Gaming rig needs an upgrade. But what to spend the £120/$160 on?

[alienware]

Nah that's cool mate

I've always said that more than 4gb is overkill unless you are doing some seriously heavy stuff like rendering

I've got 3gb in one and 4gb in the other..

 

[7up]

My new Corsair Dominators 4x1GB sticks arrived today.

There is definitely a marked improvement in performance - although it still struggles a bit on 8xedge detect (= x24 samples) during busy scenes.

Alien (+ all), you recommended setting manual timing on these babies. How do I go about this?

I'm researching RAM timing now, i'll post again if I work it out before anyone gets back to me.

Thanks for your help guys - I've been tearing my hair out for months over the stuttering!

Ash

 

[tinytomlogan]

My new Corsair Dominators 4x1GB sticks arrived today.

There is definitely a marked improvement in performance - although it still struggles a bit on 8xedge detect (= x24 samples) during busy scenes.

Alien (+ all), you recommended setting manual timing on these babies. How do I go about this?

I'm researching RAM timing now, i'll post again if I work it out before anyone gets back to me.

Thanks for your help guys - I've been tearing my hair out for months over the stuttering!

Ash

You should deffo manually set them, its in the bios. All you need to worry about are the first 4 numbers, it will be like "888-24 or 444-12" depends on what mem you have, youll have to look it up on the manufacturer site.

 

[7up]

Thanks Tom!



-Would that be 'Tested' or 'SPD' latency? (specs below)

-Other than RAM timing, will I need to adjust additional settings for voltage, etc?



RAM: CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-8500C5D

Speed Rating PC2-8500

1066Mhz

2GB Kit (2 x 1GB)

Tested Latency 5-5-5-15

Tested Voltage 2.2

Performance Profile EPP

SPD Speed 800Mhz

SPD Latency 5-5-5-18

http://corsair.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?vcode=PGCRS&partnum=TWIN2X2048-8500C5D&__utma=1.494234863.1285148328.1285167407.1285330321.3&__utmb=1.3.10.1285330321&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1285330321.3.2.utmcsr=google|utmccn=%28organic%29|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=corsair&__utmv=-&__utmk=251675657

RIG:

E8400 CORE2DUO PROCESSOR 3ghz 6 MB

ATI Radeon HD '4870 X2'

MOBO: Asus P5K Premium wifi ap

- DMA/ATA 133 (Ultra) x 1, DMA/ATA 66 (Ultra) x 1, Socket LGA775, ATX, Intel P35 Chipset

120mm Thermalright w/1x 2200rpm Yate Loon

Sound card: Creative SB X-Fi ExtremeGamer

Memory: 4GB: Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5D

Hard drive: 750GB Samsung HD753LJ

 

[Diablo]

They will run at 5-5-5-15, provided you give them 2.2V.

 

[7up]

They will run at 5-5-5-15, provided you give them 2.2V.

Thanks Diablo

 

[alienware]

You can use CPUZ mate to see what they're currently at. Look under the memory tab

But yes, they will be way over and the voltage hopelessly low.

As I said, when it comes to DDR2 they are the fastest best sticks on the planet. I have the model down (the 800) and it just screams.

However, let my board set it? butt. Total butt. Timings were utterly slack. And THIS is why you don't mix ram. You can't time either or volt it properly and thus both end up running like poop.

 

[7up]

You can use CPUZ mate to see what they're currently at. Look under the memory tab

But yes, they will be way over and the voltage hopelessly low.

As I said, when it comes to DDR2 they are the fastest best sticks on the planet. I have the model down (the 800) and it just screams.

However, let my board set it? butt. Total butt. Timings were utterly slack. And THIS is why you don't mix ram. You can't time either or volt it properly and thus both end up running like poop.

Ha! Fair dos man. We like speedy speedy!

Like Columbo, I always seem to need 'just one more thing, Sir...'

I have set to 555-15 and 2.2v accordingly.

CPU-Z shows DRAM Timings successful, Frequency at 400.7MHz.



Are there additional settings I should also change on my P5K?

A number of additional options are available having selected 'Manual Overclock' to change RAM timings.



Attachments not working today - Please see link for Asus P5K Premium BIOS menu screenshots:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardware/110267-c2d-overclocking-guide-beginners-p5k-add.html

 

[alienware]

Frequency at 400.7MHz.

Erm, that ram should be 1066 mate. So you should be seeing 533

More poking in bios to be had there.

