My gaming rig should run better than this... or should it?

[7up]

Hi guys,

The following issue has plagued me for months. Any help would be more gratefully appreciated than you can know.

I am the first time owner of a second hand rig in good condition, specs attached. I have learned a great deal since then, but there are still some gaps in my basic knowledge.

Thus, I cannot I can't answer this simple yet illusive question accurately enough:

Shouldn't my rig be chewing up basic fps shooters faster than this, dammit??

My rig is the house media center - but I really bought it to play fps shooters at a silky smooth pace. (At a 60fps constant stylee).

Based on what others are telling me, I suspect I am seeing some serious sub-standard performance here. L4D2, MW2, MW1 (2007!), Fallout 3 etc run 'adequately', but all dip as low as 20-30fps during scenes which I, only instinctively, feel it should be able to handle.

Admittedly, I do usually run at fairly high settings on 1920x1080 (60mhz HDTV), but even dropping those settings provides only marginally improved results.



The problem is that I've now got 'engineers fatigue', and have spent so many months learning and investigating the problem that I'm starting to wonder whether I merely imagined that there was one to begin with...

Im sure my games ran faster than this at one point.

Benchmark 3DMark06 score = 12864

If you can help, please let me know of any further info/test results I could provide to help identify the problem, and I will gladly post them up.

Here's what I have tried so far:

-Dismantled and cleaned whole rig (v dusty when purchased)

-Installed additional 2x2200 fans. Improved airflow.

-Replace RAM (previously two sets of mixed sticks)

-Set RAM timings manually, in BIOS (Manual timing 555-15, FSB 333)

-Format/reinstalled Windows 7.

-MEMtest on RAM

-BIOS update

Thank you, gentlemen!

Wolfdale E8400 Core 2 Duo

Asus P5K Premium Wifi

4GB: Corsair Dominator 2xTwin2X2048-8500C5D

Radeon ATI HD4870x2

Hard Drive: 750gb Samsung 753LJ

Sound Card: Creative XFI XtremeGamer

Power Supply: StarTech 650w

Windows 7 x64

Monitor: LG 42LH3000 HDTV

 

[hmmblah]

Is that E8400 overclocked at all? Based on your '06 score, everything looks right.

 

[7up]

Is that E8400 overclocked at all? Based on your '06 score, everything looks right.

Hi hmmblah. Not currently overclocked.

Do the FSB/RAM/Ratio settings look ok?

(333/555-15/5:8)

 

[hmmblah]

Yep those are right where they should be for stock.

What kind of cooling do you have on that C2D? 4.0GHz is easily attainable on most E8400's. I'd suspect you'd see a nice jump in your games especially at that resolution.

 

[7up]

120mm Thermalright w/1x 2200rpm Yate Loon.

 

[hmmblah]

Yeah, I'd definitely work on some overclocking if I were you.

 

[7up]

OCing is definitely on the cards!

But before I do, I want to establish the cause of the lame performance here.

I'm still fairly certain I should be getting higher fps overall. Are there other useful benchmark tools I could use, specifically to compare performance results with owners of similar rigs?

 

[hmmblah]

I've never owned an X2 card, but is Crossfire enabled when you are playing those games?

 

[7up]

I dont think xfire is selectable a feature on the x2 cards. I can only find references to the 4870x2 and crossfire, when they are used alongside another card, hybrid style.

 

[hmmblah]

I'm not really sure how thosse X2 cards work, if the system sees it as one card or two cards in xfire. There are a few people around here with X2 cards though, maybe they can shed some light.

I assume you are using the latest AMD drivers?

 

[AMDFTW]

just go in device manager and look if you can see the GPU twice.the x2's are hard xfired so they should be there all the time.

check the drivers for the card and your mobo

 

[SiN]

Your PSU is killing your computer, guaranteed.

 

[hmmblah]

Your PSU is killing your computer, guaranteed.

I've never seen a PSU cause performance issues. I've seen crappy PSUs cause all sorts of stability issues though. If his games were exiting and crashing I'd be more inclined to say PSU, but slowdown...that'd be new for me.

 

[7up]

My bad! My PSU is not a StarTech at all. Ahem.

I dismantled to check - It's a Silverstone 750w, ST75ZF. Is this any good BTW?

No idea why I thought StarTech.

Anyway: My performance issue has finally been solved.

Turns out I had a new problem, which coincidentally had similar symptoms to the old one.

I had previously tried full drivercleaner installs of all ATI drivers from 10.4 to current, with no success.

-Checked that the HD4870 appeared as two seperate GPUs in device manager

-This time, I uninstalled the auto WDM GPU drivers which always appear, as the final step before an ATI 10.5 install.

-In addition, reset BIOS to defaults, then reentered the manual RAM timings (555-15), RAM 2.2v, FSB 333.

One of these steps solved the problem! Games now run smoother than I've ever seen. So good to be playing full speed again.

Thanks for throwing in, guys.

However - CPUZ, HWMonitor and RealTemp all show my C2D cores at different temps. One is usually 10-15 degrees out.

Average: 37 vs 55

A number of E8400 users have reported problems with reported C2D core temps.

I already tried a full dismantle/clean/thermal paste reapplication.

Should I be concerned about this, and will it make it harder to OC?

After an image backup of my properly functioning rig, I want to try my hand at OC'ing.

Are there any other tweaks I can do at this stage without having to embark on a red-eyed, extended testing, benchmarking OC megaquest?

 

[SnW]

My bad! My PSU is not a StarTech at all. Ahem.

I dismantled to check - It's a Silverstone 750w, ST75ZF. Is this any good BTW?

No idea why I thought StarTech.

Yes its a pretty good PSU ..

 

[CRAZYCAP]

I've got the E8400 E0 Stepping overclocked to 4.2ghz on 1.3v in the bios and 1.264 in CPU-Z after vdroop. Ran prime 95 for 12hrs and the max core temp was 52deg with a H50 cooler (push/pull fans) so mate as long as you have a good cooler on that chip, get overclocking dude.

 

[AMDFTW]

can you not turn LLC on CAP

 

[7up]

can you not turn LLC on CAP

Hi AMDFTW and all,

Sorry, not familiar with 'LLC'.

For screenshots of all my Jumperfree Config options in my P5K BIOS, click:

(Apologies for a link, but I'm unable to upload today)

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overclocking/2-c2d-overclocking-guide-beginners-p5k-add.html

I want to OC, yet having studied this helpful but lengthy guide, I am still slightly confused about FSB/RAM timings/ratio concepts.

So far I have entered RAM:555-15, voltage:2.2v, DRAM:1067MHz manually, and currently FSB:333.

All other BIOS options are default.

I have CPU-Z, HWMonitor, RealTemp, 3DMark06 etc for testing.

(As reported, one of my CPU cores always reports as 15degs hotter than the other - but I suspect this is a faulty sensor, which is apparently common with the E8400 C2D)

Is there a more straightforward set of instructions I could use to OC, upping FSB/adjusting voltages etc?

Or is that guide as simple as it gets?

I attach my specs, with heatsink deets.

 

[tinytomlogan]

On 775's there is a NB/FSB strap where you can change the divider dude, sadly 775 is the easiest platform to overclock. You really just need to get in there and learn it.

The p5k premium was a brilliant board back in the day so you should do fine if you put the time in