How to tune a system?

[Vreki]

I have a pretty average system:

• Gainward PCI-E GeForce 7900GS 256MB Golden Sample
• ASRock 939Dual-VSTA soc. 939
• AMD Athlon 64 S939 3800+ Venice
• G.Skill RAM DDR 2GB PC400 CL2.5 kit Heatspreader
• And a ATA HD which I don't remember. Nothing special

I was made aware in this thread that the 7900GS apparently can handle quite a bit more than mine currently does, so I am considering how to increase my systems performance

The 7900 GS is already clocked at 500/1400 from the factory, but I know I can get at least 10% more by overclocking it
The 3800+ runs with a stock cooler at standard 2.4, but I have read that it can be increased to 2.7 without extra cooling. Is that worth the effort?

As you can see I am pretty much tied to socket 939 unless I want to change MB,memory and CPU. And I don't want to do a complete upgrade for some time.

The one component that is reasonable to replace is the harddrive.
My MB supports two SATA and one SATAII, so I could get either a SATAII drive or 2 SATA drives in raid0.
But would that have any effect on my FPS in battlefield?

Thanks for any advice.

[Sniper1432]

no man, that would just make the maps load faster :/ When I had my 3400+ I got sucky FPS 25-45 all the time, but now that I went dual core I'm getting a hell of a lot more. I also would not advise overclocking on stock cooling as it may damage your proc.

how many FPS you get right now?

[Vreki]

no man, that would just make the maps load faster :/ When I had my 3400+ I got sucky FPS 25-45 all the time, but now that I went dual core I'm getting a hell of a lot more. I also would not advise overclocking on stock cooling as it may damage your proc.

how many FPS you get right now?

Eh, I kind of left the Fraps log files at home
I will get the exact numbers when I get there.

1600X1200 at Berlin single player is playable with AA off and shadows/lightning at low, but it does lag a bit when the walker is spewing bullets all over the place.
I don't think it will be playable on a Titan map.

Thats not a problem right now, but it could be if I end up buying a LCD with a native res of 1680/1050

Currently I don't have BF installed since I did a OS reinstall yesterday, but if you have a score from a benchmark then I can try to see how much I score later. I think I have Aquamark and 3dmark03/05/06

I also would not advise overclocking on stock cooling as it may damage your proc.

Yes, but I was considering upgrading anyway, although it seems a bit of a waste. So I thought that I should at least see how much performance I could get out of the 3800+.
If it melts I could get a 4200 X2 or maybe a opteron, although I have a hard time finding out how the two compares.

[Sniper1432]

its getting very tough now to get SCKT 939 procs, so if your gonna upgrade get socket AM2 still with that said you have a nice system still but it is strange that you're lagging :/ if you play BF2, do you have a performance hit in that game as well?

[Uncleadolph]

If you're willing to upgrade to AM2, you might aswell go 775.

[Vreki]

its getting very tough now to get SCKT 939 procs, so if your gonna upgrade get socket AM2 still with that said you have a nice system still but it is strange that you're lagging :/ if you play BF2, do you have a performance hit in that game as well?

Yeah, but AM2 means DDR2, so I would have to replace the memory as well.
I wouldnt exactly say that it is lagging, but compared to you running 1600x1200 4AA all high there seems to be quite the difference.

3dMark06 gives me a score of 3908 on a clean OS with just AV and Zonealarm running.
ETA: I managed to get a link to the test results: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2425298

Main Test Results
 
3DMark Score 3908 3DMarks 
 
SM 2.0 Score 1785 Marks 
 
SM 3.0 Score 1759 Marks 
 
CPU Score 937 Marks

At 1600x1200 no AA Fraps give me these numbers, the first one is with shadows,dynamic lightning and effects low.
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
4426, 99270, 34, 64, 44.585

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
3300, 69514, 29, 60, 47.472

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
13611, 292023, 28, 61, 46.609

[venny]

getting new hdd wont make much of a diff to the game even in raid.
upgrading to am2 or lga775 would require a change of mobo as well as ram, that will cost alot.
in short, u arent going to get much more performance out of your current pc unless u plan on a major overhaul.

[looqas]

Put the money on new proc (you can get those 939 at bargain prices now) instead of hd. Go for X2 line.

Upping the clocks is pretty straight forward.

That 7900GS can go faster and use RivaTuner or Coolbits to do it. Google for instructions.

Also cranking more speed out of your proc is fairly simple. Net is full of good manuals.

But if I were you I would get a new proc and you'll avoid the hassle to oc it. Over clocking the video card is a lot of easier.

[Vreki]

Put the money on new proc (you can get those 939 at bargain prices now) instead of hd. Go for X2 line.

AMD apparently just lowered the prices on 4200 X2 939, so I will watch out for them

That 7900GS can go faster and use RivaTuner or Coolbits to do it. Google for instructions.

I successfully clocked it at 600/1600, which gave a score of 4319

Also cranking more speed out of your proc is fairly simple. Net is full of good manuals.

But if I were you I would get a new proc and you'll avoid the hassle to oc it. Over clocking the video card is a lot of easier.

Thats actually fairly simple on my motherboard, which supports "Untied Overclocking Technology"
A 10% overclock gave me a score of 4036, so that is not really worth the effort.

Thanks for your advice everybody, my tests indicate that I can run 1600x1200 reasonably well, although with most eyecandy at medium (I use the settings recommend in tweakguides)
But it is nice to know that I can squeeze a bit more out of the system if needed. :)

[Vreki]

Put the money on new proc (you can get those 939 at bargain prices now) instead of hd. Go for X2 line.

I took the advice and bought a new dual core processor (Opteron 180).
But now what?
What do you use to manage the affinity of various single-core-minded games?

I have installed the various AMD drivers and utilities, but it looks like there are no two games that behaves the same.
Any recommendations?

[Sniper1432]

i never set it to that affinity crap, there is a Microsoft download for systems with dual core but I don't remember what it's called

[Vreki]

i never set it to that affinity crap, there is a Microsoft download for systems with dual core but I don't remember what it's called

I seems to run fine in singleplayer, so I guess I wont have to mess around with it then. Unless it crashes later on.

[oplock1000]

[quote=Vreki;377427]I took the advice and bought a new dual core processor (Opteron 180).

Isn't that a server processor? Does it handle gaming as well as a normal desktop processor

[Vreki]

I took the advice and bought a new dual core processor (Opteron 180).

Isn't that a server processor? Does it handle gaming as well as a normal desktop processor

Yes, the Opteron series are aimed at the server market.
But my research indicates that the Opteron 1XX are almost identical to the Athlon 64 series, it just has to pass more stringent tests.

The Opteron 180 should run like a X2 4800+

[looqas]

Opteron line is identical to some of the high-end X2 processors. The big plus comes from that it usually has more cache memory compared to X2 procossor going at the same speed and it's cheaper.

Any single-threaded game will not benefit greatly from the second core. The boost for those games come from the fact that the second core takes care of all the back-ground programs while the other core is dedicated to game. And those programs can amount to quite substantial amounts nowadays like 5-10% of the utilization of core which single core systems have to execute aswell as running the game.

But you'll definately love it when you are encoding some videos or doing some other stuff where the utilization of the whole processor goes to 80-90%. Plus your windows will never freeze in a way that it takes forever to close the one program that has crashed and uses 100%.


You could install the Dual Core optimizer for PC-gaming http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Processors/..._13118,00.html