Bottleneck identifier

[mckinneycharles]

I'm looking at the current system I have, and seeing that it could use a little bit of an upgrade for games. The system is the one in my signature, and I'm looking to see what the bottleneck of the system is, if I should put in the money for a new processor, or perhaps some better RAM? I'd like to upgrade to 2 x 1GB RAM sticks, for video-editing purposes, but I'm not sure if it's really the CPU that's holding me back at this point. The system seems to hang at 1280 res. with no AA or AF, but other settings at high or max.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[suicidalpigeon]

overclock the cpu and the video card and it should give you enough to live off of.

 

[RyanB18]

Additional Ram wouldn't hurt. Why don't you buy a better HSF and overclock the proc? How are the overclocking features on that board?

 

[mckinneycharles]

Have an XP120 on the CPU and an NV5 on the video card. I had the vid card overclocked and unlocked before with Riva, but I set it back to stock when I upgraded the mobo and CPU. I haven't really messed with overclocking this CPU yet, but apparently this board can handle up to 250FSB. I'd planned on O/Cing, guess my next question would be for suggestions as to high speed 1GB RAM sticks...the Crucial DDR500? or lower latency DDR400's?

 

[suicidalpigeon]

tccd equiped 3200's could go to 250 with the right gear.

 

[mckinneycharles]

the problem is that I get errors in WoW when running this RAM at even 400 in dual-channel (running SPD). I guess it could definately be a board problem, or just a WoW problem, as I get errors in no other games, but seeing as how I'm upgrading RAM anyway, suggestions on low-latency that can definately handle dual-channel 400 even (the Crucial RAM I have now has been reported to have issues at this speed) would be great.

 

[mckinneycharles]

bump for suggestions before work is done 🙂