Okay...my system (as in the sig) is running XP and is pretty clean & tidy. It can run 'most anything, but nothing gets very nice FPS...games that have small loading areas and are efficient on system resources glide along, but games that require a lot of simultaneous onscreen activity (DoW: Winter Assault is bad, for some reason, despite an '05 release date - framerates in the low teens mostly) or generally massive areas (Oblivion is okay out of the box but visual modding makes it unplayable) struggle, badly. I don't know how this translates to hardware, so I thought- ask people who do. What's my next upgrade/s, and any specific recommendations?
@ rito - dude - whats is it with you & PSUs?? A better PSU will NOT in anyway make a game run better. Looking at your spec theres little point in upgrading your g.card - The X1900XTX is what I have & I run all games at the moment at their hightest settings - the rest of my system helps though - very low latency RAM - Opty 165 @ 3.1Ghz & water cooled. So I would opt for a Intel Core 2 Duo - A E6350 are very resonable at the moment.
take a look at this chart that I configured with your CPU (close enough -Pentium D 930 3Ghz) & a E6320 Conroe. http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=890&model2=879&chart=425 As you can see the Conroe CPU gets almost 25 FPS faster - on games like oblivion a new CPU will make a huge difference.
Yeah, a 925 is just a 930 without virtualization. BTW, what mods and res are you running Oblivion at? I'm at 1680x1050 with the OOO, the Natural Environments mod, Streamline, low poly grass and shorter grass mods, and it's very playable for me with most settings ~25%, HDR, and medium textures (and far distant everything). Only outside near water (all water options on) does it really give me a hard time, but I have a 7600GT and that's obviously a weak point. It looks REALLY good too. Frankly, I was really surprised when I saw how playable it was on my system. If you can, go for a new processor. I got a P5WD2-E Premium under the impression it would be Conroe-compatible; it isn't, but the 930 is VERY overclockable - I've brought it up to 4Ghz with the stock cooler. I don't keep it there because I don't really need it and it got pretty hot. If you get a good Zalman cooler you could definitely keep it there. I also think that if the games are really stuttering for you try upping your memory clock to 800 - that's where I keep mine at.
Thanks for the responses, that comparison chart was really helpful cmberry. Soo...Oblivion is with Jarrod's textures, Obscuro's Overhaul, Natural Environments and (probably at the biggest cost) loads of .INI tweaks to push up rendering distances on detail land, trees, grass, etc. and to make the water more convincing. Fussy as it might sound, I don't want to regress any of these, because I fell in love with it, even at 11FPS And contrary to convention I'm of the opinion that it looks pretty fugly out of the box. I'm saving money again, on a better income (for a student) so I'm thinking an E6550, E6750 or E6850 - they're suprisingly cheap for the performance difference, £106, £118, £168 respectively (scan). Recommended mobo? I'll hafta keep the 533Mhz ram for now, but I'll want to be able to upgrade it later on. This looks pretty hot and affordable. It'll mean going from mATX to ATX, but it's worth it to eliminate cooling issues.
do you need to upgrade your mobo? Doesnt yours already take Core 2 Duos up to 1066FSB? ahh... yes it does....but with a limited FSB of 800Mhz...clicky you could get a E4700 then...
nooo! I'm tired of low-mid range gaming hardware, I've decided to save up for the E6850 or the E6750, and a new ATX mobo, and possibly a new case (alternative: I might just cobble an open chassis together from sticks of balsa wood, akin to the lego mod and that table that bit-tech use to test hardware). Best timing-for-value 800 MHz RAM?
You're wrong... if that psu isn't pushing reliable power, the X1900XT might be acting up... he'd probably be getting a lot of other issues too, but this could be one... He really should be working with a better PSU... especially if you're gonna go to a more power-hungry upgrade. Grab a corsair HX620W or 600 or 700W OCZ GameXStream... Yeah, the CPU in use isn't that great, but it shouldn'e be holding back as much as it is... check drivers, and check what you have running in the background... do a good spyware and antivirus sweep, and a cleanmgr cleanup.
^ But he's not having 'technical' difficulties - his PC is running fine albeit a tad slow in certain areas of certain games. By putting in a new PSU wouldn't suddenly increase the FPS in the games. If his games were freezing, hanging or crashing - then yes, the PSU could be to blame!
Talk about conflicting messages. MY understanding was that something's either getting the power it needs, or it's screwing up in a very noticeable way. The card seems fine, but I've put that 620W psu on my list anyway. No, the CPU is definitely it. The card handles ALL effects like a breeze, but in areas of high processing (loads of stuff onscreen, foliage, high draw distances, etc.) I don't know why I got a D925, it sucks. My task manager generally shows a measly quarter of my RAM being used, but my CPU maxxing out freuently. It's definitely the bottleneck. Could also be the RAM to an extent, it is pretty slow now. Check my list (I already have £90 saved since last week): - 2x 1Gb Corsair TwinX RAM, 4-4-4-12, 800MHz, £67. - Asus socket 775 motherboard, £121. - Core 2 Quad q6600 (1066MHz, 8mb cache, Kentsfield), £172. - Corsair HX 620W Power Supply, £91. Additional... - 400Gb Seagate barracuda HDD, £77.
I agree with that - really, for some reason people fee like blaming PSUs for all their probs nowadays... If the PSU was affecting the card there would be artifacting, not a slowdown, and if the PSU was affecting the CPU the game or computer would just crash. For now, like I said, overclocking that CPU IS an option - at least try it until you get the new parts.
instead of the p5n board from asus can I suggest the p5k (or the p5k deluxe)? it had the p35 chipset which is supposed to overclock better than the 680i. Thats if you are planning to overclock. It may cost a little more but it also supports the new 45nm chips and I dont see support for than listen with the p5n. Unless I missed it.
Your system's remarkably similar to mine, how does yours handle itself? Have you attempted Oblivion - if so, does it run? Also, overclocking sounds like a plan, but I don't know how to do it. I have ATI tray tools, but that's for GFX card occ'ing, which would be redundant in my case. Doesn't CPU overclocking involve screwing around drawing graphite lines on the chip and crap like that? & can I do it on a stock heatsink?
nope, its changing settings in the bios. hit delete when the first screen comes up and start increasing things like the front side bus, cpu voltage, ect. read up on overclocking though, if you do too much you can fry something.
SUCCESS! Just a followup. I cleaned oblivion (and all the demanding mods) from my system, then reinstalled and carefully added tweaks and patches one by one. I now have it looking moderately gorgeous (full ingame settings, + 1.21 official patch, higher .ini values for cell buffers and such): Note the lack of pea soup and the awesome draw distances for 'most everything. Lowest framerate when dancing around the Garden of Eden is 32fps. Full AF, 4-AA. Sex. Sex. Sex. I took Brooksy's advice and upgraded .NET framework, ATI drivers, direct X, etc. which helped a teeny bit. I'm not done yet, still got to improve blood decal stays, distant land draw distance (I want mountains!), water effects and tree canopy shadows. I'm avoiding OOO and Natural Env. mods until I get a new CPU, they eat my system alive. This page was of great help, and I recommend it. Discretion is needed when choosing which tweaks to use, but it's better than the last Oblivion tweaking guide I used, which was written for people with watercooled supercomputers >:-(
Look I didn't read you whole post and I am sorry if this brings nothing to the conversation, but I just have to say how crappy the netburst cpus are for gaming.. My Prescott @ 3.4Ghz was wayyyyyyy slower than my Pentium M @ 2.7ghz and it personally gave a second life to my X850XT I am sorry , i bet I am not of any help
