My PC's Performance?

[MrPabulum]

I recently upgraded to a Barton 2500+, on my Asus A7V8X-X (KT400) mobo. So far, there seems to be a decent increase in performance from my XP1900+, but nothing extraordinary. I even overclocked the Barton to 2.1Ghz, with aggressive memory timings at 2-2-6, (1T is set to auto), Samsung 512MB PC2700, video is a Radeon 9700 Pro (340/320) Synthetic benchmarks look normal...but, for example, I can't get BF1942 to run smoothly at higher than 1152X864, max quality, 4XAA, 8X AF. Same thing for Madden 2003. I was previously running those games at 1024X768, max quality. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but it seems odd that I only got one resolution jump from such a significant CPU upgrade...Could it be that memory bandwith is just that much more important than an individual CPU? But then, the Nforce2 doesn't run that much faster...

Any ideas? Am I getting normal results? Are those games just awful system hogs? I do know that Madden 2003 isn't coded that well for the PC (which will hopefully improve this year..) Any experiences guys?

 

[Oreo]

Games at high res + AA/AF aren't CPU limitied. If you had the same graphicscard in your old rig you shouldn't expect hardly any improvment in your games at that res.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Oreo
Games at high res + AA/AF aren't CPU limitied. If you had the same graphicscard in your old rig you shouldn't expect hardly any improvment in your games at that res.

Correct. You have just a very minor CPU change and thus you shouldn't expect anything graphical to have much of an improvement.

 

[wacki]

Dunno. Your video card is certainly powerfull enough. I got those resolutions on BF1942 with a geforce3 Ti4200, and an AMD 2100+ and the screen never jumped. One thing I do tho, is install Windows on 2 different partitions. One is for all of my main programs and the second is for gaming only. I've had too many problems with interfering applications in the past. (I hate unwanted processes running in the background) Check your fragmentation of the HD. Also the CPU doesn't play that big of a deal in gaming, its all video card.

Check this article out:
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000242

a Pentium II 330 Mhz with Radeon 9700 beats a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with Radeon 9600 at 3 out of 4 games !!!!!

 

[MrPabulum]

I imagine that the AA/AF (which ATI certainly does well and efficiently) causes the frame rates to be lower, but I figured I could get 1280 X 960 outta BF1942. On the other hand, some of the maps (BoB) are real hogs. Oh well. Guess I'll have to oc the video a bit more.

 

[santaclaus]

Originally posted by: wacki
Dunno. Your video card is certainly powerfull enough. I got those resolutions on BF1942 with a geforce3 Ti4200, and an AMD 2100+ and the screen never jumped. One thing I do tho, is install Windows on 2 different partitions. One is for all of my main programs and the second is for gaming only. I've had too many problems with interfering applications in the past. (I hate unwanted processes running in the background) Check your fragmentation of the HD. Also the CPU doesn't play that big of a deal in gaming, its all video card.

Check this article out:
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000242

a Pentium II 330 Mhz with Radeon 9700 beats a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with Radeon 9600 at 3 out of 4 games !!!!!

You are living in denial!!!

 

[Arcanedeath]

BF 1942 is a memory hog, your prob. droping frames due to not having enough ram, upgrade to 1 GB and I bet your issues will disapear. Just my 2 cents...

 

[MrPabulum]

Well, I have two slots filled up, totaling 512. Could one 512 and two 256s work normally on an oc'ed machine with aggressive timings? Maybe 768MB would be enough...

 

[wacki]

Originally posted by: santaclaus


You are living in denial!!!

Denial of what?

His comp is more powerfull than my old setup in every way. He shouldn't be having these problems.

MrPabulum

my setup was AMD 2100+
512 meg ram
Asus A7N8X deluxe
PNY geforce3 Ti4200

and I had no problems whatsoever, something isn't right.

 

[santaclaus]

Originally posted by: wacki

Originally posted by: santaclaus


You are living in denial!!!

Denial of what?

His comp is more powerfull than my old setup in every way. He shouldn't be having these problems.

MrPabulum

my setup was AMD 2100+
512 meg ram
Asus A7N8X deluxe
PNY geforce3 Ti4200

and I had no problems whatsoever, something isn't right.

Look, i'm sorry.

 

[MrPabulum]

Yeh, but I'm also running 4XAA/8X AF, quality. No matter how good ATI's implementation is of these methods, the FPS is bound to take a hit, especially at higher resolutions. I'm not knocking the TI4200, but I'm pretty sure it can't handle AA/AF without a severe performance hit. Therefore (correct me if I'm wrong) I assume you are running your games without AA/AF.

