Botteneck check

[Adster3000]

Hey,

I recently discovered that my AMD 440 3GHz tri-core is bottlenecking my system in terms of gaming. I'm using an ATI 5850 and found that Battlefield Bad Company 2 lags because of the CPU.
I discovered this because a friend of mine recently upgraded his CPU while having a similar computer to mine and found his performance in BFBC2 improved greatly.

I've come here to ask if my motherboard will bottleneck my system if I were to upgrade to a Phenom ii 1090T hex-core.

My motherboard is an Asrock M3A770DE. Specification:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=M3A770DE

This is the processor I am looking to get:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-266-AM

And its specification, if needed:
http://products.amd.com/en-gb/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=640

Any help, advice and opinions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Adster3000]

Is it possible for the motherboard to be bottlenecking the CPU at all?

 

[Adster3000]

Not really it has a x16 pci-e slot so its fine.

Okay, what would happen if I were to crossfire 5850s, bearing in mind the other slot is x4?

 

[Adster3000]

No point in X6 for gaming.

Phenom II X4 955BE is your best bet

The thing is.. My mate who I previously referred to earlier bought an ATI 6870, which is a bit better than a 5850. He had the same amount of lag and slowdowns as I did, due to us both having the same AMD 440 tri-core.

He then upgraded to a Phenom II 965 and found that his performance improved a lot, but it wasn't perfect. I.e. not a flawless 60 fps.

This made me unsure if it was now the CPU or the GPU that's still causing his small dips in fps and since I plan on crossfiring my 5850 soon enough anyway, I thought I should just spend an extra ~£20 on a hex instead of the quad.

So.. I dunno..

Thanks for all the replies people.

 

[Adster3000]

www.anandtech.com/bench

The last website you will ever need.

Care to elaborate? Those rating mean nothing to me.

I also do not understand how all the Intel processors have huge ratings compared to the AMD equivalents.

I sense bias.. But what do I know?

What this guy said.

OP, have you tried unlocking the fourth core of your processor? You might get lucky.

Oh, and hard drive bottlenecking is a myth in PC games. The only thing a slow hard drive will actually slow down is load screens. From there, everything is so aggressively cached into RAM that a 5400RPM EcoGreenMegaSlow drive will run at the same speed as an SSD.

I have attempted to unlock the fourth core and was successful.

The only reason why I didn't keep it was because I needed to buy an after-market cooler as it was unstable with the stock cooler. I didn't want to do this at the time.

Would it not be worth me upgrading the CPU just to have the L3 cache? I was under the impression that it would be worth it.

Also, does anyone know how a crossfired pair of 5850s will fare with the x16 and x4 PCI-E slots?

 

[Adster3000]

I think I read a 5850 in a PCI-E slot running @ x4 will only decrease performance by about 5%. It's not an ideal board for crossfire, but it's advertised with crossfire so it has to work.

As long as your Athlon II X3 doesn't unlock some L3 cache and the extra core then an upgrade to a Phenom II X4 or X6 is a good bet. I would still grab an aftermarket cooler though whatever you do, I couldn't stand listening to the stock AMD heatsink fan, I swear it spins at about 2000rpm.

Yeah, my friend had to upgrade his cooler the next day he received his CPU because it was too loud. This is what made me consider it in the first place for when I upgrade.

And no, I'm pretty sure it didn't/doesn't unlock any L3 cache.

Don't go Crossfire, a single 5850 is plenty enough- it's definitely your X3 that's holding you back.

If your X3 was unstable when unlocked, it's likely that it's due to the 4th core being unstable, rather than a lack of aftermarket cooling, unless temperatures were seriously through the roof. If you could unlock it safely with a cooler, I'd say do that- an Athlon II X4 at 3.0 or so is easily enough for modern gaming- but if not, get the Phenom II. The L3 cache on the Phenom is nice, but it's no game changer.

What I meant by unstable was I ran a stress test and It soon shot over 70C, which I did not like at all considering it didn't scrape 60C when it's all stock.
My apologies.

I get horrendous lag on DX11 setting in some games (Lost Planet 2), probably like 20-30fps if I remember correctly.
Could this be to do with my CPU? or is it still a GPU thing? Games like this are the reason why I wish to crossfire.

 

[Adster3000]

I have a 720be running a 5770 and have no stutter at all in BC2 when i installed a 955 I noticed no difference at all so sold it.. I have the 720 unlocked to a quad and running at 3.6ghz and it only cost me £40 on the MM..

Could be worth getting a cheap Phenom II from the MM as it seems the extra cache makes quite a difference...