*my* dominators are 800 DDR, so show 400 in CPUZ. Yours are the model up, and should show 533. See? that's why you need to take full control of everything in bios manually. I just hope your board supports 1066. Might need a bios update.

 

[7up]

Aha! DRAM Frequency, methinks.

Changed BIOS 'DRAM Frequency' to 1066MHz.

CPU-Z now shows DRAM Freq as 534.3

 

[AMDFTW]

thats right mate,have the timings stayed the same,they should of if u set them manualy

 

[alienware]

*hurrah*

Glad you got there man ! Yeah, should be miles better with it all set up correctly

 

[7up]

Hi AMDFTW - Yeah, CPUZ shows timings remain at 5-5-5-15, thanks for checking.

Cheers Alien, couldn't have done it without you.

Other CPUZ Memory readouts (Do tell me if anything looks wrong)

DRAM: 534.3MHz

FSBRAM 5:8

Command Rate: 2T.

*Goes to leave then turns, finger raised*

There's just one more thing..

I want to keep an eye on the RAM temps for a while.

I have MSI AFterburner, HW Monitor and CPU-Z, but can't locate RAM temps.

Any thoughts?

 

[AMDFTW]

RAM modules dont have temp sensors,if you can touch them without burning yourself then they are fine lol,at stock they should be cool to the touch so dont worry,you could change the command rate to 1t

 

[7up]

RAM modules dont have temp sensors,if you can touch them without burning yourself then they are fine lol,at stock they should be cool to the touch so dont worry,you could change the command rate to 1t

Thanks man - RAM running very cool

Gave N1 (T1) a try, but BIOS failed to boot, so reset to AUTO.

 

[Diablo]

Yeah RAM (apart from FBDIMM for servers) runs nice and cool. Unless you are putting frankly stupid volts through it I wouldn't worry. And the voltage you have there is fine.

 

[AMDFTW]

yer thats odd mine do that aswell even tho ur intel and i am AMD migh be something to do with 1066 ddr2.

i would set it to t1 tho and not manual it better to set evrything manualy

 

[7up]

Hi AMD and co,

A quick Google showed an even hit/miss ratio for those attempting to boot using T1, with the consensus being that it can offer a slight improvement in many cases.

Since it fails for me, and I'm not very familiar with BIOS OC settings, I'll have to leave it for now, unless there's something obvious you or anyone can see in the attached BIOS screenshots:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardware/110267-c2d-overclocking-guide-beginners-p5k-add.html

(Link is just an example of P5K Premium BIOS options. My my settings are as follows.)

My FSB Frequency is currently 333, default.

RAM timings: 555-15

DRAM Freq: 1066MHz

FSBRAM: 5:8

RAM volt: 2.2

Command rate: N2 (T2).

Are there any quick-fix options in these menus which might offer further performance improvements?

I'm too tweak-fatigued to embark on a full OCing project for the time being, but would be keen to know about any final quick tweaks I might have overlooked.

 

[alienware]

All seems good to me mate. Your CPU has a 1066 bus. CPU FSB are weird. That 333 somehow gets multiplied by 4 to give you your 1066 FSB then X3 for your overall clock speed.

 

[7up]

"But its still not fast enough...or is it?



I'll post a new thread with this, but since people here are up to speed with the specs will mention here too:

So after all the aforementioned tweaking, + new RAM, I've definitely got a performance boost in some areas... Yet I'm still not convinced my games are running as fast as they should. Like I've said, this is my first rig so I'm not sure.

Busy scenes in FPS games are still showing frame drops, where I suspect they should be much smoother.

L4D2 has improved - but older game COD 4 Modern Warfare (2007) still drops to 28 much of the time.

I ran a 3DMark test, and scored 12864. I browsed other submitted results for similar setups.

Although I couldn't find results with an exact match for my E8400, the average was around 16000 or more:

http://service.futuremark.com/searc...-100&graphicsdriver=-100&operatingsystem=-100

Bearing in mind that I have tried replacing RAM, temps all report as running cool. (too cool maybe?? I see others talking about temps which peak much higher than my GPU/CPUs, which report an ave of 55/65 respectively, regardless of whether im playing or not.)

I haven't yet tried a Windows 7 reinstall, but I'd like to avoid that - at least until I know I've exhausted all other options.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Let me know if I can upload any info which might help.

Many thanks

Ash