Skyrim issues, and wanting to overclock my APU

Let me start off with my rig, and then what's happening.
I have the AMD A8-3870K 3ghz apu with the stock HS/Fan.
NZXT H2, which is really awesome. I was impressed with the H1, so I bought this one not knowing if it was that good or not. This one is better IMO. It has the new thing with PSUs being put at the bottom of the case, rather than the top, and I think that's a good thing. Doesn't seem to run near as hot.
Antect 500W Green PSU.
OCZ 4GB (2x2) 1866 DDR3 (if it's anything not DDR3 we got problems).
WD SATA Green 500GB for my storage.
Windows 7 64 of course.
No optical drive.
Almost forgot. Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H with the F5 BIOS.
OK, so I bought this being a loyal AMD fan, read the tomshardware reviews, blah blah blah. I put Skyrim on it, and it runs great for a while, but then the frame rate suddenly drops, and about ever 1-3 seconds there's a jerkiness. I don't know what could be causing it because when I'm in a village (whiterun, etc.,) it runs fine. But when I'm out in the bushes or something, it runs crappily.
So, I thought the ultra high settings might be too hard on it. So I toned the settings to "medium", and guess what? The same thing happened, only much more frequent.
I have done some OCing, but I'm wondering if that is interfering with my gameplay? I'm going to reset my bios back to regular timings and see what happens. Right now, I feel like this: This is pissing me off because it's just stupid. I have the CPU clocked at 3.3ghz right now. Should I back off a bit first?

You didn't list a graphics card in your post. Do you not have a discrete graphics card? Skyrim is a new game with really advanced graphics. I doubt the graphics processor built into the A8-3870 is enough to handle Skyrim on anything other than the lowest settings. My brother in law had to buy a $150 graphics card to be able to play Skyrim, so I doubt your integrated graphics will be enough. Sorry to say, but I think you'll have to get a new graphics card.

I have a A8 3870K as well but I picked up a cheap 6670 for $60 and run it in dual graphics with the APU. Can play BF3 and Mass Effect 3 with all settings at high and get around 50 fps on BF3 and 60 fps on ME3 with no stutter at all plays them both great. This is with the APU at stock 3GHz. I think if you also picked up a cheap 6670 and run it in dual graphics it should fix your problems with Skyrim.

AdmiralAdama said:

I have a A8 3870K as well but I picked up a cheap 6670 for $60 and run it in dual graphics with the APU. Can play BF3 and Mass Effect 3 with all settings at high and get around 50 fps on BF3 and 60 fps on ME3 with no stutter at all plays them both great. This is with the APU at stock 3GHz. I think if you also picked up a cheap 6670 and run it in dual graphics it should fix your problems with Skyrim.

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That's the way to do it. Don't get an nVidia card. That would be a waste of your A8-3870. Get an AMD graphics card and then setup crossfire with your A8-3870.

Well, I'm using the APU...so the GPU is built in with the CPU. I'm sure you've heard of it. I know it's faster than the HD4200 IGP that was used with AMD mobos before this. It runs fine now...I don't know what the heck it is.
Oh, I've put the settings on high and ultra high, and they work fine, but there is that intermittent jerkiness. I guess it's the CPU getting hot, or background stuff going on. But Windows 7 is better about that than XP is, so I don't know.
I think I'm going to get the add-on card after I get my full-time hours back at work. I built this system knowing I wouldn't have the best GPU available, so I went with the quad-core. It's cheaper than building a phenom setup right now anyway.
Off-topic: anyone read the article on Tom's Hardware on the APU vs Pentium (don't remember what one)? I guess it's better to have a system that runs games but sucks at multitasking vs a system that can multitask and runs mid-range games.

Oh yeah, forgot to say I hate Nvidia cards now. I had a laptop with one of the Athlon X2s (the sucky 1st gen.) with an Nvidia 7150m, and I hated that laptop. I still hate it. I will never go back to Nvidia after that experience.

I'd def get another card and run it in dual graphics mode, skyrim is a hungry game and really eats vid memory because it doesn't like to free up data that gets loaded when you enter and exit different areas, I've found using the beta 1.5 patch and the even more popular unofficial patch made a big difference as well as using the memory tweak that is posted on the steam forums, with the above I no longer have stuttering issues outside or during certain times of the day and I have the official texture pack as well as a whole swath of HQ texture mods while keeping a 54-60 fps at any given time.

now if they would fix the games physics to allow people to run the game with vsync off without having catastrophic side effects.

ezzep123 said:

Oh yeah, forgot to say I hate Nvidia cards now. I had a laptop with one of the Athlon X2s (the sucky 1st gen.) with an Nvidia 7150m, and I hated that laptop. I still hate it. I will never go back to Nvidia after that experience.

