Hardware Discussion Thread

Trevor451

I think I might need a cpu upgrade soon enough since I think my cpu is starting to bottleneck on some games at 1080p res . CPU is a amd athlon x3 unlocked to a phenom x4 but with no l3 cache. GFX card is a radeon 6850

Would I notice a big performance increase in games if I was to get this processor?

Unregistered.

Trevor451 wrote: »

amd athlon x3 unlocked to a phenom x4 but with no l3 cache.

That would make it an athlon x4.

What speed is the cpu running at, how much vram does your card have and what games are you playing? It could be worth your while getting a decent cooler and overclocking a bit.

Trevor451

CPU is running at 3.2GHZ (stock) but the temps reach 63C when running prime 95 for 40 min so I think its best not to overclock the cpu
Graphics card is a club 3d radeon 6850 with 1GB of vram.

I dont think this would make much of a difference but I am using 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3-1066 CL7 ram

Unregistered.

Trevor451 wrote: »

CPU is running at 3.2GHZ (stock) but the temps reach 63C when running prime 95 for 40 min so I think its best not to overclock the cpu

63 is not too bad. Is that on the stock cooler? What games are you playing that's causing the bottle-neck?

Trevor451

Unregistered. wrote: »

63 is not too bad. Is that on the stock cooler? What games are you playing that's causing the bottle-neck?

crysis seems to be preforming bad. Using the in game FPS command I can see that the fps is around 30 fps but sometimes it drops down to 16 fps :eek: I am playing at high settings (recommended) at 1080p res.
The cpu is using the stock cooler yea

oceanclub

I'm wondering if my CPU is a bottleneck too:

• Asus PK5 Deluxe with WiFi
• Intel Q6600 CPU with Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (stock speed)
• 4x1GB Kingston HyperX memory
• nVidia GTX 560 Ti
• Corsair TX750 750W PSU

(Games at 1680 x 1050)

According to both the optimal settings and to this page - http://www.geforce.com/#/Optimize/OPS/Crysis-GeForce-GTX-560-OPS - with an Intel Core 7, I should be able to play with settings on "very high". But even at medium, I'm still getting only 20-30 FPS with my CPU.

P.

deconduo

Trevor451 wrote: »

crysis seems to be preforming bad. Using the in game FPS command I can see that the fps is around 30 fps but sometimes it drops down to 16 fps :eek: I am playing at high settings (recommended) at 1080p res.
The cpu is using the stock cooler yea

Yeah, crysis at 1080p will struggle a small bit with that. Upgrading to that X6 won't help much either as its optimized for 4 cores afaik. It might even be worse as you are getting a 0.4GhZ decrease in clock speed. For gaming, your best bet for an upgrade would be an X4 955 or 965 with a decent cooler. You should then be able to OC it to 3.6 - 3.8 pretty easily.

oceanclub wrote: »

I'm wondering if my CPU is a bottleneck too:

• Asus PK5 Deluxe with WiFi
• Intel Q6600 CPU with Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (stock speed)
• 4x1GB Kingston HyperX memory
• nVidia GTX 560 Ti
• Corsair TX750 750W PSU

(Games at 1680 x 1050)

According to both the optimal settings and to this page - http://www.geforce.com/#/Optimize/OPS/Crysis-GeForce-GTX-560-OPS - with an Intel Core 7, I should be able to play with settings on "very high". But even at medium, I'm still getting only 20-30 FPS with my CPU.

P.

CPU is definitely the bottleneck here, an i7 940 would probably be 30-40% more powerful. The 560Ti is almost overkill at 1680 x 1050.

oceanclub

deconduo wrote: »

CPU is definitely the bottleneck here, an i7 940 would probably be 30-40% more powerful. The 560Ti is almost overkill at 1680 x 1050.

Is it worth overclocking the Q6600 as a short-term fix 'til I do a full upgrade?

P.

Unregistered.

oceanclub wrote: »

Is it worth overclocking the Q6600 as a short-term fix 'til I do a full upgrade?

P.

Very much so.

tazzzZ

Trevor451 wrote: »

Anybody know any good tutorials on how to unlock the 4th core on the AMD athlon x3 450?

Also if the 4th core does not unlock will the cpu be dead?

Thanks!

