Upgrading to a new rig, anyone care to estimate on the performance increase please?

Synergy · 27 Feb 2006 at 23:37

Hi, new to the forums but have been a customer of Overclockers ever since I bought my first Athlon 800mhz. I just landed myself a new job so I decided it must be time to treat myself ^^.

I currently have a socket 754 A64 3200+ 1GB Crucial CAS3 PC3200 - i also have a 7800GTX and I feel my PC is really holding my gfx card back. The ram and CPU barely overclock at all (like 5%) and I'm looking to change this.

I'm considering upgrading to...
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
AMD Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-142-AM)
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)

My first question is what kind of performance increases am I going to see, specifically in games, but also elsewhere.

Secondly, is that RAM going to be the best for the rig? (assuming I want a cost effective 2GB solution)

Thirdly, I'm assuming the most recent 146's from OCUK are the CABJE stepping, which although not as nice as CABNE/CABYE still overclocks quite well (2.8ghz?).

Thankyou very much for your time and sorry for asking annoying questions

ACESHIGH · 27 Feb 2006 at 23:47

Synergy said:
Hi, new to the forums but have been a customer of Overclockers ever since I bought my first Athlon 800mhz. I just landed myself a new job so I decided it must be time to treat myself ^^.

I currently have a socket 754 A64 3200+ 1GB Crucial CAS3 PC3200 - i also have a 7800GTX and I feel my PC is really holding my gfx card back. The ram and CPU barely overclock at all (like 5%) and I'm looking to change this.

I'm considering upgrading to...
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
AMD Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-142-AM)
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)

My first question is what kind of performance increases am I going to see, specifically in games, but also elsewhere.

Secondly, is that RAM going to be the best for the rig? (assuming I want a cost effective 2GB solution)

Thirdly, I'm assuming the most recent 146's from OCUK are the CABJE stepping, which although not as nice as CABNE/CABYE still overclocks quite well (2.8ghz?).

Thankyou very much for your time and sorry for asking annoying questions

You should see a very nice increase in performance with that upgrade especially when you overclock the CPU. To help you do that get something like this ...
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 00:06

Thanks for the response, how much would that cooler actually help? Are the stock fans not up to much?

Ive used Zalman coolers and the odd Arctic in the past with reasonable success but that was generally because I bought OEM or stock coolers really werent up to much, i figured they were better these days

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 00:15

In fact its only £18 more so I'm going to take your advice

I also happened to find a very good review on this cooler, coincidentally using an opteron 146 with the mobo I am going for too.
Link below for anyone interested.
http://www.3dxtreme.net/index.php?id=acfreezer64pro1

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 00:22

Bought!

Devlish · 28 Feb 2006 at 10:00

good luck mate, im considering exactly the same type of upgrade (except i have a radeon 9800 pro!) so would appreciate any thoughts you might have on your new setup.

FirebarUK · 28 Feb 2006 at 11:51

You wont notice much at all tbh. Not unless you start picking through bench scores and figures.

Having said that, 2GB of ram rather than 1GB gives a lovely boost in some games.

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 13:31

FirebarUK said:
You wont notice much at all tbh. Not unless you start picking through bench scores and figures.

Hmmm i doubt that

I like to run games @ 1600x1200 maxxed out (except AA). Also - while I'm not into overclocking for the 'fun' of it, if i can get a reasonable performance increase (running a 2.2ghz chip @ 2.8-3ghz on air) then its something I like to dabble in. I find with my current system that the processor (probably the memory controller?) limits my performance. My framerate is generally quite high, but the occassional 'hitching' is what annoys me.... especially in games such as BF2.
Bearing in mind that my system is always fully tweaked for optimal performance, i really am hoping to see my min fps increase a large amount and no hitching whatsoever.

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 13:32

Sleepless said:
good luck mate, im considering exactly the same type of upgrade (except i have a radeon 9800 pro!) so would appreciate any thoughts you might have on your new setup.

No problems, do you want benchmark results? If so, with what piece of software? I tend to usually just use games as 'personal' benchmarks and generally don't publish figures on forums etc.

FirebarUK · 28 Feb 2006 at 13:40

You wont notice much at all tbh. Not unless you start picking through bench scores and figures.

Only speaking from experience. I went from a K8V + 3200+ to a 3800+ Venice overclocked to 2.55Ghz. Barely noticed the difference, apart from silly benchmarks scores. The extra ram is where your performance increase is.

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 13:48

I'm partly blaming my hitching on both it being a 754 chip/board and having 1gb (of not very fast) RAM.

I have read that people have reported large speed increases just from jumping from 754 to 939.

The IPB · 28 Feb 2006 at 14:13

Im sure you will notice something, even if its not a massive FPS increase new games coming out will run better, current games should run better. So your in no way losing out.

Devlish · 28 Feb 2006 at 15:23

yeah and better positioned for that next expensive graphics card although with a 7800gtx that may be a while

. I'd be more interested in whether you do see a performance increase, im not expecting miracles just whether you have a noticeable improvement in the smoothness of BF2 etc.

p4radox · 28 Feb 2006 at 16:07

The main increase for now will come from the extra RAM. Seeing as you don't seem like the "overclocking for the sake of it" kinda guy, I'd go for the GSkill ZX over the HZ. Tight timings will give you a real-world gaming and general use performance boost, whereas higher bandwidth will only really benefit encoding and benchmarking.