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I think your problem is that the 7150m is absolutely terrible. Nvidia cards are fine. To quote Passmark (which is not extremely valid, but still), the 7150M scores 37. My (old - last year) 6150SE (integrated, ****ty graphics) scores 55 - and it's about 8 years old now.

OK, I'm wanting to overclock a bit. I ran the AMD vision thing that clocks your system for you until it gets too hot to handle, and it will go to about 3.4. I thought that might be bit much to handle, so I clocked it to 3.2. One thing I did was OC the GPU from 600mhz to 800mhz, and the system keeps rebooting every now and then. So, I figured I was running things too hot. I clocked the cpu back to 3.090 ghz using the FSB control in the BIOS.
What HS/fan should I use? I don't want to spend $100 on a fan, no matter what anyone says. My budget is really really tight. $30 at most, including shipping. Should I just not OC and get a cheap video card or get a better HS/Fan now? I don't want to run the system too hard without proper venting.

A $30 graphics card won't help much (if at all) for playing Skyrim. You can get the Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus from Newegg for $30. That's probably the best cooler that you can get at that price.

Also, be careful that you don't overdo it on overclocking your graphics on your APU a jump from 600mzh to 800mhz is a pretty big one. I would step it down a bit and try small increments up until your system isn't stable anymore, then go with the previous stable setting.

You definitely want a better heatsink. If they came with the heatpipe cooler thats included with the PH-II Blacks it would have been much better. But no the include that solid aluminum POS cooler with that black edition APU. I bet that whats happening when you start dropping frames its due to thermal throttling going on inside the APU. The GPU eats up most of the APUs TDP(thermal rating) when you get it going. The Hyper 212+ or 212 Evo would be my recommendations at $30. The other thing you might consider is increasing your RAM voltage 1 or 2 notches. AMD is known for needing just a little more DRAM volts to run error free than intel systems. 3d errors in your ram wont crash the system but they will murder your framerate.

Dual graphics on this platform is worthless with anything less than a 6670 IMO. The 6570 is an OK choice too, as far as I can tell its the same silicone as the 6670 but has lower memory bandwidth and is clocked alot lower.

Yeah, I'm not new to the idea of overclocking, but I've never had a chance to actually do anything beyond little thing. It runs OK right now after I backed the CPU off, but I should back the GPU back some. When I cranked it up to 900 like the tom's review guy did, the driver quit working. So I don't know what they were using. I'm sort of thinking the guy was just getting paid by Intel to say the stuff he did. They paired an APU against a Pentium g260 or something and a hd 6670 (I think), and they said the Pentium was better at gaming, but the APU did better at multitasking. I don't know about you guys, but a system that can't multitask but can outrun newer hardware at gaming just doesn't seem possible, or like a good deal to me.
Maybe I'm just living in the glory days when the AMD Athlons tore through Intel's stuff like there was no tomorrow.

And no, this cooler is more like a stock HS/F cooler that I ripped off an Athlon XP than the Phenom cooler. The fan was thinner than the other one I think if you would hold them by their sides....if that makes sense. I would think they would be a little better than that. I should've known when I first built it, the fan almost looked like it wasn't turning. But it must be, cause I've heard it kick on quite a few times.

Is there a way in Skyrim to track my fps or do I have to use an external program?

As far as I know the only way to get an FPS reading is to use an outside program. I use MSI afterburner OSD. Fraps is the other popular option for doing this.

Each CPU is different, and every component interacts differently in other systems. Just because the reviewer hit 900mhz does not automatically mean that you will. He could have gotten a really stable chip and you could have a dud (hopefully not). Or his ram might have been less finicky as yours, or any number of other things could cause you to have lower overclocking results.

As for your cooler.. I can't imagine an athlon XP cooler being enough for any modern CPU, especially not an APU. Those old heatsinks are way to small for what you have.

Just the fan reminded me of the XP series, not the HS. But I agree with you guys...they should have made a better HSF, at least what they shipped with the APU.
I've got a question--I have an NZXT Hush 2 case. Where the heck do I stick another fan it it? I was wanting to either put one sort of by the CPU, or one on the top of the case, but don't know what brand/model etc to get.

If you don't have front intake, put one there (I'm assuming it has it).

Yeah, there's two big fans...I think 140mm. They're blowing directly into where the 2.5/3.5" HDDs would be.
If I get a new CPU HSF, what would be a good budget realisiticly? I'm willing to pay money to save my cpu. I'm in a situation where I could rebuild if needed, but I have no desire to do so.
Also, is 500W enough power? I'm not sure...the last build with my phenom II was 700 I think.

My bad...2 front ones are 120mm, the back one is 120mm as well. I can put 1 more 140mm in the top. And one more 120mm in the bottom, though I'm not sure where that one can go.