Bottleneck?

[Daaaveee]

hey guys/gals, noob over here! anyway, looking for your opinions on where the bottleneck is in my system, specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon 3000+ skt 754 (i suspect this)
Asus K8N4-E Deluxe
Corsair Value 3x512MB DDR PC3200
Sparkle GF 7800GT
WD Raptor 36GB 10krpm + Maxtor 80GB 7.2krpm

i'm struggling to run BF2 on anything remotely pretty looking... to make it playable (30-40fps still!), i have it on 1024x768, most things medium, AA and dynamic lighting off, dynamic shadows low. i've just been living with it, but now its getting on my dangly bits!

any suggestions?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

just out of the box speed, i've never had a go at overclocking anything. shadows are low with AA, dynamic light etc off. net connection is only 512k (fastest i can get out in the sticks!), but virtually never have any problems with lag, pinging around 60-80 usually.

once i cover the funds for the nurburgring trip i'll be looking to upgrade... about £250 to spend i'd say... possible to go dual core for that money?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

3800x2 costs about £210 after VAT,so probably not if you include RAM cost.
is not a good idea running 3 stick of ram btw. your best to keep 2 sicks only in use as timings suffer. get yourself a nice set of 2gb g.skill pc 4000 ram for £150 and overclock your chip. you should be able to get an extra 500mhz out of it, and your frame rates should increase due to the added ram. sell your old Ram to cover some of the cost and you should be fine.

great that sounds like a good plan. will i need extra cooling at all? how do i go about overclocking?

thank you both for your input, its much appreciated!

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

hmm, food for thought i guess. how much would i be looking to get for my existing CPU mobo and ram, realistically? i have another skt754 mobo with AGP as i bought the K8N4-E Deluxe for the PCI-E slot for the 7800, would have made sense to upgrade CPU then really!

obviously i'd like to be able to push up the GFX ASAP, but dont want to spend much for a month or so, so could probably spend about £100 now if that would be much use?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

Post your 3d mark scores, bf2 is fine on my pc running at 1680X1050 on a 6800gt/barton 3200, 1 gig of ram - and I use high settings.

what do i need to get it? noobie over here has not clue

Dave

edit: no worries, d/ling now, i will postup the scores in due time!

 

[Daaaveee]

3D Mark = 3144
SM2.0 = 1441
HDR/SM3.0 = 1428
CPU = 740

i'm guessing thats pretty rubbish!

suggestions then to improve on with a budget of ~£250?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

cheers everyone.

yep it was a 3DMark'06 score. i'll try 3DMark'01 and post up the results later on tonight when i've tried it with 3 and 2 sticks of ram...

looks like an overclock on the 3000+ and 2 matched 1GB sticks could be the way forward then? if someone recommends a pair i'll get them ordered and hopefully stick them in tomorrow night

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

i'm at work at the moment so don't have a chance to try it until tonight, and then it'll be too late to order unless i go for extortionatly priced saturday delivery, and yes i am impatient, hence wanting to order soon

G Skill at around £150 sounds good, i'll have a browse and see what else there is for about that price. also, whats the difference between PC3200 etc? i dont know what i can go for and what differences there are

how do i go about overclocking the 3000+ ?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

dude you should be able to clock that cpu to around 2.4

Just go for PC3200, that will do fine

sounds great so how do i go about doing that?!

just been looking and it looks like the G Skill ram with the blue heatsinks has the best timings (is that the right word?) of 2-3-2-5, for ~£150. theres some Corsair ram on offer this week which comes close though...?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

G.Skill 2GB DDR ZX PC3200 (2x1GB) CAS2 Dual Channel Kit (F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX) (MY-007-GS) 1
Total £158.86

should be here tomorrow! hopefully try some more tests tonight with an older 3DMark and with just 2 dimm ram see what difference it makes

can anyone tell me how to overclock my 3000+?!

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

I dont think 754 boards are capable of running memory in dual channel tbh. if this is the case, the upgrade would provide very little benefit.
Correct me if i'm wrong.

please, somebody correct him? :lol:

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

thanks guys.

no worries anyway i'll still stick the ram in tomorrow and see what difference it makes. as well as overclocking the CPU tonight to see what extra i can extract from it

it certainly appears my skt 754 days are numbered though!

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

3D Mark 2001 = 15813, if thats any use?

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

3D Mark 2001 = 18572 after overclock to 2.4ghz

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

I dunno why people bother using 01 its soo old, 03 at the most, 05/06 tell us the true story of whether the card lacks in games.

already posted my '06 result

after over clocking:

3D Mark '06 = 3309

downloading '05 as we speak so i'll let you know

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

That is low, when I had a Skt754 system with a Newcastle A64@2450Mhz and 2x512Mb Ballistix@200Mhz I got a score of 24024

With what memory configuration was your score set?

rams only at 100mhz for some reason, tried upping it but it wasn't having any of it... just going to leave it for now, the G Skill ram should be here tomorrow so i'll redo '01, '05 + '06 tomorrow night, see what i can hit

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

3D Mark05 = 6469

any good?

looking forward to the G Skill arriving tomorrow

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

RAM arrived this morning! 7:38pm! will install it tonight when i get home from work, it looked rather sexual though

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

6500 for 05 isn't too bad, considering its running single channel. Should get better timings from the gskill so more points hopefully.

yep, fingers crossed. 4 hours to go... damn i can't wait to give it a whirl

also, does anyone know what vcore i should be looking at to O/C the cpu some more, as it wasn't stable at 2400mhz 1.5v

Dave

 

[Daaaveee]

ah yes i just thought, will the slight increase in FSB (or HTT i think it is on mine, w/e), have a derogatory effect on memory timings of the G Skill?

Dave