Project: Oblivion boost.

[ShadowPho]

Recently I got oblivion. At first I thought it looks fabuluos, so I turned up the graphics on max on 1280x1024. I was getting 10-12 FPS (still accepteble), but it drops down to 2-3 in a fight. At first I valued the beauty of HDR over the FPS, but yesterday it all changed.

I turned all the settings down, and WOAH, FPS did not change. After half an hour of contiunuos tweaking I got it to 15 FPS, but then I realized that turning down HDR (the famous FPS killer), shadown and view distance should be more than 3 FPS.

Then it hit me. What about my CPU? I quickly ran into my services and stopped FAH. Then I go back inside the game, and :gasp: my FPS doubled!! 25-35 constant FPS. But my CPU still gets throttled in a fight :(.

Now I know that my 3.4 GHz Northwood CPU still gets throttled by oblivion. How much can I/should I push it?

I dont know what kind if heatsink it has, but its really big, copper core and alluminium flaps. I attached a fan to it and to the NorthBridge. (I am attaching pics so somebody more proffesional then me could tell me how good it is. :) ). Non oc temp are ~60C.
My memory is 2GB of cheapo ram with heatsinks.
THe board is a usual Intel D875PBZLK board.
And my video card has a silent cooler add on.
So, how much can I expect out of this?

[Evilsizer]

i would find a way to add a low cfm fans on that cooler. something like a 120 yateloon or the 80mm coolermaster 24cfm fans. zip ties should do the trick or you could try to use super glue.

[bigtwinlvr]

Id find a better heatsink or something. Northwoods werent that bad compared to prescott heat. I ran a zalman 7000 or something like that on mine, all copper.

[ShadowPho]

i would find a way to add a low cfm fans on that cooler. something like a 120 yateloon or the 80mm coolermaster 24cfm fans. zip ties should do the trick or you could try to use super glue.
I did add a 120mm dealta fan to it, I am just not sure how hard to push it.

Id find a better heatsink or something
I am trying to save all the money to get a E4300. A good heatsink will be $30-$40, and E4300 itself is $100. For right now I am trying to push this hard enough to last until the next upgrade.

[batboy]

Of course, you'll need another motherboard if you get an E4300. That also means DDR2 RAM and PCI-E vid card.

[bryan_d]

Of course, you'll need another motherboard if you get an E4300. That also means DDR2 RAM and PCI-E vid card.

Not necessarily,

The Asrock 4coredual or 775Dual-VSTA, can accomodate his RAM and Video Card. Benchmarks also show that in stock form, the Asrock in only about 5% percent off the fastest chips such as the intel 975.

Along with BSEL mod (1.8GHz-->2.4GHz), the Asrock/4300 combo would be a significant change over the northwood.

Might I add that the motherboard only costs less than 60 buckaroos. :)

Or you wait unitl the further price cuts to make an even cheaper system.

Bryan d

[batboy]

I can't bring myself to recommend ASrock mobos. If you are going to upgrade, why do it half azzed? Buy quality components and do it right the first time.

[Morbid]

If you are going to upgrade, why do it half azzed? Buy quality components and do it right the first time.

Not everyone has the money to throw at computer parts.

[EmAn]

Not everyone has the money to throw at computer parts.

true... stats in sig

[SeasonalEclipse]

Not everyone has the money to throw at computer parts.
Exactly. Some of us just want to have the bare.

[KillrBuckeye]

I've built several rigs for family members using ASRock 939 boards, and they've all been problem-free and overclock pretty well.

[ShadowPho]

For right now I am just trying to survive on what I have.... can someone recommend me on how far to push this?

[Evilsizer]

i wouldnt push it, how much have your temps dropped after adding the fan?

[hUMANbEATbOX]

really with the best air cooling, ram, mobo, and psu, the most a 3.4c will do is probably 3.75ghz. that's only a 350mhz bump over what you have now. wouldn't be worth the expense or the hassle IMO.

i would pinch pennies, try to scrounge u a few hundred bux then see what you can sell your current computer for. soon there will be sub $80 C2D's, and with ram prices being what they are, you will be able to get a great rig on the cheap. the biggest expense would be the video card by far.

[ShadowPho]

really with the best air cooling, ram, mobo, and psu, the most a 3.4c will do is probably 3.75ghz. that's only a 350mhz bump over what you have now. wouldn't be worth the expense or the hassle IMO.


Wasn't there a P4 that was pushed to 8GHz with dry ice :eek: ?

[Viol8ted]

dry ice :eek: ?

dry ice being the key words :beer:

[hUMANbEATbOX]

Wasn't there a P4 that was pushed to 8GHz with dry ice :eek: ?
more like liquid nitrogen. :p

and it wasn't a northwood. no possible chance for a northwood to do 8ghz.

[FlahsMemory]

Well I dont know if this may help with your computer. I know it worked for me with certain games with my dual core and I heard it increases performance on games when operating in Vista. I use it on WinXp Pro SP2 and I gained 10 frames when I did it so anyway try this out and see if it helps. Also post if it doesnt improve performance:

Click Start
Right Click My Computer
Select Properties
Go to Advance tab
Click Settiings for Performance
go to Advance tab
Memory Usage
and turn it to System Cache
My virtual Memory is set to 2032 but I think 1gig is enough

If there is no gain in FPS you can also try messing with the Visual Effects tab and see if any works better but I havent messed with it and think it only applies to the windows OS. I just enabled the System Cache and gained FPS in my games I played. Most of the games I saw a nice increase was FPS games and MMO.

