Am I "Bottlenecking"? :P

Marky · 20 Oct 2010 at 08:36

Howdy folks!

I've not upgraded my PC in quite a while now - frankly I've not looked inside my computer for about 4-6 months now - and that was just to throw in a hard drive...

I've found recently that there are a few games that are being released that aren't able to run on my machine as well as I hoped...

F1 2010 for example - I had to turn the settings down - and I hate doing this

But I also played Fallout 3 last night again and found my PC slowing down at the "vault door closing" scene - I never remember it slowing down like this before!

Granted, about a year ago the motherboard decided it didn't like one of the RAM slots and so I had to reduce my RAM from 4GB down to 3GB but I didn't think it would hit massively...

I currently use a e8400 (not overclocked) and a 4870x2 - which I thought was one of the best cards for value and performance (maybe I'm wrong with this now?)

Is this normal performance for my PC? Is it crying out to be upgraded?

Marky

Nelson Santos · 20 Oct 2010 at 09:15

What was the ram problem in the end? Or did you not get to the bottom of it?

Your spec should run F3 without problem, maybe try just running on 2GB ram.

Tealc · 20 Oct 2010 at 09:32

I suppose dropping from dual channel RAM to single channel RAM would make a difference.

The 4870x2 is still more than capable.

Marky · 20 Oct 2010 at 09:42

Nelson Santos said:
What was the ram problem in the end? Or did you not get to the bottom of it?

Your spec should run F3 without problem, maybe try just running on 2GB ram.

Nope I never got round to finding out what was wrong - I just remember one day booting up and a message came up about memory being naughty and so it wouldn't boot.
I ripped out one stick at a time until it booted - and I have put one of the sticks into what I thought was the offending RAM slot and it didn't boot - so it must be a problem with the motherboard.

Why would it help reducing the RAM again?

reilly · 20 Oct 2010 at 09:53

Hey marky I have an e8400 and 4870x2, both not overclocked as the my motherboard doesn't like it at all. I play F1 2010 and I bottleneck to, and have to play on the lowest settings. I have two monitors so i opened up everest/task manager to check temps and loads and the e8400 was at 100% load on both cores in F1 2010. So i conclude that my e8400 is the bottleneck.

I cannot speck for fallout 3 as I haven't play that.

If it is possible maybe a an overclock to 3.6 would improve gameplay but if you are in the same boat as me it maybe not possible.

Nelson Santos · 20 Oct 2010 at 10:04

ignore....

EDIT* Always thought duel was better then single, as is faster. Might be worth trying out, could work.

bJN · 20 Oct 2010 at 11:06

Just look into clocking your CPU up a bit, F1 2010 is a CPU hungry game, so all the gains you get there will be very noticeable once you start pushing more juice through it

As for FO3, can't advise on that situation as I haven't played it myself and don't know what it's like in terms of performance anyway, but I should imagine it's a similar story as a 4870X2 should rip through pretty much anything even by today's standards...

Marky · 21 Oct 2010 at 00:26

reilly said:
Hey marky I have an e8400 and 4870x2, both not overclocked as the my motherboard doesn't like it at all. I play F1 2010 and I bottleneck to, and have to play on the lowest settings. I have two monitors so i opened up everest/task manager to check temps and loads and the e8400 was at 100% load on both cores in F1 2010. So i conclude that my e8400 is the bottleneck.

I cannot speck for fallout 3 as I haven't play that.

If it is possible maybe a an overclock to 3.6 would improve gameplay but if you are in the same boat as me it maybe not possible.

Interesting that the CPU is at max... you must be right...

Maybe an upgrade is in order after all... Might treat myself for Christmas

MeatLoaf · 21 Oct 2010 at 00:55

Might be worth checking that crossfire is working in F1, else youd essentially be running it on a single 4870

Marky · 21 Oct 2010 at 13:59

MeatLoaf said:
Might be worth checking that crossfire is working in F1, else youd essentially be running it on a single 4870

How can I check this?

matt_fsr · 21 Oct 2010 at 15:27

Can't be sure on the Crossfire mode for the 4870X2 I'm afraid.

But I'd say you'd definitely be bottlenecking that card on a 3.0Ghz E8400. I have a E7200 (2.5Ghz stock) running at 3.3Ghz and only an 8800GT card. I dont think I'm CPU bottlenecking my card, but a single 4870 is more powerful than my 8800GT!

Get some overclock on it

Pop it to around 3.4 - 3.6Ghz (if you've got good cooling) and see if that smoothes it out.

Marky · 22 Oct 2010 at 00:40

But but... I'm scared

Ahaha

Got any decent newbie overclocking articles I can read up on? Never got into overclocking - nearest I've got to it is going into my ATI advanced options and putting the slider up applying and then putting it back again "just to be safe"

matt_fsr · 22 Oct 2010 at 13:19

Ha ha, well... my first tip would be to make sure your fans are clean

Check your motherboard CD see if it comes with any overclocking utilities, sometimes they can give you a fairly 'safe' 10-15% of overclock.

If not, check your BIOS and lock the PCI and PCI-Express speeds (if you can) to what they are as default.

Raise your FSB by 5Mhz, save it, reboot and check all works OK.

If you have a spare HDD, I reckon its worth disconnecting your primary HDD's and using the 'spare' while testing your overclock. I've never corrupted data when overclocking but its not worth the risk.

Repeat adding 5Mhz-10Mhz values until you get an improvement you like, or system becomes unstable. Add a little more CPU voltage see if that fixes your stability.

I'd also recommend having a good read of some recent overclocking guides, and make sure you get your head around what's what before starting.