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 16:27

Sorry i probably mis-represented myself, I AM an overclocker but I tend not to push components to their limit. I get stuff at a good point in the price/performance/overclockability curve - push them as fast as they will go without altering voltages etc too much, then just leave them

I don't like messing with watercooling etc to eek the last few % out, at the heart of it im a hardcore gamer, so if its not 'noticable' in game then its not worth the effort.

That said I can't see the point in overclocking if its NOT for gaming, but then I am narrow-minded

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 16:29

Can anyone suggest a decent benchmark to compare these two systems? (something that I can download and run tonight then run again tomorrow after I rebuild my new system).

MikeTimbers · 28 Feb 2006 at 16:33

If it's for gaming, use whatever game you like best. Anything else is irrelevant.

FWIW, I upgrade my kids' machine from an XP-Mobile @2500/NF2 with a GF2MX to an Opty 146@2766/NF3 with a FX5600XT. Can honestly say that for them running Age of Mythology it's made not the slightest difference!

OTOH, it's made folding 50% faster

Synergy · 28 Feb 2006 at 20:14

Well you see, I run MS-DOS 5.0 and i noticed that QBasic Gorillas was 0.000000001 milliseconds slower loading up than I'd like

Synergy · 1 Mar 2006 at 14:19

Should get my new parts today (am at work, will install when I get home)

I write the following for speed comparison purposes as requested.....

I'm hoping that I don't actually have to reinstall Windows seeing as A64 / Opteron are pretty similar as far as Windows is concerned and I'm even using a very similar mobo chipset.... Maybe a few driver reinstalls will sort it out... we'll see...

I've downloaded the free edition of 3dMark2006 (scores seem about half of what they were in 2005 from what I remember) to compare the two systems.

I'll use the following for both tests...

Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
(Completely up to date, all fixes etc, i tend to use Autopatcher to ensure that I am fully up to date, always spyware free and never running any services and programs that I don't need to)
DirectX version 9.0c
Nvidia Detonator 83.90
Nvidia 6.84 Nforce 4 Chipset Drivers

The bits of my PC not specified, like PSU, HDD Raid array etc are the same between tests.

3DMARK SCORES
-----------------
OLD PARTS:
3DMarks - 3745
SM 2.0 Score - 1746
HDR/SM 3.0 Score - 1722
CPU Score - 846

NEW PARTS

@ Stock (completely untweaked, 2ghz CPU etc):
3DMarks - 3610
SM 2.0 Score - 1713
HDR/SM 3.0 Score - 1665
CPU Score - 793

@2.7Ghz (245 mem)
3DMarks - 3920
SM 2.0 Score - 1735
HDR/SM 3.0 Score - 1688
CPU Score - 1063

@2.85Ghz (260 mem)
3DMarks - 3980
SM 2.0 Score - 1742
HDR/SM 3.0 Score - 1697
CPU Score - 1121

@2.9Ghz Prime stable,
3DMarks - 4039
SM 2.0 Score - 1767
HDR/SM 3.0 Score - 1736
CPU Score - 1123

@3.00Ghz (250 Mem, 2.7v RAM, 1.5v CPU)
3DMarks - 4086
SM 2.0 Score - 1770
HDR/SM 3.0 Score - 1738
CPU Score - 1180
-----------------
All at default voltages etc.
-----------------

HARDWARE:
------------

OLD BITS: (this would never O/C more than about 8% mem/chip speed

)
========

CPU
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ | NewCastle | Socket 754 | DH7-CG
CPU Clock Speed 2211.3 MHz
Clock multiplier x 11.0
HTT Bus Frequency 201.0 MHz

MOBO
ASUS K8N4-E Deluxe, 1.XX
BIOS revision ASUS K8N4-E Deluxe ACPI BIOS Revision 1010
BIOS release date 10/21/2005
Chipset nVidia nForce4 rev. A2
Southbridge nVidia nForce4 MCP rev. A2

MEMORY (this is old Crucial PC3200)
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 1024 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 201.0 MHz
FSB

RAM CPU/11
CAS# Latency 3.0 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 3 clocks
RAS# Precharge 3 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 8 clocks
Bank Cycle Time (TRC) 12 clocks
DRAM Idle Timer 16 clocks

NEW BITS:
========

CPU:
AMD Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939)
OSA146DAA5BN
CACJE 0605APHW
1413994A60901

MOBO:
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express

MEMORY:
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3

(to be filled in properly when I get it up and running).

Synergy · 1 Mar 2006 at 14:31

MikeTimbers said:
If it's for gaming, use whatever game you like best. Anything else is irrelevant.

FWIW, I upgrade my kids' machine from an XP-Mobile @2500/NF2 with a GF2MX to an Opty 146@2766/NF3 with a FX5600XT. Can honestly say that for them running Age of Mythology it's made not the slightest difference!

OTOH, it's made folding 50% faster

Your kids play Age Of Mythology? Intellectuals!