[dfonda]

Go with the Asrock and a E6320 keep all your other parts. You'll gain 3000 points in 3dmark 06. The bottleneck will be in your GPU then. Your framerates will be very good.

[deathman20]

Yeah don't push it. Its not worth it, if anything make sure the case is clean and nice airflow. That shouldn't cost you a thing but time. As well if need be add secondary fans blowing over say the northbridge, CPU and GPU area's. That should help with temps a bit as well since I use to do that, heck still do it in my water rig to aid in cooling some items.

Otherwise I'd agree wait til the upgrade and save the cash. If its not broken don't fix it type thing. How long have you been running it like this? If its recent then sure I'd raise concern but thats me and I like to keep the CPU at least under 50C (no matter what I get its 50C... period).

As for setup. Go with what you feel like you can afford. Im with Batboy on this though, if you are going to upgrade do it right, then thats coming from me who does a major upgrade every 2 years with minor upgrade every year. With the ASrock boards at least you can use your old memory mind you its not going to get you far due to the clock speed limitations of DDR in general. If going for anything expecially with running DDR get the E4x00 seires. They run on a 200Mhz FSB and typical PC-3200 runs that and should do well. If anything you might get a slight OC out of it and it doesn't really harm it that much compared to the E6xxx's in tests. Sure its a little lower here and there but nothing critical. If anything when you upgrade your ram its like a free upgrade to the CPU since you should beable to clock it quicker as well.

[ShadowPho]

Yeah don't push it. Its not worth it, if anything make sure the case is clean and nice airflow. That shouldn't cost you a thing but time. As well if need be add secondary fans blowing over say the northbridge, CPU and GPU area's. That should help with temps a bit as well since I use to do that, heck still do it in my water rig to aid in cooling some items.

Otherwise I'd agree wait til the upgrade and save the cash. If its not broken don't fix it type thing. How long have you been running it like this? If its recent then sure I'd raise concern but thats me and I like to keep the CPU at least under 50C (no matter what I get its 50C... period).

As for setup. Go with what you feel like you can afford. Im with Batboy on this though, if you are going to upgrade do it right, then thats coming from me who does a major upgrade every 2 years with minor upgrade every year. With the ASrock boards at least you can use your old memory mind you its not going to get you far due to the clock speed limitations of DDR in general. If going for anything expecially with running DDR get the E4x00 seires. They run on a 200Mhz FSB and typical PC-3200 runs that and should do well. If anything you might get a slight OC out of it and it doesn't really harm it that much compared to the E6xxx's in tests. Sure its a little lower here and there but nothing critical. If anything when you upgrade your ram its like a free upgrade to the CPU since you should beable to clock it quicker as well.

I pushed it 3.5GHz normally, then had to change the timings on the memory, and then it went to 3.54... I was just about to start bumping up voltage when luckily I realized that my BIOS doesn't support that...

So I fire up Oblivion, click "contiunue" and start playing. Everything seems normal. My temperatures are 55s CPU and 62VPU. And then Oblivion starts...bugging. Damage calculations start being wacky, terrain heightmaps get messed up (so I start levitating or going underground) and areas stop loading. I realized that something is wrong.
At first I decided that its all memory. So I went and set my memory timings to 2-2-2-7 (its originaly 3-3-3-8). Oh-oh, that was a big blunder. After I restarted my PC, it wouldn't restart. All the fans are spinning, lights are blinking, and the CDrom is blinking. My BIOS does not boot and does not say the nice messege: "Memory timings error, memory timings reset".

So grudgingly I open up the case, and take out the CMOS battery. No dice. Then I take out memory and reshufle it in the slots. Still no boot. Fearing that I fried something I switch the jumper from "Normal BIOS boot" to "Setup BIOS". And wow, it actually worked! It booted into admin BIOS, and then I just flipped the jumper again and it worked.

So you are completely right.... If it works, don't push it. I pushed it and nearly fried it.

As for the new setup, I am thinking of getting a Q6600 or a Q6300. By Q3 it will be $266 for Q6600, and that will be around the time of my birthday. I could justify buying a nice good quadcore as I am the type of person who runs an antivirus scan, self coded encryption (thus unoptimized), foobar, firefox and FEAR.
What would be the cheapest motherboard/RAM that would be able to bump that Q6300@1.86GHz to 3GHz?

[hUMANbEATbOX]

i haven't seen a q6300 announced.

but if there was one, you would need 429fsb, for 429*7=3003mhz. running those fsb with a quad is pretty tough, but i think the p5b-dlx and commando could do it. someone may correct me here. :)

[Evilsizer]

i haven't seen a q6300 announced.

but if there was one, you would need 429fsb, for 429*7=3003mhz. running those fsb with a quad is pretty tough, but i think the p5b-dlx and commando could do it. someone may correct me here. :)
close enough is the X3210 which would be the Q6420 :) buy.com $450!