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

Brockie_UK

Brockie_UK

Brockie_UK

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Joined
23 Oct 2012
Posts
13
Location
United Kingdom
Hi All,

Just joined up on the forums and am hoping someone can help me or offer some advice. :confused: 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! :rolleyes:
 
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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.
 
When I overlooked my first gen i7, it really boosted my performance a lot. I got a 900MHz boost from a £30 cooler and some patience. It is really, really noticeable in most games, especially games that prefer GHz to cores. Your i7 has the D0 stepping meaning it should overclock more/better. Your system is begging for a CPU overclock!


I would have a google about how well those games scale with SLI. When I had my 2x 4890s, i always had to check if games played nice with crossfire. Some games scaled negatively so they worker better with one card only. I'm not sure if this is a problem with Nvidia though.*


Regarding services, how much background crap do you have running? How much stuff starts up on boot that you dont need? I disable pretty much everything; adobe updater, iTunes, steam, office, google updater, msn, daemon tools... I also don't have any antivirus.I guess some people think that is a bit stupid but *I haven't had a problem in 4 years or so.*
 
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Idleman said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.

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

almoststew1990 said:
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?
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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
 
A single monitor resolution shouldn't be affecting your graphics to have to be on medium I wouldn't have thought. Even though you'll probably be at your vram limit, the actual performance hit shouldn't be that great.

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.
 
Mirmo said:
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.
Click to expand...

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 said:
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?.
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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.
 
Attu90 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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

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.
 
2 560's will not perform the same as a 670 for two reasons:

A. A 560 is really very similar to a 460.
B. Only 1GB of VRAM.
 
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?
 
dunn2010 said:
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?
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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.
 
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.
 
triggerthat said:
Definitely benchmark so we can see what is is running at (then we can compare).
Click to expand...

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

Antowns said:
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.
Click to expand...

Interesting... How do I go about checking that? I'll have a read on Google too in the meantime ;) Thanks man.
 
Looking at your mobo specs, both slots run at 16x in sli so no worries there. Get them benchies done :-)
 
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