who can tell me if my pc is as fast as it should be?

Hello, this it my first post in these forums

The reason I have registered here is because I have heard from friend that the people on the board are mature and intelligent, so i'm hoping some people can help me with my pc ive built

first off the specs:
Asus A8V mobo socket 939
AMD FX-53 64 bit (now known as a 4000 i think)
Nvidia 6800 GT with arctic cooler
in This case
Ive got 3 hard drives of varying sizes, 2 IDE and 1 sata
all cooling in case besides what Ive mentioned above is stock fans that came with the hardware
1 gig (2x512) of Corsair xms memory
and finally, ive got a Fortron 510 watt PSU


I am interested in getting the best performance I can get from this hardware, I edit large amounts of video and play the latest video games as well as surf the web on a almost daily basis

I don't know much about building a PC, but a friend helped me and we got it put together, my question is what kind of stuff should i do to set it up completely, i used the drivers and updated the mobos bios using the included cd easily, what about my processor? do i need to install drivers for it as well? or is the standard drivers in winxp what I'm supposed to be using? also what exactly is a chipset and do I need to worry about installing updated drivers for it?

I have the latest drivers for my video card from the nvidia website, its a PNY video card thou, so does that mean i should only use the drivers listed on the PNY website?

I ran 3dmark 05 to see what kind of performance my pc has
my 3dmark05 score is 4990
from looking around the futuremark website i saw several pcs with similar hardware with higher scores than mine, so It makes me wonder if maybe there is drivers i haven't installed or something I need to update
can anyone comment on my 3dmark score and tell me if its on the right mark?

performance is 3d games is very good but it seems to me like it should be better, I can notice my FPS dropping at times in almost all the first person shooters I play. HL2, UT04, CoD, CoD2 demo, Tribes 2 are the ones i will focus on

I have a strong desire to play all my video games at the highest resolution of my monitor 1280 x 1024 and that resolutions is what I have all my games set as

UT04 runs excellent, everything turned all the way up, running around getting frags the fps is smooth, but often in a crowded map 3-5 people will get blow into pieces at around the same time sending gibs flying all over the place and smoke effects and flames and such, when somthing like this happens my FPS drops, not to a unplayable level, but its low enough for me to notice and for it to distract me and mess up my aim, other than massive explosions of limbs UT04 runs perfectly so i don't want to lower my graphics setting just because of something that happens every so often. I wonder if this is caused by my CPU lagging? because gibs are physics objects and physics objects are processed by the CPU

HL2 I also run at my max resolution with all the graphics turned up and 2x anti alias 8x antriscopic the frame rate seems to be unpredictable at times, like it will Be fine and then i will turn and my fps will drop noticeably and then return to normal speed, also the first 3 minutes of HL2 my computer typically skips 3-4 times at least, which is quite distracting, the skipping never really goes away either its just random split second pauses throughout the single player. Again, this feels like maybe a CPU limitation or maybe memory, or maybe i should just turn off anti-aliasing?

Tribes 2 the FPS goes so low at times its unbeleivable and makes me think i have a messed up install or the game must have compatability issues

CoD i run with everything all the way up, full resolution, and also becasue it has no anti alias setup in the game i used the nvidia driver to turn on anti alias automaticly for CoD, CoD runs perfectly smooth until there is a large amount of smoke or alot of people runnign around in an open area firing and then my FPS starts dropping again, rarely becomes unplayable, but its distracting, and I like the anti aliasing too much to turn it off for CoD becasue it helps me when aiming down the sight

in the CoD 2 demo i run with everything maxed and full resolution but not antialias and several times in the demo my fps would drop to unplayable for a few seconds and then speed back up, mostly this was triggered by going into a large cloud of smoke or fighting with large numbers of enemies

so, thats my story, I seem to have a pc that is super fast and has awsome graphics, but slows down just enough to make me angry and wonder if there is anything I can do to give it that little edge to help it run as smooth as I feel it should

I have not messed around with overclocking anything becasue I am unsure about how effective that would be and I know its dangerous, in my opinion its an absolute last resort, but overclocking may be more effective than i think it is, ive never done it personally

I guess in theory i should be able to push my 6800 GT a little further becasue I have an arctic cooler on it, i dont really know exactly how to do that and i dont know how dangerous that would be. or how much of a performance increase I would see


I have a few more questions pertaining to my monitor and win xp x64
ill save them 4 latter thou

Your 6800gt should be able to run everything under the sun at 1280x1024, but you may have to turn off Anti-Aliasing, it really kills performance.

Also, yes, you do need chipset drivers. The chipset is part of your motherboard, and does a LOT. I believe you can get drivers from www.viaarena.com.

Lastly, when did you build this pc?

I built it about a year ago, ive always wondered if there was more stuff i needed to setup or whatever but its worked great ever since i built it and i didnt worry about it

after trying to play CoD2 at 1280x1024 and getting like 40 fps I figured it would be a good time to ask someone if there was anything I can do to help my pc some more

I figured it would be a good time to list off a few other games ive noticed dont go quite as fast as i think they should

do you know anything about 3dmark scores? is mine normal for my hardware?

Considering that you have an FX53, I would recommend you overclocking your RAM and your VIDEO before even touching the CPU. Another thing is that board of yours will not hit insane HTT as some of the Nforce chipset ones will, but with the ram you won't be able to hit a very high fsb anyways. Actually, would you mind linking us to the exact RAM and the exact VIDEO card that you have? That would help.

