Graphics have HD870, upgrade to 8800GTS or Q6600?

[Cruelinios]

Right so I have just upgraded from a x1800xt 512mb to a Gigabyte HD3870XT 512MB GDDR3 overclocked to 854 core and 954 mem (gddr3), with a fresh install of Vista, C2D 6300 @ 3150, bus at 452mhz and 3072mb ram, with that i'm getting 10802 in 3d Mark 06, a bit dissapointing IMO and Sup Com at 1680x1050 and high graphics and 0xAA 0xAF doesn't run as well as I'd hoped for.

So i started nosing around the futuremark results pages and looking at it, it seems like there is a much higher performance increase if I went from dual to quad core and know I can reach 3.8 - 4ghz easy on this board. I have also looked at a BFG 8800 GTS 512MB OC and they also give a good 40% speed increase in games like Crysis (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200..._gts_oc_512mb/)

So my dilemma really is, quad core or 8800 GTS to improve my gaming experience?

Cheers

[Mankz]

Quad for me or an e8400

[heir flick]

i found my biggest increase in 3dmark came with the quad cpu and overclocking it, so i would say get a quad and if your motherboard supports crossfire then get another 3870 later

[oasked]

Honestly, why do you care about a 3d mark score? You will almost certainly get a better 3DMark score with a quad core, but it isn't going to do anything for real games I'm afraid, at least not yet.

[WhiskeyAlpha]

Originally Posted by oasked

Honestly, why do you care about a 3d mark score? You will almost certainly get a better 3DMark score with a quad core, but it isn't going to do anything for real games I'm afraid, at least not yet.

QFT. High 3Dmark scores rarely reflect "actual" 3d performance. Look at the scores the ATi 2900 are capable of for example

You're more likely to see gains in the 3d performance from improving the GPU than the CPU (when you consider you already have a pretty powerful dual core) but the 3870 is a great card. Granted the 8800GTS is a more powerful card but is it worth upgrading to from a 3870?

[Burnout21]

Originally Posted by oasked

Honestly, why do you care about a 3d mark score? You will almost certainly get a better 3DMark score with a quad core, but it isn't going to do anything for real games I'm afraid, at least not yet.

i agree with that,

3Dmark is the biggest drive of hardware sales, people tend to overlook the actual performance of there hardware 'in game'.

how well dose Sup Com at 1680x1050, high graphics, 0xAA 0xAF run? i would imagin it runs farily well. as 1680x1050 is basically 1280x1024 which tbh isn't the highest res now! lol!

[WhiskeyAlpha]

Originally Posted by Burnout21

i agree with that,

3Dmark is the biggest drive of hardware sales, people tend to overlook the actual performance of there hardware 'in game'.

how well dose Sup Com at 1680x1050, high graphics, 0xAA 0xAF run? i would imagin it runs farily well. as 1680x1050 is basically 1280x1024 which tbh isn't the highest res now! lol!

Actually, 1280x1024 (1,310,720 pixels) is more akin to 1440x900 (1,296,000 pixels) than 1680x1050 (1,764,000 pixels)

[Cruelinios]

Thanks for the replies, yeah i'm taking the 3d mark scores with a pinch of salt, just using them idea of how the system is running compared to other rigs, i'm not buying hardware to get up the score charts because i'm uber l33t ... anyway, so Sup Com at 1680x1050 is ok, im running it at high everything with medium shadows, 0xAA 0xAF and its ok but say I play with me vs 2 large computers (~1600 units on the map), it isn't as smooth as i'd hoped for, I was hoping a HD 3870 would be a lot better than this! i'm getting C&C 3 and Crysis tomorrow and will try that but I know Sup Com is one of the few games that uses multi-threading and really can hammer a decent system ... so i'll go and order the Q6600, if i dont get the performance I need, might have to sell my raptor and a few other hdd's and my old x1800xt and get either another hd3870 or a 8800gts ...

[rls669]

Q6600 will make zero difference in real world gaming. Games are not cpu limited, they're gpu limited. If you think adding a Q6600 and keeping your 3870 is going to make any discernible improvement whatsoever, prepare to be disappointed. OTOH, replacing your graphics card will make a very large difference.

[Tim S]

In SupCom, you are more likely to see a benefit from the quad-core CPU... especially with lots of units on screen. While the built-in benchmark is a pretty good measure of graphics performance, it isn't representative of the CPU load created when you've been playing against other players with lots of units on the map.

It's one of the few games to really take advantage of quad-core CPUs.

In other games though, you will see more benefit from the GPU upgrade - it depends how important SupCom is in that respect.

[wuyanxu]

i'd say neither.

the 8800GTS isn't really that a huge leap from 3870. and unless you are going to encode, quad cores will gain minimum FPS, as all above says).

btw, 3.6Ghz is typical overclock, 4Ghz q6600 is very unlikely.

[kenco_uk]

How opinions differ from month to month...

I'd say go for a quad core now, if you really must upgrade something. You'll see the benefit in supcom and a handful (literally) of other games designed to take advantage of multiple cores for a start, together with the smoothy creaminess of Windows in general.

Then go for an 8800GTX when the prices start to come down. Either that, or an NVidia 9800-something or other, when they hit the shelves.

[Cruelinios]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

3.6Ghz is typical overclock, 4Ghz q6600 is very unlikely.

I'd have to disagree, I've seen a large number of users at XS that are reaching 3.8-4.0 on air with the G0 stepping chips and either P5B dlx or P5K dlx ... I'm at 450 fsb now, i'm running a decent water setup and if the chip can handle the volts, 450x9 = 4050 ... but again that is theoretical and always down the chip you get, but my board can handle it ....

