7850 Upgrade.

[Vale]

I've a Powercolor PCS+ 7850 2 gig that is happy at these speeds all day.

I have a 6100 Bulldozer at 4gig permanently and 8 gig ram.
Motherboard is an Asus Sabretooth 990FX Rev.1 board.

The ram is running at 800mhz ? despite being 2133 Patriot ram, if I set it any
higher the PC won't boot.

Anyway, the only game I play is Mechwarrior Online and the framerates are not
good. Thinking an Nvidia gpu may help my cause? would a GTX 670 be any better than what I have? or maybe a 7950 or maybe a cpu upgrade.

I have about £150 to spend so possibly looking second hand, I've been a member here for a few years but can't access MMarket because of the post count.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[Doogles]

If it is dual channel then 800mhz X2 = 1600mhz. Depending on what PSU you have you could get a B Grade HD 7950 from here for £150. ATM there is a deal on a R9 280 which I would get at £150. (More powerful than the HD 7950 and the same price, without being B grade) You might find it is a CPU bottleneck though, but a new GPU will help anyway.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-019-VX&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1842
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-259-MS

 

[Doomedspeed]

I've just done a bit of research, as I thought, your GPU isn't the (Major) problem.

Like a lot of Online MMO (type-games) its VERY CPU heavy. It can use upto 6 threads (example the 4690k has 4 threads, 4790k has 8 threads) so up to 12 virtual cores (in theory)

A lot of these games, especially older one like WoW are 'Core speed' Heavy too, so single core performance is also important (Wow isn't the best example as that only uses a single thread unlike MWO).

Your OC is defiantly helping your CPU catch up but its architecture isn't the strongest.

A few questions:
1) What resolution do you play at?
2) What are your 'poor' FPS?

 

[Tohrazer]

as doomed said it may be a CPU issue, my girlfriend plays mechwarrior maxed out no problem on her 270x... with an i5 4670k

 

[humbug]

I agree with Doomedspeed, but I would going back to the RAM, if you set D.O.C.P in the BIOS what speed does it set the RAM at and will it boot?

Two things.

# if your running in dual channel mode (no reason why it shouldn't as that is standard) then 800Mhz = 1600Mhz. It will say 1600Mhz in the BIOS, 800Mhz in CPU-Z.

# If your trying to set higher speed manually you may have to increase the RAM volts.

If you use the D.O.C.P option it should set it at 2133Mhz with the appropriate volts and timings.
If not you need to find out what the volts and timings are for your RAM and set it yourself.

 

[Vale]

OK. Have had a fiddle in the BIOS and set it to D.O.C.P and it set the FSB for 228 and it would run and error in Win8. Went back in and set the FSB to 210 and the multiplier to 19 and increased the mem volts up a little and so far so good. Before that the memory according to the BIOS read 1066 now it's 1933. Mechwarrior is now smooth on Tourmaline desert and Terra Therma.

Playing at 1920x1080 not windowed and medium graphic detail. Lowest reported frame rate 26 and maximum over 100 after I tweaked the ram (surely it can't be THAT simple)...

 

[humbug]

OK. Have had a fiddle in the BIOS and set it to D.O.C.P and it set the FSB for 228 and it would run and error in Win8. Went back in and set the FSB to 210 and the multiplier to 19 and increased the mem volts up a little and so far so good. Before that the memory according to the BIOS read 1066 now it's 1933. Mechwarrior is now smooth on Tourmaline desert and Terra Therma.

Playing at 1920x1080 not windowed and medium graphic detail. Lowest reported frame rate 26 and maximum over 100 after I tweaked the ram (surely it can't be THAT simple)...

Dunno but your minimum FPS are still low.

D.O.C.P is setting for 1866Mhz, running the FSB (actually called HT-Bus) @ 210Mhz is why its running at 1933Mhz, which is fine.

What cooling do you have on the CPU?

If you overclock the CPU a bit those minimum FPS should go up.

If you have the cooling for it its pretty easy to do, turn the volts on the CPU up a little and run a 21x Multiplier. that should give you 4.4Ghz

 

[Vale]

Yes but the temp thing is a problem. It goes upto 60+ degrees, worried about cooking the cpu..

I have the standard cooler that came with the chip.

------

Ok tried that at 21 X and we are now at 4.42.

 

[humbug]

Yes but the temp thing is a problem. It goes upto 60+ degrees, worried about cooking the cpu..

I have the standard cooler that came with the chip.

Ah yes, the stock CPU cooler is not for overclocking.