The only difference between your processor and my friends is the +.2GHz clock. Do you run everything at max with HBAO on? Also, what resolution?

Gah.. Still unsure as to what to do.

 

[Adster3000]

+1 from me.


Its more than a "bit" better



Mikey has pointed you in the right direction, however this URL compares the 6970 against the 5850: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=295 The 6970 looks about 30% faster to me.

Imho if a game is a "console port" then it will benefit more from a multi-core CPU than a better graphics card, but thats just mho. Cheers

My bad!.. He has a 6870, NOT the 6970. My apologies..

I shall edit my OP.

But yeah, when he upgraded his GPU from an ATI 4670, he had the same lags and slowdowns as I did (while having the same tri-core). The CPU upgrade almost completely sorted it.

I don't want it almost completely sorted, though.

 

[Adster3000]

Yes mate all at max 1920x1080 no stutter perfectly smooth...Sounds like graphics drivers to me.. ?

He runs his at 1650x1080 and has the latest drivers apparently. He gets the drops more noticeably when HBAO is on.

Unless that .2GHz really does make the difference..? I dunno.

 

[Adster3000]

Get an cheap but decent after market cooler like a hyper 212 plus, that should help keep your chip cool and overclock a fair amount. Hopefully will keep the core unlock more stable.

For a gaming perspective, a 955BE will be enough, and it's a bargain compared to the 1090T.

BTW, I have a 1055T, and I have gamed at stock speed for quite a while (BFBC2), despite the low default clock speed.

In any case, try a 3rd party cooler and some overclocking, that'd be a lot cheaper. If it doesn't work, you can still keep the cooler, which you will need with a 955BE or x6 anyway, to make any kind of headway.

BTW, what's the motherboard? Hopefully not a nforce.

Oh, and I have a 5850. I also hope you don't play at insane settings with maxed AA (I use no AA to be sure). The 5850 is a good performer, but certainly not top of the line.

Is the Hyper 212 Plus a good cooler then? Are there any that are known to be better?

Would you, or anyone know how far I'd be able to get a Phenom 965 in terms of overclocking?

I don't fancy replacing the cooler on my tri. It's not a Black Edition, does this mean it's not designed for overclocking? Or would be bad for overclocking?

My motherboard is an Asrock M3A770DE. I did state this in my OP, by the way.

I do like to run games on max or the highest I possibly can, which is why I wish to crossfire.

On a different note, my friend overclocked his 965 to 3.8 and said that it improved it more. This has made me hesitant over a hex, as this would suggest that it's the clock that's the problem.

Why is this so difficult?

Aha, cheers fellas.

 

[Adster3000]

BTW if you want it easy, get what your mate has, since he knows how to get there with your setup. I still recon a 955 will do the job just as well.

I reckon you're right.

So are the 955 and 965 the same chip or something? Would I be able to achieve the same OC with both of those chips?

How come everybody is against crossfiring, anyway? I'm looking at benchmarks on the AnandTech website and all seems fine in terms of performance.

You should adapt the graphics settings to your card really, because the other way round doesn't work. There's no point running eye candy that will bomb your framerate. Also, you can try disabling v-sync if you are running at low frame rates.

You're right here, I do always bump the settings down until I get a solid 60.
This actually isn't possible for me with BFBC2 though. If I run it with absolutely everything on low, my performance is practically the same.

The only difference I notice is when I create a lot of explosions/smoke. The lower the AA is when I do this, the less severe the drops in FPS are.

Otherwise, no matter what the settings, I cannot get a solid 60 fps when looking into the center of some maps (but obviously I get 60 when looking out/away from them). Depends on the map.

What cooler does he have to run his 965? 3.8GHz is a nice number, must be a decent cooler or is he cooking his CPU?

This is another odd story.. He originally bought a an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 and found his OC to 3.8GHz was unstable. Kept bluescreening. He then reinstalled his stock cooler and put that OC back on and found that I ran stably. So, yeah.. He pretty much is cooking it. I believe he said the stress test (OCCT I think?) came out as 65C after an hour.

His dips with AA on max when there are explosions and smoke directly in front of him. With AA off (or 2x, I think), I believe he gets a solid framerate. I'm going to assume this is normal? No bottlenecking here? I can live with this, but I'm stumped at how some people are claiming they are getting perfectly smooth gameplay with lower spec hardware than mine.

Thank you for your assistance, by the way.

 

[Adster3000]

You may be able to unlock L3 on the tricore. Here's a discussion, probably more around the net.

