- Joined
- Mar 29, 2008
- Location
- Hovering Directly Above You
First off, my rig:
Asus Maxiumus Extreme Mobo, Intel Qx9650 @3.2ghz w/ Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler, 2 Gigs of OCZ PC1600 DDR3 RAM, Thermaltake 1000W Crossfire PSU, Sapphire 3870x2 1gig GPU with 8.3 drivers, X-FI Fatality Xtreme Gamer Sound, 2 15k 100gig SCSI drives.
To Preface:
I have been building my own systems for years. However, I have always just set them to the highest stock stable settings. I have never done any overclocking.
However, I bought this system specifically with the idea of getting into overclocking and seeing how extreme my performance with gaming can get. It's my first time fiddling with these things, and I figure that as soon as I hit the heat-barrier, I'll move to liquid cooling. However, I'd like to get into a nice comfortable, Air cooled zone before I move over into liquid.
So, THUS FAR:
First, I wanted to just get it up and stable with no OC before I move on to the tweaks. I just got it set up with a clean install of Vista. The only things installed are the drivers for GPU and Sound, 3dmark06, and Norton 2008. I have the mobo set to "AUTO" for all OC settings, which gives a very mild .2 ghz OC "out of the box". Right now the system is very stable. I don't have anything else OCed at all.
So, after getting the system set up and making sure it's stable, I run 3dMark with Norton running and get 17, 086. I run a second time with Norton totally disabled and get a score of 16, 897.
So, out of the box with NO TWEAKING, I'm getting about 17,000 3dmarks on 8.3 Vista drivers. From what I've seen, this is pretty standard.
However, on 3dMark, it looks like the CPU is bottlenecking in the CPU tests. Now, the QX9650 is a quad core, and I guess that I'm a little taken aback that the CPU is lagging so hard. My immediate reaction is that I don't have my system settings in a way such the CPU is being utilized to it's maximum potential. So my questions are:
1. What immediate, non-overclocking changes do I need to make to my system to optimize my performance?
2. What are the first OCing steps to take in a situation like this? Do I go immediately to the CPU and bump it as far up to 4.0 as I can?
Any advice on what the standard first steps are in a situation like this would be appreciated.
Thanks all.
Asus Maxiumus Extreme Mobo, Intel Qx9650 @3.2ghz w/ Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler, 2 Gigs of OCZ PC1600 DDR3 RAM, Thermaltake 1000W Crossfire PSU, Sapphire 3870x2 1gig GPU with 8.3 drivers, X-FI Fatality Xtreme Gamer Sound, 2 15k 100gig SCSI drives.
To Preface:
I have been building my own systems for years. However, I have always just set them to the highest stock stable settings. I have never done any overclocking.
However, I bought this system specifically with the idea of getting into overclocking and seeing how extreme my performance with gaming can get. It's my first time fiddling with these things, and I figure that as soon as I hit the heat-barrier, I'll move to liquid cooling. However, I'd like to get into a nice comfortable, Air cooled zone before I move over into liquid.
So, THUS FAR:
First, I wanted to just get it up and stable with no OC before I move on to the tweaks. I just got it set up with a clean install of Vista. The only things installed are the drivers for GPU and Sound, 3dmark06, and Norton 2008. I have the mobo set to "AUTO" for all OC settings, which gives a very mild .2 ghz OC "out of the box". Right now the system is very stable. I don't have anything else OCed at all.
So, after getting the system set up and making sure it's stable, I run 3dMark with Norton running and get 17, 086. I run a second time with Norton totally disabled and get a score of 16, 897.
So, out of the box with NO TWEAKING, I'm getting about 17,000 3dmarks on 8.3 Vista drivers. From what I've seen, this is pretty standard.
However, on 3dMark, it looks like the CPU is bottlenecking in the CPU tests. Now, the QX9650 is a quad core, and I guess that I'm a little taken aback that the CPU is lagging so hard. My immediate reaction is that I don't have my system settings in a way such the CPU is being utilized to it's maximum potential. So my questions are:
1. What immediate, non-overclocking changes do I need to make to my system to optimize my performance?
2. What are the first OCing steps to take in a situation like this? Do I go immediately to the CPU and bump it as far up to 4.0 as I can?
Any advice on what the standard first steps are in a situation like this would be appreciated.
Thanks all.
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