct, the mother board is useless when considering OC options .

Da_Jewish_Fonzy

Apperently its BIOS is locked but it is compatible with clockgen. Which means you might be able to overclock using clockgen. I'd google A8AE-LE and do some forum digging to see what others have done as far as overclocking.

Yousaif

According to http://www.overclock.net/amd-motherb...k-a8ae-le.html, you can use Clockgen to OC on that board. Use it at your own risk, however.

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Yousaif


Isaiah 1:23

dorkismaximous

That is pretty good news. I will be able to OC after all. I am going to research OC a bit, I have no intentions to deliberately burn out everything . I assume over heating may become an issue. Looks like it may be time to consider investing in a few extra fans. So, the CPU was determined to be the major source of bottlenecking while RAM trailed shortly behind. Thanks for all of the suggestions, replies and time everyone!