EDIT: Just had to go into bios and change the core unlock setting from disabled to enabled and it worked!

how do u find the temps on the athlon x3 450 unlocked when under full load? i just prime95ed mine for 8cycles and maxed out at 66-67 which i think is acceptable levels? mine is being used in a home server though. prob overkill for what its used for but still cant beat the price of it.


*EDIT* Just read ur reply above so can disregard.

actually i now seem to be having issues. after a good 2 hours of transferring files the server seams to just crash and need a hard reset. pain in the ass obv. i'm assuming this is prob down to the cpu gonna roll it back to x3 just to try sort it. unless any1 else has any other ideas?

roast

Trevor451 wrote: »

crysis seems to be preforming bad. Using the in game FPS command I can see that the fps is around 30 fps but sometimes it drops down to 16 fps :eek: I am playing at high settings (recommended) at 1080p res.
The cpu is using the stock cooler yea

Aftermarket coolers are dirt cheap. Even if you plan on replacing the CPU, and aftermarket cooler is always a decent option. You could definitely squeeze out some better performance from overclocking if you had a better cooler.

cherryghost

Crysis never used 4 cores. A Tri core should trump it. It's heavily GPU dependant

Monotype

After somebody mentioned one in a thread, I see that AMD has released 3 new cards OEM only - 6450, 6570 and 6670.
Very little info in the line of reviews as yet and not even listed on their 6000 series page, but the specs are all there so you can estimate.

lmimmfn

Monotype wrote: »

After somebody mentioned one in a thread, I see that AMD has released 3 new cards OEM only - 6450, 6570 and 6670.
Very little info in the line of reviews as yet and not even listed on their 6000 series page, but the specs are all there so you can estimate.

theyre just rebadged 5 series cards

cherryghost wrote: »

Crysis never used 4 cores. A Tri core should trump it. It's heavily GPU dependant

yeah Crysis only ever uses 2 cores

Trevor451 wrote: »

crysis seems to be preforming bad. Using the in game FPS command I can see that the fps is around 30 fps but sometimes it drops down to 16 fps :eek: I am playing at high settings (recommended) at 1080p res.
The cpu is using the stock cooler yea

Well considering i have an i7 920@4Ghz and an OC'd 6970 and get 50FPS( drops to 35FPS at the end which is the most gpu intensive part of the game ) on average on high with only 2xAA and @1680x1050 i would say youre quite doing well.

Trevor451

Do you guys think that the AMD black edition x4 955 is worth it? Will I notice a good jump in performance in games? Also would the stock cooler be good enough so I could overclock it to around 3.5ghz? thanks Currently on a Athlon x3 3.2ghz

marco_polo

Trevor451 wrote: »

Do you guys think that the AMD black edition x4 955 is worth it? Will I notice a good jump in performance in games? Also would the stock cooler be good enough so I could overclock it to around 3.5ghz? thanks Currently on a Athlon x3 3.2ghz

If speaking solely from a gaming perspective then i'm not sure it is not worth it, the number of games that will see a performance boost going from X3 to X4 are few and far between.

There is a decent selection of 7 different games (such as Crysis WH, L4D2, Fallout 3, COD WAW) benchmarked here for the Athlon II X3 435 vs an Athlon II X4 and the i5 750. At no point is the Athlon II X3 bottlenecking any of the games (They are using a still fairly respectable GT 260 as the GPU in this review)

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/athlon_ii_435_240e/17.htm

big_show

I'm in the market for a TV that, in say 6 months down the line, will do as a monitor for a PC that I'm building.

At the moment I'm looking at this Philips

It's 100hz, 2ms RT, got decent reviews (from what i've seen) and a decent price.

can anyone point out any snags i may hit down the line by choosing this? (ie too big? incomparability etc)

Thanks

EDIT: I will mainly be using it for PC gaming, wii and xbox.

Lu Tze

big_show wrote: »

I'm in the market for a TV that, in say 6 months down the line, will do as a monitor for a PC that I'm building.

At the moment I'm looking at this Philips

It's 100hz, 2ms RT, got decent reviews (from what i've seen) and a decent price.

can anyone point out any snags i may hit down the line by choosing this? (ie too big? incomparability etc)

Thanks

EDIT: I will mainly be using it for PC gaming, wii and xbox.

You should ask the lads in the richersounds forum, as they are the philips shop as well and know more about this TV i imagine than anybody that will answer you here.

You never know, they might give you a better price as well.