I would recommend getting a £30 cooler for it, but to be honest, given the type of games you play its worth getting an Intel setup, if you have £150 and selling the Motherboard / CPU your using right now you could get an i5 rig, used, or maybe new.

It is the CPU holding the performance back, not the GPU.

Something to think about.

 

[IceShock]

Im not a expert on amd processors since the old times of the 4400x2's etc talking about around 2005-2006? cant even remember how long ago it was, but judging by todays benchmarks etc, id defo say that your gpu is being held back by your cpu, its really worth getting a better cooling rather than using the stock one. you can grab an excellent water cooler the h100 manufacturer refurbished for around 60 pounds on ocuk, which would be better than the high end air cooler I have, and on a i5 setup 2500k, I run this processor at 5k on air, it gets a little toasty in summer ill admit, but in winter I don't have to worry about temperatures. but if I had one of these 60 pound coolers, I wouldn't have to worry full stop, and with one of these coolers, you could overclock your cpu to the limit that your gpu isn't no more bottlenecked by your cpu, or you could just go the intel route and just be more future proofed against this problem. but then again that's more money. it all depends on how much pounds per performance you are willing to pay.

 

[Doomedspeed]

Yeah you need a better cooler on the CPU and possibly a better CPU in general.

I wouldn't bother spending £60-£100 on a cooler now, its a bit pointless considering you really need a better CPU ( I think switch to intel would be best).

My rule for coolers spend upto HALF PRICE of the WHAT YOU'RE COOLING (new). So for a 4790k a H100i is good value, as you'll probably overclock it to hell and back. The 8320 is where the rule can be cropped a little bit, as a H100 won't go amiss here.

Just a vague rule of mine really, helps you get the best value for what you actually need.

 

[humbug]

Yeah you need a better cooler on the CPU and possibly a better CPU in general.

I wouldn't bother spending £60-£100 on a cooler now, its a bit pointless considering you really need a better CPU ( I think switch to intel would be best).

My rule for coolers spend upto HALF PRICE of the WHAT YOU'RE COOLING (new). So for a 4790k a H100i is good value, as you'll probably overclock it to hell and back. The 8320 is where the rule can be cropped a little bit, as a H100 won't go amiss here.

Just a vague rule of mine really, helps you get the best value for what you actually need.

I ran an FX-8350 @ 4.4Ghz on a £30 Hyper 412S, it never got past 60c during stress testing. it now runs at 4.6Ghz on a £40 Cooler Master Seidon 120V @ 58c tress testing, it will do 4.7Ghz on it no problem.

The 412S cooled a 4.2Ghz P-II x6 for years.

Its not nessesary to spend that much on Cooling, around £30 is enough to run his CPU or an i5 at decent clocks with manageable temps.

 

[David Bisset]

I agree with Doomedspeed, but I would going back to the RAM, if you set D.O.C.P in the BIOS what speed does it set the RAM at and will it boot?

Two things.

# if your running in dual channel mode (no reason why it shouldn't as that is standard) then 800Mhz = 1600Mhz. It will say 1600Mhz in the BIOS, 800Mhz in CPU-Z.

# If your trying to set higher speed manually you may have to increase the RAM volts.

If you use the D.O.C.P option it should set it at 2133Mhz with the appropriate volts and timings.
If not you need to find out what the volts and timings are for your RAM and set it yourself.

Dual-channel has nothing to do with it saying 800MHz when it's meant to be an effective clock speed of 1600MHz. Being DDR (first D stands for double) is the key there! Though running in dual channel mode is nice too of course.

To echo what others have said, CPU is the more likely bottleneck, MWO runs (or ran, not played in ages) fairly well on a 7850.

 

[joeyjojo]

Dual-channel has nothing to do with it saying 800MHz when it's meant to be an effective clock speed of 1600MHz. Being DDR (first D stands for double) is the key there! Though running in dual channel mode is nice too of course.

Was about to write this, thought this was a knowledgeable forum!

Multiple channels just let the memory controller access different modules independently. The "effective" memory speeds come from the DDR generation. Some examples below:

DDR-400 runs at 200 MHz = 400 MHz effective (2 T/cycle)
DDR2-800 runs at 200 MHz = 800 MHz effective (4 T/cycle)
DDR3-1600 runs at 200 MHz = 1600 MHz effective (8 T/cycle)

All three are truly running at 200 MHz, but each generation you get double the "effective" speed since you can do double the work per cycle.

The OPs 2133 memory should therefore be set to 266 in the BIOS, not 200.

 

[Resa69]

Was about to write this, thought this was a knowledgeable forum!

