Advice Needed - Should I be expecting more from my system?

[Brockie_UK]

Hi All,

Just joined up on the forums and am hoping someone can help me or offer some advice. as I cannot help but feel I should be getting more from this system (main specs below) in terms of performance in gaming.

Main games played: BF3, Arma 2 (and hopefully Arma 3 if this system can take it) and Football Manager (not very system demanding!).

Main Graphics Problems: BF3 running smoothly, I have to set graphics to "Medium" which I think is an absolute joke!

Really struggle to get any sort of decent graphics performance out of Arma 2 (I personally think my system should eat up Arma 2 without any problem, but correct me if I am wrong). Very stuttery game play with "blasts" of excellent frame rate then a quick freeze, then a blast, then a freeze, blast etc etc. When selecting "Default" settings on either game, I'm disappointed with the graphics quality it switches too.

With the specs below, I should be able to play both games smoothly and maxed out (or very high at the least) and still have good frame rates - again, correct me if I am being naive here.

• Does anyone think there is anything glaringly obvious that I am doing wrong? Or any particular component in my specs below that is detrimental to the rest? I know the HDD is not an SSD but wouldn't expect this to make much of a difference.

• Would an overclock yield much greater performance?

• If requiring an upgrade - could you recommend components to upgrade and which ones to upgrade to in order to handle the newest games (i.e. BF3, Arma 3 etc) with ease?

• I would be interested to hear from anyone that has the same/similar system and how they have their "nVidia Control Panel" set up in case I am missing a trick there.

• If anyone can recommend a program that can manage/limit background services whilst gaming, I'd be happy to try them if it might help.

My specs as follows, let me know if you need any other information:

Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth TUF (Intel X58)
Processor: Intel Core i7 960 D0 (4 x 3.20GHz) 8MB
Graphics: 2 x Nvidia GTX 560 Ti 1 GB (SLI)
HDD: Western Digital 500GB (not SSD)
Power Supply: Corsair 950W (CMPSU-950TX-UK)
Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H50 V2 (Advanced Liquid Cooling)
Memory: Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) XMS3 1600MHz - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (PCI-E)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 BIT

Thanks in advance for any help, I'm sure many people are aware how damn frustrating it is when you think you have the best tools for the job, but are let down!

 

[Brockie_UK]

Do you have sli enabled in the Nvidia control panel?
Because you should be playing at higher settings in BF3. Although, I can only comment on SP, not online gaming.

Hi - yes I do have SLI enabled in the Control Panel. I also have the option of choosing which card or processor is dedicated to PhysX but I have left this on "Automatic (Recommended)" setting.

What resolution do you play at as well mate? Vram may be a factor.

Interesting... I play on the highest possible setting for my monitor (1980xSomething) and I beleieve it is set to 60hz. Is this too high a setting? The idea of going back down to something like 1280x800 makes me feel a bit sick - lol! But I will do so if it's going to help.

Your i7 has the D0 stepping meaning it should overclock more/better. Your system is begging for a CPU overclock!

Regarding services, how much background crap do you have running?

LOL - right, I'll have a look into this overclock tonight and see how I get on. As for background stuff, I really have next to nothing running (although you've mentioned a couple there that I could also turn off). I've recently reformatted my computer to install everything fresh and try and find out what the issue is with my graphics performance, so I barely have any programs installed at the moment anyway.


Thanks for the replies so far guys - interesting stuff, keep it coming

 

[Brockie_UK]

Almoststew has already posted the best suggestion, get a higher clock on your processor, bang bf3 on high profile and see how your fps fares. I would expect an avg of 50+ if I had your rig, maybe the odd dip into the thirties every now and then.

To be honest though if it was me, I'd consider selling the 560's and getting a 7850, with the overclocks available on it, the rexent MASSIVE improvements for bf3 driver wise and at little to no cost after you sell your cards, shaboom.

Ok - I'll certainly give the overclock process a try tonight... Should I go straight in for an "aggressive" overclock or take it up in stages?? From what I've seen of the Intel software it can take up to 24-48 hours?

I will consider the graphics card change as well, but other than eBay I'm not too sure where to sell my current cards.

Thanks very much for your responses.

 

[Brockie_UK]

Intel software ? what would you be using intel software for ?

You should be overclocking your CPU in BIOS and just do it small steps at a time, waht CPU cooler have you got ?

Edit to say ..ahhh cooling should be fine.

It's just the on board 3rd party software that I suppose is mant to allow safer overclocking for a complete novice like me

If anyone can recommend another tool to use that would be great! In the meantime, I'll research how to go about doing through directly through bios. Thanks man.

 

[Brockie_UK]

Is it worth benchmarking? Am I right in thinking that 2 560s performs the same as a 670/680?

Hmmm I have no idea I'm afraid!

Am I right in thinking I just need to overclock the Processor? Or should I be looking at overclocking the card/s as well?

 

[Brockie_UK]

My dad plays BF3 everything on high running on an old pentium 4 @ 2.4 ghz and a gtx 460 so you should be smashing it....

could you download heaven benchmark, run it with everything full and see what your average fps is?

WTF?! That is really depressing!

I'll add Heaven benchmark onto the 'To Do' list for tonight mate thanks.

I'll do a benchamark before and after overclocking and post back the results.

 

[Brockie_UK]

Definitely benchmark so we can see what is is running at (then we can compare).

Cool - definitely will do tonight and post back on here. Thanks.

Have you checked the specs of your motherboard to see whether it operates at half speed when connecting two PCI-E devices? My AsRock 970 Extreme4 operates at 2 x PCI-Ex8 when connecting multiple cards.

Interesting... How do I go about checking that? I'll have a read on Google too in the meantime Thanks man.

 

[Brockie_UK]

I've just noticed a BIOS update that came out at the end of August on the ASUS site which I do not have yet. Any idea if this might help? If so I will update this prior to benchmark stuff.

Sabertooth X58 BIOS 1402
Improve VT-d compatibility issue

 

[Brockie_UK]

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Download MSI afterburner. It's a great software tool for OC'ing GPUs. You can set custom fan speed profiles and there is an OSD so you can show your FPS in game as well as GPU load, VRAM used, temps etc etc

Cool, will do mate thanks. Will post results of benchmarking and overclocking here asap. Fingers crossed.

 

[Brockie_UK]

Hi again

Just completed a benchmark using Heaven DX11 Benchmark 3.0 - thanks dunn2010 that is a great little tool!

Here are the results for your interpretation:

Spoiler

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I'm no expert obviously but that range of FPS is a bit odd isn't it?

Also, is it only picking up one of the two graphics cards here?

Any help/advice is much appreciated.

 

[Brockie_UK]

And a new benchmark with some functions lowered - turned off:

Spoiler

 

[Brockie_UK]

Did you try running BF3 with the settings used in the video of my other post?

Yes thanks! I did have a tinker with the settings and could definitely notice a bit of improvement. The same cannot be said for Arma 2 though

I think I will give overclocking a try and see how much (if any) difference that makes.

Can anyone recommend a decent overclocking program - and preferably idiot proof in this case

Also, any guides that take me through it step by step would be very helpful (I am about to go through Google now in the meantime) so I don't destroy everything.

 

[Brockie_UK]

I found this to be a good guide for overclocking my i7 920.

http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

The guide has been updated to cover some of the later 900 series bloomfield cpu's, it was based on the settings for an asus p6t deluxe mobo that i had, but the bios layout on the sabretooth TUF board is virtually identical.

Excellent thanks very much - I'll give that a read

Should I be considering OC'ing the graphics cards too?