Anyone else recommend the memory suggestion? Seems awful tempting..:evil:

 

[WarCon]

Originally posted by: wacki
Dunno. Your video card is certainly powerfull enough. I got those resolutions on BF1942 with a geforce3 Ti4200, and an AMD 2100+ and the screen never jumped. One thing I do tho, is install Windows on 2 different partitions. One is for all of my main programs and the second is for gaming only. I've had too many problems with interfering applications in the past. (I hate unwanted processes running in the background) Check your fragmentation of the HD. Also the CPU doesn't play that big of a deal in gaming, its all video card.

Check this article out:
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000242

a Pentium II 330 Mhz with Radeon 9700 beats a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with Radeon 9600 at 3 out of 4 games !!!!!

It really shows that a video card can make a big difference and that a processor doesn't always.

But did you notice that the 2.8G P4 rig was only running a 9600 (non-pro) versus the 9700 Pro, which would account for some of the variance. Personally I think it would of meant more if they had used the same video card in all machines.

 

[MrPabulum]

Well, the video is now stable at 350/325. BF1942 still plays well at 1152X864, 4XAA/8XAF, quality setting. Madden 2003 plays well at 1024X768, same AA/AF settings as BF1942, but any higher and the game stutters. Oh well. Here's hoping that Madden 2004 runs better than its predecessor.

 

[Sharkmeat]

Make sure you do a good house cleaning and check your monitor refresh-rate in game with the monitor menu to see if you running other than 60hz.

 

[MrPabulum]

Madden 2003 is running 1024 x 768 at 100Hz. I defraged the PC two nights ago, and ran a suite of cleanup tools three nights ago. Is it possible for a console port like Madden 2003 is less apt to handle FSAA properly? Maybe I need more memory.

 

[stonecold3169]

Your biggest CPU issue is that you are running an athlon chip without the memory and fsb in sync. This can cause actually a fairly significant speed difference. Your overclock I am assuming is at a 400mhz fsb, and your memory is at 166, right? The architecture of the amd platform right now requires a synced memory speed to the core.

As far as to why bf1942 isn't running well, I would try more memory, I know some people siad that any and all sluggishness in it was solved by going up to a gb of memory. Plus, if you were ever to go the NF2 platform, you could use double bank speed or whatever it is called.

Good luck!

 

[tweeve]

I have seen BF1942 run on a number of systems, i network game it all the time. over 512 in RAM works Great, My brother has 640 in RAM and it works great but real preformce come at the 1GB level, if you are having trouble with BF try lowering the bots when you higher the screen size, it will help the frame rate. At my house I run BF on two computers that can just meat the minimum config, but they work fine because each computer has over 512 in RAM.

 

[matrixdud]

The biggest advantage that's gained from the Barton core is the 333MHz FSB. If you've still got your memory running at 266MHz then going with a Barton Core was pointless because you won't see much of a performance gain at all. Even still you're really only gaining 233MHz in clockspeed or 15%( Athlon 1900+ = 1.6GHz, Athlon 2500+ = 1.83Ghz). The smaller die size might make the chip a little faster too but not really, it just enables it to run faster and with less power. The enanced FSB is the real performance gainer but only if the CPU->Memory is under strain. Most of the work for 3D graphics are done on the Video Card so a faster CPU isn't going to help too much.

 

[MrPabulum]

Regarding the overclock, I currently have it at 12.5 * 168, so the CPU and memory are pretty close to sync. I'd push the FSB higher, but the heatsink on the KT400 northbridge isn't that large, and I imagine that my Asus A7V8X-X (it's cheap, like the budgie!) wouldn't handle a high FSB too well. The Vcore is currently at 1.7 and quite stable. The goal of the overclock was 2.0-2.2Ghz, so I'm pretty happy in that regard, though it's not much of a FSB overclock. So is it better to keep an FSB of 200 or one that is in sync with the processor?

Edit: Would an additional DIMM of Samsung memory, thus filling all three slots up, hinder my overclock at all?

 

[Arcanedeath]

Whenever you add more memory is can cause problems when you try and overclock, however if you get 1 512 mb stick of memory (should be pc 3200 at least to be safe) you prob. won't have issues since your only running a very mild FSB overclock of 2mhz over the normal fsb, worst case you may need to up Vdimm .1 volt to get some more stability. Hope this helps...

 

[MrPabulum]

I'll prolly be adding another 512MB of Samsung memory. Can't really mix PC2700 and 3200, eh? Or can I?