Multiple channels just let the memory controller access different modules independently. The "effective" memory speeds come from the DDR generation. Some examples below:

DDR-400 runs at 200 MHz = 400 MHz effective (2 T/cycle)
DDR2-800 runs at 200 MHz = 800 MHz effective (4 T/cycle)
DDR3-1600 runs at 200 MHz = 1600 MHz effective (8 T/cycle)

All three are truly running at 200 MHz, but each generation you get double the "effective" speed since you can do double the work per cycle.

The OPs 2133 memory should therefore be set to 266 in the BIOS, not 200.

I never knew that!

 

[humbug]

Was about to write this, thought this was a knowledgeable forum!

Multiple channels just let the memory controller access different modules independently. The "effective" memory speeds come from the DDR generation. Some examples below:

DDR-400 runs at 200 MHz = 400 MHz effective (2 T/cycle)
DDR2-800 runs at 200 MHz = 800 MHz effective (4 T/cycle)
DDR3-1600 runs at 200 MHz = 1600 MHz effective (8 T/cycle)

All three are truly running at 200 MHz, but each generation you get double the "effective" speed since you can do double the work per cycle.

The OPs 2133 memory should therefore be set to 266 in the BIOS, not 200.

You have completely misunderstood what is going on here.

Don't tell him to set anything to 266, he is talking about the HT-Bus (what he called the FSB) which is the name usually given to Intel's Internal Bus.

Stock his CPU runs at 200Mhz HT-Bus x18 (3600Mhz) he currently has it set to 210Mhz x19 to give him 4Ghz, His RAM multiplier is set to (what looks like 9x) to give him 1890Mhz, slight fluctuations in the HT-Bus speed may actually be putting out 212/3Mhz to give him his cited 1933Mhz.

If he sets 266Mhz he will end up with 5.05Ghz on the CPU and 2400Mhz on the RAM. No chance it will boot at that.

The HT-Bus and Memory clocks are tied together, that is why it error'd @ 228Mhz.

He has it running by doing what i advised him to do, lets not confuse it.

 

[David Bisset]

thanks for writing that up joey, I took the lazy approach.

Just a word of warning to people playing around here - depending on what monitoring tool you're using you may see the actual clock speed (e.g. 200MHz), the external clockspeed ( e.g. 800MHz due to being DDR3) or the effective 'clock speed' (e.g. 1600MHz) - this is why if looking at CPU-Z a lot of people think their RAM is running way too slow, as the DRAM Frequency box shows it un-doubled.

There are a few ways of setting your speed, such as altering your base clock speed, changing your memory multiplier etc, depends what board you have how best to do it.

Edit: As humbug mentions above, some of these factors are linked to your CPU clock speed too.

Edit2: Also, joey is correct that 266 would get him the memory speed he desired, although that will not necessarily be stable and would force dropping the CPU multi if it were to be possible at all. Doesn't make his info wrong though!

 

[humbug]

Just a word of warning to people playing around here - depending on what monitoring tool you're using you may see the actual clock speed (e.g. 200MHz), the external clockspeed ( e.g. 800MHz due to being DDR3) or the effective 'clock speed' (e.g. 1600MHz) - this is why if looking at CPU-Z a lot of people think their RAM is running way too slow, as the DRAM Frequency box shows it un-doubled.

Yes, if you read up that is exactly why i advised a distinction to what CPU-Z and his BIOS will have been telling him.

What is in His BIOS 1600Mhz, will appear as 800Mhz in CPU-Z.

 

[David Bisset]

I know you said that humbug, but you also said it was because it was in dual channel mode in the same line of the same post. Just wanted to clarify that what you said about CPU-Z reporting was correct, given we've just been explaining that the given reason for this was wrong which may have caused the OP to think what you said about CPU-Z was wrong too.

 

[humbug]

I know you said that humbug, but you also said it was because it was in dual channel mode in the same line of the same post. Just wanted to clarify that what you said about CPU-Z reporting was correct, given we've just been explaining that the given reason for this was wrong which may have caused the OP to think what you said about CPU-Z was wrong too.

well, this is what i said to him.

"# if your running in dual channel mode (no reason why it shouldn't as that is standard) then 800Mhz = 1600Mhz. It will say 1600Mhz in the BIOS, 800Mhz in CPU-Z.

Thats pretty clear, "Dual Channel" is the wrong word to use yes but it is as clear as day that i was explaining that (what looks like he was reading) in CPU-Z is actually 1600Mhz.

He can't set it to Single, Triple or..... can he, so it impossible for him to get that wrong, no danger of it.
At the end of the day he followed my instructions and fixed it, he has it running about as well as it could all things considered.