Again, try a hyper 212+ with AS5 and overclock the x3. Try unlocking the cache (if available), and extra cores. YOu may need to reduce overclock to keep it stable, or it may hold with everything unlocked.

If you still not satisfied and nothing unlocks, get a 955BE and overclock with said cooler. The HD 5850 is good enough on its own, and if it's not, reduce eye candy. That would be the cheapest route to fix your problem. That's all I can say

I unlocked my tri again briefly as a test. I can confirm that mine doesn't unlock the L3 cache, which is a shame.

I also ran BC2 to see how it would fare (while keeping an eye on my temps) and found that the map loads a lot faster, I'd lag like mad when I first got into a map because it was sill loading map resources. Performance in general was a improved a bit, also.

If I got the Hyper 212, would it be recommended to use AS5? Will it provide noticeably better cooling? I only ask because I've never installed a new cooler without the thermal paste being pre-applied and if it doesn't benefit me, I'd rather avoid doing it.

In reply to your other post, my memory clock is at 1600MHz.

Best I start reading up on overclocking, also.. If anyone has any favored guides, I'd appreciate them.

 

[Adster3000]

I have a Hyper 212+ on my 720be. I used the stuff that came with it and my temps are nice and low. Just make sure yo thinly spread the compound over the chip as the base of the 212 is not flat and the blob method causes it not to spread..

On an off topic note, when aiming for a max temperature when OCing, do I focus on CPU temp or core temp?

 

[Adster3000]

One thing to be careful with core temps, is the surface contact between the cooler and the CPU, especially cheap coolers as they tend to have less precise and grainier machining on the surface (the Hyper has the pipes pressed directly onto the contact surface).

So parts of the CPU may not have a contact as good as other parts. If you get discrepancies (say, over 10 degrees) between core temps, then your thermal contact may not be optimal and could use some better compound spreading to fill the gaps on the cooler surface.

I still recommend you use AS5, that gives you more paste to spread around and ensure maximum surface contact. You don't need a big slab though, just a 'film', unless you have big gaps to fill in between the heat pipes at the base.

As for core temps versus CPU temp, if you unlock your cores, the core temps on CPU-Z and other software may be reported wrong. You can always double check in the bios for consistency.

I say AS5 as it's a tried and tested compound and you get plenty of it. You can use some isoprophyl alcohol to clean the gunk off the CPU and cooler.

I assume the Hyper 212+ does come with pre-applied paste? If it does, I think I'll just leave it as it is and buy a couple of case fans. I currently have only one that's on the front.

Another question I have is side panel fans. I can fit 2 on my Xigmatek Asgard case. If I were to buy 1, would it be best to put it over the CPU or GPU? And would I be assuming correctly that it should be pumping air into the case?

Any fan recommendations would be appreciated, also. There are so many to choose from.

For games that can only take full advantage of one or two cores, the Athlon II and even Phenom II is a bottleneck (I'd imagine only at low resolutions though).

Sorry, but I already proved that wrong when I unlocked a core to test performance.

 

[Adster3000]

The 212+ comes with a tube of paste not pre-applied and it works very well. I have tried them all and tbh if applied correctly they all work as good as each other. I have that cooler on my 720 unlocked to 4 cores at 3.6ghz using the paste it came with and it barely hits 40'c under load.. Just don't use the blob method as it wont spread a thinlayer on the chip is perfect..

Fair enough, thanks.

After finding out that I don't focus on CPU temp but on core temp, it turns out my unlocked tri is stable with the stock cooler. Highest it is was 75C (CPU temp) which is about 64/65C core temps if I'm not mistaken? Obviously I cannot check because it doesn't display them when the core is unlocked.

Should I let it run like this? I know my max temperature is 70C according to the AMD website's specification and also CoreTemp. Also bearing in mind this is about 5 or 6 degrees higher than what it was before the unlock, which isn't much I'd imagine?

Now it's a matter of deciding whether to keep this and get a new cooler or just carry on with getting a 965 with the cooler and OC that.

 

[Adster3000]

start with the hyper. If it doesn't work or you can't overclock safely, get a 955BE. Easier to overclock.

Sounds like a plan. What's the delivery charges and times like through OCUK?

Seems a little hot to me that. Is the stock cooler the non heatpipe small one as that would explain the temps.

Why don't you get a new cooler like the Hyper 212+ and have a play with your current chip and see how it goes before getting a new chip. If it turns out that it's not performing how you wan't then buy a new chip and you have the decent cooler ready to go. The Hyper 212+ is only £15 and a bargain as it offers superb cooling equal to many high end coolers...

Cheers

Yeah, no heat pipes. Standard AMD cooler.