Hard Drive Problem or Ram problem?

JamieT

JamieT

JamieT

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6 Dec 2008
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187
Basically i've tried to build the best gaming machine i have for budget i've currently running a Q6600 overclocked to 3.5 ghz, 4 Gig Geil Black Dragons, ATI Radeon 4870 HD Sapphire, Water cooled. I'm still currently recieving some FPS Problems (when it's far distancing if i take down the terrain distance on games it smoothens out, Also when theres quite a few people around me on offline and online games) So i'm wondering will more ram sort this out? help smoothen n run programs better or is 4 gig perfectly fine? Running vista x64 Only other problem i can think of it being is my hard drive, Which is about 5 years old, IDE and makes a hell of a lot of noise, So would it be worth be getting 2x 2Gig Geil Black Dragons and go up to 8 gig or could it possibly be the old HDD letting me down? (Games that have low FPS is: Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Call of Duty 5, And other games that have a lot of detail to load) Anyone got any suggstions?
I've become baffled with this problem and don't really know what else to do, So any information, Suggestions would be most welcome!
Thank you.
 
Well i believe the missus has bought me one for christmas,(500gig sata 7200 32 mb cache Maxtor) And was planning to get the ram along side it, I was thinking though 8 gig wouldn't be used, Since i only use my system for gaming, Even idle now just doing pretty much nothing it's really clicking and what sounds to be like struggling if you like, So would it be worth just trying the new HDD?
 
Low FPS can depend on many other things than just your hardware. But I would go for a new HDD if I were you. A 5 year old is so much slower than one up to date. I would suggest any size of Samsung SpinPoint F1.

Im afraid of running on old HDD's just cuz of all my data that I've stored. Just in case they'll crash. But that's just me :)
 
Yeah i'm hoping the new hard drive will solve the problem, A system like mine though should be able to handle the above games pretty well surely, Seen worse computers out perform mine (With pretty much brand new Sata hard drives) So this is the only thing i could think of letting me down, I've upgraded the whole system, Mobo (PQ5 pro Asus) etc (above specs) But the only thing i haven't upgraded through out my whole system is infact the 5 year old HDD
 
i would be carefull going to 8Gb ram as you may find you won't be able to hit your 3.5Ghz overclock anymore. i have to limit my fsb to 367 since just can't get anymore with 4 sticks in. What resolution are you running at? aa/af level?
 
Get 2x SATA drive's and put the in RAID 0 config. A must for a gaming rig like yours. It won't help for smoothness but loading time will be reduced.

4 gig is plenty of ram for gaming. The games you get slowdown with have pretty advanced graphics options, do you have them all maxed out?

Crysis will kill your system at max settings.

Check you graphics card contol panel and make sure you don't have antialiasing maxed out and anisotropic filtering maxed either.

That can really hit your FPS bigtime.
 
Try downloading HD Tach and post us a screenshot so we can see what your hard drive speed looks like.

Doh!! Just tried it on mine and it doesnt run on Vista :(

Doh!! Part2 Runs on vista in winxp compatibility mode :D
 
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I can easily pick up another hard drive i was thinking of RAID'ing since it does help loading yeah, Crysis is a rotton game to play on ultra, I can play it on 'Gamer' Settings which i'm assuming is mid graphics, And i get about... 40 fps, As for my card, the AAA on my card is set to maximum quality, AA is set to default (goes up to x2), Same goes for AF Set to default (Goes up to X2 and is at the bottom)
 
This is my HD Tach test running on Vista x64 - run in WinXP SP2 compatibility mode :D

myhdtach.jpg
 
Your always going to get some slowdown on certain games whatever system you have. It just depends on how well the game is optimised.

Unreal Tournament & the new Tomb Raider games for instance run beautifuly on most systems but Crysis and GTA4 run like a dog unless you have a killer system.
 
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