OK guys im in a little predicament here. My current rig is as follows Asus P5Q-E Q6600 ( running @ 3.32GHz ) 4GB DDR 2 800 ( running @ 8888MHz ) Samsung F3 1TB HDD BFG GTX 275 mild o/c 700W PSU Cosmos S case X-fi gamer Corsair H50 cooler How ever recently ive noticed a drop in performace while playing games online such as ArmA II Operation arrowhead....sometimes im going as low as 15FPS which as we all know is unplayable. I have had this chip running at 3.52GHz on air but no matter what i do I can push it any higher these days as I get BSODs on start up and when I ran memtest it borked out straight away. So to get performance in game back im looking at upgrading but im not sure as to what would be the best way. Funds are limited so this is not a buy anything I want upgrade Option 1 Keep current GPU, Case, cooler, PSU , etc and go for Asus P7P55D-E Core i5 760 4GB Corsair XMS3 1600 Total cost £330 Option 2 Keep Current CPU, board, PSU etc buy GTX 460 1GB card 4GB 1066 to replace existing ram that could be borking on me Total cost approx £ 240 Any help would be appreciated as I'm really stuck on what to do
You know it could be the game it self, memory leak? ArmA II was a very buggy game and very demanding too. Do you get this in any other games? But to your question, buying a stronger GPU will be enough for you. You see GTX 470 with Mafia 2 going for £220 nowadays, or go 768MB GTX 460 SLI for £230.
I normally only play ArmA II : Operation arrowhead Would the jump from the GTX 275 to the 470 be worth it ....unfortunatley my board doesnt support SLi ( just checked it here to be sure. ) However if I went down the 1GB 460 route would I notice enough of a difference as well to justfy saving the extra 60 -70 and saving towards a core i7 930
With your quad core CPU running @ 3.32GHz and a decent GPU, you shouldn't really need to o/c your RAM as it wouldn't make any noticable difference imho. Are you able to drop the RAM back to stock speed to see if it clears the BSOD's? As for the GPU, if you went to a GTX460 you would see an increase in performance but I don't think it would be a huge increase. See Anandtech's bench comparison of your card and a stock 460 1GB: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/169?vs=180. Even with a new m/b, i5 CPU etc I think you would still be limited by your GPU. If you don't want to go SLI then maybe a 470 or even a 5850/5870? I would suggest that before buying anything that you revert the RAM back to stock to see if it resolves the BSOD's then see if there are issues with games other than Arma II, just in case (as Shaftydude says) a buggy game is causing it. Edit: comparison between 275 & 470: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/169?vs=160
unfortunately I've not got an of those games but the last time i played L4D I know i didn't get anywhere near those speeds. Ive locked the ram as close to standard as i can ( 801MHz ) and managed to get the machine back upto 3.6Ghz....i can post easily at at 3.8 but will not get into windows at all. Ive run the good old cpc suite and got a score of 1289. im going to download the hawk demo and run it to see if the scores match up. As soon as ive done that im going to see what happens when i run memtest at these settings FSB 400 x 9 DDR 2 801 and then also FSB 420 x 9 DDR 2 840 is there any way to figure out if the board memory controller is borked?
I think some more diagnosis is in order... You say that you are getting memtest errors? Can you set the RAM to stock speed without changing your overclock? If so, do you still get memtest errors? Can anyone suggest a benchmark tool that the OP can use to test to see if we can find where his problem lies? Something that can test CPU, GPU, RAM & I/O (inc HD if poss).
well ive just run the HAWX demo bench mark at 1920 x 1080 and x4AA...and im getting an average 64FPS ....according to the link above I should be pulling at least 72FPS so something is off somewhere
I'm not so sure. 8fps is not a lot of difference and coul dbe down to a difference in driver versions for example.
well ive locked the ram off to 800mhz set the volts on it back to normal 1.8v ( I did have them set at 2.1v ) and got the FSB @ 400 x 9 giving me 3599.5 mhz....its now been stable for the last 49 mins with out a BSOD. which brings me back to my original question of upgrading chuck in a new GPU ( GTX 460 1GB ) car or go i5 760 etc or Go AMD 6 core 1055T
You have a great quad core CPU that is running at 3.6GHz, games don't use more than 3 cores at most at the moment. Assuming you are getting the best out of your current rig (e.g. no buggy game, driver or O/S problems) then the limitation you are going to come up against is a GPU one before a CPU one. Getting a significant performance increase from a GTX275 is going to cost more than a GTX460 in my opinion. If it was me, I would wait and see what is going to happen with ATI's 6xxx series hardware. At the very least it should shake up prices of existing graphics hardware. Maybe an SSD while you wait?
ill hang on then but ive had to clock back down to 3.2GHz again as ive had another 3 BSODs this evening...and i wasnt doing anything heavy
Wierd...you have a problem somewhere. If it was me I would take it all to stock and see if it was stable. If not then the fun begins... Okay, can I assume that you have checked the seating of the GPU & RAM and reseated just to be sure? Also, can I assume that you have run a memtest with everything at stock speeds & voltages? Assuming the above has passed, we may be looking at a software error. What exactly does the screen say when the BSOD's happen? Is it the same every time? If the BSOD screen doesn't stay long enough to read it, right click Computer, select Properties then the Advanced tab. Go to Startup and Recovery settings and untick "Automatically restart". This should mean that at the next BSOD, the screen will stay until you physically turn off the PC. Does the BSOD refer to any files in particular? What other messages are on the screen?
