widescreen monitors/PC games to try

jas72

jas72

jas72

Soldato
Joined
31 Jul 2006
Posts
10,276
Location
Belgium land of chocolate
1st I have a 19" widescreen monitor am I alone as you never see benchmarks for them or even hear people speak about them. Has 22" become the norm for gaming?

2nd I recently got a 4870 card so have been replaying my games MOH: Airborne and COD series with everything maxxed, I also played HL2 but surprisingly didn't see much difference between a 7600GT and my new 4870 with that game, maybe I missed some settings.

Also even with my 4870 I only get 15 FPS in obilivion with everthing maxxed is that normal?

I have a E6400 C2D on stock
2 GB Geil 667
P5Q pro board
and the Sapphire 4870 card. (stock speeds)
 
Could be your CPU. The 6400s at stock aren't great...but you should hit 3-3.4 ghz easily enough (3.2 with minimal faff).

I'd have expected that even maxed, Oblivion should be running at more than 15fps.
 
never overclocked before need an easy guide (well easier than the one on OCUK hehe)
 
Got my E6400 to 3.2 in seconds.

Open Bios
make sure you have access to the advanced tuning options (on my Gigabyte, its press Ctrl-F10)
Got o the CPU settings.
Manually set CPU clock to 400 (from 266)
Manually set Memory clock to 1.6 to keep your RAM at stock speeds
Set PCIE clock to 100 (i have no idea what this does, it was just in my guide)
Manually set RAM to stock timings (5,5,5,12 or something simliar)
Set Memory voltage to correct (my board defaulted to 1.8, RAM was 2.1, so +0.3v)
Hit F10, save changes, reboot.
Machine now running at 3.2Ghz

You can go back in and OC the RAM later if you wish.
 
Your CPU is holding your GPU back big time. Buy a Q6600 clock to 3.6 and watch them frames burst out of your games. If you dont fancy overclocking a stock Q6600 will still do the trick, you can upgrade to a 22" screen and it'll be as fast.
 
Don't bother with the Q6600. Just overclock your current CPU.

E6400 @ 3.2 can deal with pretty much all modern games/cards well enough..and even if you want a faster one than that, faster dual core would be cheaper than a quad core and with the same performance in everything but 3dmark and Zoompreme Commander.
 
Loowi_ashley said:
Your CPU is holding your GPU back big time. Buy a Q6600 clock to 3.6 and watch them frames burst out of your games. If you dont fancy overclocking a stock Q6600 will still do the trick, you can upgrade to a 22" screen and it'll be as fast.
Click to expand...
A stock Q6600 won't do the trick, it'll barely be better than his current processor.

Hardly any games even get much benefit from Quad Core, clock speed > cores.
 
He's just bought whats probably the best GPU on the market at this current time and you telling him to keep with his 2.1GHZ, 2MB cache dualcore ?!!!?

He needs a screen and a processor that will let his 4870 stretch its legs
 
Loowi_ashley said:
He's just bought whats probably the best GPU on the market at this current time and you telling him to keep with his 2.1GHZ, 2MB cache dualcore ?!!!?

He needs a screen and a processor that will let his 4870 stretch its legs
Click to expand...

We're saying to overclock it to 3.2ghz. Shouldn't be too hard to understand that it'll outperform a stock Q6600.

Q6600s only run at 2.4ghz. If you really think that a less than 10 percent increase in clock speed will suddenly make his rig fly you probably shouldn't be handing out advice on here.

edit: I do agree that he needs a better screen though.
 
Way I see it is that he doesn't need to buy anything. A higher clock on that cpu will be easy and the resolution of his current monitor will mean it'll be easier for him to slap all the extra graphical options on now and in the future without noticing any grind.

Upgrading to a quad core cpu would be a waste of money as has already been said. New monitor would be nice but my reason above is enough to not bother upgrading it unless the OP was already considering doing so prior to the responses in this thread.

OP, just as an example, the rig in my sig was built 3 months ago. Processor was sourced second hand from ebay for £40 and it's not as good as your 6400 at stock. It clocked straight from 1.8 ghz to 3 ghz with no hassle at all and plays everything I throw at it and then some.
 
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Loowi_ashley said:
He's just bought whats probably the best GPU on the market at this current time and you telling him to keep with his 2.1GHZ, 2MB cache dualcore ?!!!?

He needs a screen and a processor that will let his 4870 stretch its legs
Click to expand...

3Ghz is an easy clock speed to meet, that'll be more than enough. :D

When/if I get my 4870 I'll be keeping my nearly 2 years old E6300 (At 3Ghz) the only game where more clock speed would probably be a big benefit is in TF2, annoying how CPU limited it is due to the lack of multi-core, hate dropping below 60 in big open area fights, didn't even lose any FPS going from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200. :o :o :o
 
well, ballistix aren't exactly known for 'sticking it out' ;)

Anyhow, back on topic..

Overclock your blimmin CPU!
The guide in these forums really is fairly straight forward - just up the volts a teensy bit, whack up your fsb and job done :p
 
For my CPU all I have to do is whack up the FSB which should be enough, might wanna drop down your memory multiplier though.

Heck I'm currently running 1.275 volts, default is 1.325 and that's intended for stock speeds! No crashes yet.

Has been a much easier system to keep stable over my last AMD 64, which was ages ago.
Loowi_ashley said:
Perhaps why you surgest nothing else will do? E6400 even at 3.2 and its 2MB cache it will be holding his card back.
Click to expand...
Not really...

and it won't be holding his card back to make a significant difference, good heavens he may not bench as high, but who cares!
 
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