In any case, you should be able to hit 6800 Ultra speeds with your GT. Most GT cards get close to it at the very least. I would suggest looking in the VIDEO section of this forum and you'll probably run by a tutorial. Another key feature of these forums is that we have a SEARCH link up at the top. That comes in rather VERY handy for me at times, especially when I first joined here.

What you basically want to do when you overclock is raise your Front Side Bus (FSB), with your RAM in synch with it (1:1 ratio). After that you then tighten up the RAM timings. You do all of this little by little until you reach your max STABLE speed(s). You can check stability with several programs. My favorites are memtest86 (for your ram), prime95 (for both ram and cpu), and maybe SP2004 (which I have yet to play with).

As you overclock, you want to raise the voltage to your CPU. RAM is harder to overclock, as sometimes more voltage doesn't always necessarily help. You have to play with it and see what fits you best. Memtest86 is a good way to test your settings, but definitely not a program that will tell you 100% stability with your ram. Prime95 gets you pretty close to stability proof, but also computer useage and gaming will tell you more. If your computer crashes, freezes, causes artifacts, or any of the stuff that is irregular, then you obviously know that you are unstable.

In general, the last thing I would overclock is the video card, but in all honesty in your case (since you have decent ram and a killer CPU), then I would start with that first, considering that you show great interest in gaming.

Download Rivatuner and use that. Use the search tool to find out how to use that program, or maybe even use google. There is an nvidia overclocking tool, but I think Rivatuner is far more advanced. Rivatuner also GRAPHS out your temperatures, which is actually awesome.

ALWAYS MONITOR YOUR TEMPS. Your CPU should not exceed 50C for a long period of time. It won't kill it, but you can lose stability with high temps. 50-53C is not so bad during a prime95 stress test, but make sure that your CPU doesn't do that normally during a game and whatnot. Your videocard GPU temp should hit 70-75C at complete LOAD. Anything below that is awesome. Anything above won't kill it, but you dont' want to run it really hot for long periods of time.

Start with your video card. You may not need to OC your CPU and RAM just yet.

Your card's clocks are probably 350mhz GPU and 1000mhz mem. Download 3dmark03 and/or 3dmark05 and use that to test to see if you see artifacts. Raise one thing at a time. First test GPU, and then MEM, or vice versa. ALWAYS OVERCLOCK ONE THING AT A TIME, and when you OC a different component make sure the others are already stable. I would personally overclock the GPU to its max, and check with 3dmark for artifacts. I then write take a note of the max clock and then set it back to default. Then I test the memory overclock and record that. Then I set both the GPU and MEM to what I wrote down and 3dmark run it again for artifact checks.

Good luck. I'll be back to check up.

Even with my computer which is fairly comparable... I notice slowdowns with HL2 as well.

as someone mentioned before... it does make a HUGE difference with performance having AA on in games.

More ram might help. I just got a 3200+ and an MSI board from somebody, and to get it up and running, I took 2x 512mb out of my main rig. That left me with 2x 512 (I had 4 to begin with). I find things get very choppy at times in some games, so more ram is not a bad idea.

Really? More ram than 1gb for HL2?

yea ive used 2 gigs before and i noticed a difference in load times and overall performance, i needed one of those gigs for my other pc thou so im running 1 gig right now
one day ill probly add some more, thanks for the suggestion

Ive downloaded Riva Tuner after reading a tutorial on how to use it and overclocked my card a little while running 3dmark, these are the results i typed in as i was doing the tests


5034 - - - - - 351 core 1012 mem
5067 - - - - - same as above with fan at 100%
5132 - - - - - 367 core 1032 mem
highest core temp in above 3 = 67 C

I havent had time to try any video games yet, do yall think i should continue to push my card further? the tutorial i read said temps above 70 is a bad idea and mine is cutting close to 70 at times, mostly its low 60s and it spikes thou

ok, this is an update, yesterday after monitoring the performance of my video card overclocked i saw that it was perfectly stable so I decide to keep pushing it following the instructions in these forums
the following is the log i created while benchmarking
does anyone know why my 3dmark score seems to change by like 20-60 points between tests even when i dont adjust the clock of my vid card?
also, when i overclocked the mem and the core together I did not see much of an increase in performance from the increse in memory speed, is this normal? should i turn my memory back down if it doesnt look like overclocking it increases my 3dmark score?
I monitored the video cards temp during all of these tests and even with both mem and core as high as i could safely push the the temp never got past like 68C I never once saw the temp touch 70C, so i guess that means my cooler rocks!!

anyways
this is the OC log of a OC newb

5034 351 core 1012 mem
5067 same as above with fan at 100%
5132 367 core 1032 mem
5163 same as above
5197 same
5151 same
5155 same
5172 same
5198 same

highest core temp in above = 67

5336 382core 1032mem

5554 401core 1032mem
5517 same

5611 409core 1032mem ****artifacts detected*****

5498 396core 1032mem **none/little artifacts detected***

***now procceding with OC of mem*****
4966 345core 1040mem
4970 345core 1075mem
4964 345core 1090mem
***score is not increasing, proceeding to reboot before resuming OC******
4974 345core 1093mem w00t
4966 345core 1104mem


*****************final**********
5586 401core 1092mem