Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

[MonkMachine]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

a huge part of this is subjective.
ive frequently seen people post their system specs as a P4 2.8ghz, geforce 6600gt, 1gb ram and say they run BF2 at all high settings. or they ask what settings they should run it at and a bunch of kids chime in saying 'crank em all up to high!'

im no expert, but i have a rough idea as to what systems paired with what cards will run at what settings. ive read through many 'what settings do you use' posts and have shaken my head at some of the posts - people running at *far* too optimistic settings that couldnt be getting more than 10-15 FPS. but to them that is considered 'perfectly playable'.
personally i consider <30fps unacceptable. and that generally means you need >50-60FPS average, which will dip to the 30s when the $hit hits the fan in big firefights - and thats when you need smoothness the most.

so no offense, but when someone says 'i have this and this and it runs perfectly fine', i want to see settings and average/min FPS.

and what is someone 'awfully wrong about'?
its been established over and over that beyond a point BF2 is *not* CPU dependant. the difference between an athlon xp 2000 and an athlon 64 3700+ is night and day. an xp 2000 is pitifully below BF2 requirements - not just the recommended, but the minimum requirements (which are very optimistic). you are going from a processor that is far too slow to run BF2 properly to one that is more than adequate. previously your processor was the bottleneck. right now its your vid card - if you swapped your processor for an FX-60 i doubt youd get any significant increase. your argument is hardly conclusive of anything other than that yoou finally have a processor fast enough to run it properly.

the thread was asking whether upgrading from a 3000 to 3700 would yield an increase in BF2 performance and the answer is no, unless you consider 1-2 FPS a noteworthy 'increase'.

Your right mate, if only there were a few more like you on the forums.

[Blackhearted]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

"I have no RAM heat spreaders or anything and since you don't think the VS RAM is a good candidate for running higher than normal speeds, then I won't bother even though 216 MHz didn't seem to give me any problems."

im just quoting my personal experience - but if you do some google searches youll find that valueselect, while highly recommended as good budget a64 ram, is one of the worst for overclocking.

tigerdirect heat spreaders

these arent bad heat spreaders for the money. at $2.25 canadian each you cant really go wrong. ideally its not a bad idea to have them on your memory even at stock speeds. as a fellow canuck you know that $2.25 doesnt get you much in canada. maybe a coffee at tim hortons.

if your valueram runs totally stable at 216 then dont let other peoples experiences discourage yoou from leaving it at that. any type of chip - cpu, ram, etc - has a certain level of variance. they are tested to run @ at *least* the rated spec, but different batches could have different overclocking results, even 2 chips from one batch can have significantly different potentials. the fact that your ram will even post at DDR 450 speeds is a pretty good sign, IMO.
id grab some heat spreaders, and now that you know you can run your ram stable at around 433mhz yoou can mess around with different FSB clocks/dividers and see what you can do with the CPU. it gives you a bit more leeway.

[Talus]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

Thanks for the words of encouragement

But seeing as how I got no performance gain from the CPU overclocking (and RAM overclocking for that matter), I'm going to focus on making sure that I'm overclocking my GPU properly and safely.

I was running my 6800GT at 370/1120 and it seemed fine.

But then I let coolbits tell me the 'optimal settings' and it set me at 393/1080 .. and I got 4 FPS increase. I need to make sure these new settings aren't going to hurt my card.

[Blackhearted]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

Thanks for the words of encouragement

But seeing as how I got no performance gain from the CPU overclocking (and RAM overclocking for that matter), I'm going to focus on making sure that I'm overclocking my GPU properly and safely.

I was running my 6800GT at 370/1120 and it seemed fine.

But then I let coolbits tell me the 'optimal settings' and it set me at 393/1080 .. and I got 4 FPS increase. I need to make sure these new settings aren't going to hurt my card.

just because you dont see an improvement in BF2 doesnt mean that there is no improvement from your overclock :)
you run other programs on your comp dont you?

nvidia's coolbits-enabled overclock testing algorythm seems to do a good job of determining the optimum clock for your vid card, however it does *not* account for cooling. that is near the optimum speed you can run it at without getting errors if you can maintain the temperature it was tested at, which is impossible with stock cooling. after a half hour of BF2 you may start getting artifacts.

the chips can survive pretty hot temperatures (my fan failed on my 6600GT and it actually reached 110 degrees without frying before i noticed it, and the chip throttle temp is 145 degrees), but if its overheating due to an overclock you will be worse off than running it at stock speeds. so just because nvidia's algorythm tells you its fine at 393 dont take that as gospel - play BF2 for 2-3 hours on it while monitoring the temperature. if it starts to overheat then turn it back down, IMO 4 FPS is not worth having to go out and buy an expensive aftermarket cooling solution. especially in canada, where after exhange rate/taxes/etc itll end up costing you $60-80.