Moon54

Hi,

Does anyone know if 1920 X 1200 monitors are still being made?

I have a BenQ one with that resolution and I love it, but I can't seem to find
any in the online stores I tried.

Cheers.

ScumLord

Moon54 wrote: »

Hi,

Does anyone know if 1920 X 1200 monitors are still being made?

I have a BenQ one with that resolution and I love it, but I can't seem to find
any in the online stores I tried.

Cheers.

I see plenty of them on Dabs and Hardwareversand that resolution is mostly on monitors 24" and up from what I can see. I think you would probably have to look for a 16:10 rather than 16:9 (TV resolution).

Solitaire

Dear oh dear... has OCZ been up to its old tricks again? :rolleyes:

Needless to say, don't touch their SSDs with a bargepole!

In fact, the entire SSD market will soon be getting a downgrade, as they're all slowly following suit and transitioning to cheapo low-quality 25nm chips, and in an SSD - especially a SandForce model - unreliability also translates to reduced effective capacity and reduced read/write speed, especially regarding crippled small-file read speed. The reason for the change? 25nm is cheap and nasty, so there's a bigger profit margin on the drives.

Gotta love progress... :rolleyes::pac:

Tea_Bag

Solitaire wrote: »

Dear oh dear... has OCZ been up to its old tricks again? :rolleyes:

Needless to say, don't touch their SSDs with a bargepole!

In fact, the entire SSD market will soon be getting a downgrade, as they're all slowly following suit and transitioning to cheapo low-quality 25nm chips, and in an SSD - especially a SandForce model - unreliability also translates to reduced effective capacity and reduced read/write speed, especially regarding crippled small-file read speed. The reason for the change? 25nm is cheap and nasty, so there's a bigger profit margin on the drives.

Gotta love progress... :rolleyes::pac:

Very interesting!

dont have time to read the entire article, but would that not affect all 25nm based sandforce SSD's? corsair F60 or F120?

marco_polo

Tea_Bag wrote: »

Very interesting!

dont have time to read the entire article, but would that not affect all 25nm based sandforce SSD's? corsair F60 or F120?

Sandforce is the controller which is common to both drives and has not changed, the NAND module are the flash storage chips which OCZ have changed to 25mm, according to reviews Corsair use 32nm Intel MLCs (29F64G08CAMDB) and there is no suggestion these have changed on Force drives.

deejer

Trevor451 wrote: »

Do you guys think that the AMD black edition x4 955 is worth it? Will I notice a good jump in performance in games? Also would the stock cooler be good enough so I could overclock it to around 3.5ghz? thanks Currently on a Athlon x3 3.2ghz

Just wondering did you upgrade as I am thinking along the same lines. Was able to unlock the 4th core on the Athlon and had it running at 3.6Ghz but it was overheating with the stock cooler. Going to upgrade the cooler and give it another go.

I guess if this works ok there prob no need to upgrade?

Solitaire

Did you unlock the L3 cache as well?

IMHO you shouldn't need to upgrade to a Phenom so long as you can keep the quad cool; an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev2 should keep it under control but if you have enough room in the case I'd strongly recommend a Xigmatek Gaia, Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus or similar 120mm cooler to keep that beast under better control

tazzzZ

How do u unlock the L3 cache??

Solitaire

Depends on the mobo but if it actually works it should unlock along with any dormant cores...

Tea_Bag

Solitaire wrote: »

Depends on the mobo but if it actually works it should unlock along with any dormant cores...

i was wondering this myself, would i see any jump from my athlon to a fully fledged phenom quad? its unlocked to quad core @2.9ghz with 6mb L3 cache. i cant find any benchmarks with the 2. i understand that they should be the same, but i have my reservations that i paid very little for a quad core phenom processor.

Solitaire

Clock-for-clock, the Phenom will usually trump the Athlon especially in apps that require intensive data-shuffling around the CPU (particularly crypto and gaming!). For use in a gaming rig having the unlocked L3 is a big boost but if its the difference between OCing a Phenom X4 to 3GHz or the Athlon X4 to 3.6GHz, I'd be tempted to stick with the Athlon. And then again... four cores are (nowadays) always better than three, even for gaming.

tazzzZ

Aww pity. I have the 4th core unlocked but no l3. Agh well mine is only being used in a home server so the extra core is plenty.