Originally Posted by kenco_uk

You'll see the benefit in supcom and a handful (literally) of other games designed to take advantage of multiple cores for a start

Thats what I needed to hear, I only really play SupCom at the moment, used to be a big FPS player on CS, now just playing Sup Com or Crysis in to the wee hours after a hard day at work so think the Q6600 is taylored for my needs ATM, it gets delivered this arvo

[wuyanxu]

Originally Posted by Cruelinios

I'd have to disagree, I've seen a large number of users at XS that are reaching 3.8-4.0 on air with the G0 stepping chips and either P5B dlx or P5K dlx ... I'm at 450 fsb now, i'm running a decent water setup and if the chip can handle the volts, 450x9 = 4050 ... but again that is theoretical and always down the chip you get, but my board can handle it ....

i highly doubt it's 24/7 overclock. most people say they can get 4Ghz out of their chip, but in fact, it's only for benchmarking.
i've even got 3.9Ghz out on air, where my cheap RAM gives in. it's really depends on luck. the usual 24/7 garanteed clock for water cooling is about 3.6Ghz, and about 3.4Ghz for air.

[Tsen]

With air cooling only, 4 Ghz is very, very optimistic. I've only got mine to 3.4 stable (though I'm "only" using an Arctic Freezer 7), and I don't run it 24/7 at that speeds. On water, 4.0 is very reachable, but not on air. Oh, and as far as GPU vs CPU upgrade, I'd go with the CPU now and wait a while on the GPU. Right now isn't a good time to be looking at high end graphics. The 9800 GX2 isn't a good enough upgrade for me to be considering the price tag, and anything less than that isn't really a big leap forward for you. I'd just hold on tight and wait a few more months. The Q6600 is a great processor, and you won't regret using it. Supreme Commander and Crysis both use a lot more processing power than other games nowadays. You'd see a bigger gain from graphics than CPU in Crysis, but since there's still no card that can max Crysis's settings, you'd be best to wait.

[wuyanxu]

Originally Posted by Tsen

With air cooling only, 4 Ghz is very, very optimistic. I've only got mine to 3.4 stable (though I'm "only" using an Arctic Freezer 7), and I don't run it 24/7 at that speeds. On water, 4.0 is very reachable, but not on air. Oh, and as far as GPU vs CPU upgrade, I'd go with the CPU now and wait a while on the GPU. Right now isn't a good time to be looking at high end graphics. The 9800 GX2 isn't a good enough upgrade for me to be considering the price tag, and anything less than that isn't really a big leap forward for you. I'd just hold on tight and wait a few more months. The Q6600 is a great processor, and you won't regret using it. Supreme Commander and Crysis both use a lot more processing power than other games nowadays. You'd see a bigger gain from graphics than CPU in Crysis, but since there's still no card that can max Crysis's settings, you'd be best to wait.

well said.

i see you've got same RAM as me, can i ask what's the maximum frequency have you got on those RAM sticks? what setting for max frequency?

[Tsen]

I actually switched out that for 4 GB of AData RAM. The platinum didn't overclock well, mostly because they intended for it to be overvolted to 2.1v to even reach the advertised latencies. Kind of turned me off of the OCZ brand.

[heir flick]

i just noticed i have the same graphics card as Cruelinios and i have the q6600 so for the 3dmark 06 score this is what you can expect, cpu @stock and single 3870 about 11600, cpu @ stock and 2 3870's about 13700 (yes i was a bit dissapointed at that) cpu@3ghz and 2 gigabyte 3870's with the core clocked @830 it scores just over 16400, as for games they are playing fine at 1920x1200

[Cruelinios]

Cheers guys these comments have been really helpful and thought about it for a good while and went ahead with the Q6600 as I'm really in to sup com at the moment ...

So my Q6600 G0 arrived on Friday and was tempted to lap it first but left it and got some nice results; instantly could get to 3200 on stock volts, quite impressive I must say. Went and started pushing it up, managed to hit 3.9 but the volts were far too high for my liking, i was on close to 1.56v just to get it up that high and was getting about 65 load so reduced it down to 3650 @ 1.48v - 43 idle / 56 load according to CoreTemp.

After a few hours of Priming, went ahead and fired up an 8 player map, got up to around 2000+ units and things usually would have started slowing down considerably on my C2D, it got so bad at some points that 1 second ticked over every 4 seconds on the game clock, on my Q6600 it was fine, handinling it perfectly and CPU usage maxed out at about 63-65%.

Very happy with these results, shoved on a quick round on 3DMk 06 and got 12900 so that will suit me well until I the HD4xxx series comes out in June.

Thanks for all of your comments and suggestions

[Cruelinios]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

well said.

i see you've got same RAM as me, can i ask what's the maximum frequency have you got on those RAM sticks? what setting for max frequency?

Just saw this ... This Geil stuff is OK but a bit weird, so i ordered my 1st two sticks around Jan/Feb 07, had these stable at 450 x 7 5-5-5-12 @ 2.2v, loved these so much that I though't I'd go ahead and get another two and wasn't happy with the results, max post I could get was between 425/430 @ 2.2v (didnt want to go higher and fry it). So now have it running at 406x9, thinking of getting some 8500+ later and hitting 510x7 for some nice bandwidth but a bit sceptical if the p5b dlx can handle it, my NB is toasty ...

Whats the OCZ platinum good to?