Improving the performance of my machine

[skaler]

I have an ASUS A8N-E motherboard with an Opteron 170 processor, a GeForce 7900GS card with 256megs(PCI-E), 1 gig of Crucial CAS2 latency ram, and am using the on-board audio chip, even though I own an Audigy2 ZS card that currently resides in another machine.
I have never overclocked anything, and don't know how. I'm playing Half Life 2 with the fakefactory cinematic mod, and find some stuttering and pauses. Also, I looked into downloading Half Life 2 The Lost Coast, but STEAM tells me that my CPU is a 2000MHz unit and the minimum requirement is a 2200Mhz. My question:Is it reasonable to overclock my Opteron to 2200, or is that going too far? It has a Zalman cooler on it, but I don't know which model. Also, would bringing the Audigy card into the system help anything?
I don't know how to overclock, as I said, but I understand that the motherboard can do that from within the BIOS. I have it updated to the latest, 1013. Can anyone either tell me how, or point me to a website that has a tutorial? I think the memory has to be clocked down, and then the front side bus has to be increased? At this point, that is just so much Greek to me.
Thanks.

 

[Noema]

Half Life 2 with the Cinematic mod will stutter unless you have more than 1GB of RAM, simply because some of the textures are so huge that it has to constantly swap with the hard drive. Not much you can do outside getting more RAM, or removing the mod.

As for Steam telling you that your Opteron is not enough...don't believe it for a second! It's using Pentium 4 standards to measure CPU power, by sheer clock speeds! Which is nonsense, because a C2D E6400 runs at 2.1GHz...do you think such a processor (which beats the snot out of a P4 3.4, and even higher clocked P4s) is not capable of running HL2: Episode 1? A proverbial 'ROFL' is in order.

Your Opteron is fine for that game. It's no doubt more powerful than my A64 3200+ and I get 60+ fps in HL2: Episode 1.

 

[dfuze]

I think if you want more performance, you'll get more bang by getting 2gb of ram in your machine. I've gone from 1 to 2 and it is amazing. And I noticed a huge difference between 4x512 and 2x1gb chips as well (with 2 being much faster in my case).

 

[Arcada]

You definitely need 2GB of RAM.

If you dont give it enough vcore when overclocking sometimes you can get a stable OC, but it will actually stutter. I'd probably just buy a new CPU with current prices myself.
The X2 4800+ is a pretty decent deal at $240.

 

[chusteczka]

I think the cpu is fine. When you get bored with the default speed, that cpu will overclock nicely. You can read up on overclocking in Zebo's Quick and dirty A64 clocking guide. There are people in the forums, such as myself, who have the Asus A8N-E motherboard and would be willing to walk you through the steps if needed.

For now, the best solution is to purchase more memory. There are currently two options:

• Purchase two 512MB sticks of RAM to add to your current two 512MB sticks of RAM for 2GB (4 x 512MB)
• Pull out the 2 sticks of RAM you currently have and purchase 2GB of RAM (2 x 1GB).

The socket 939 memory architecture works best with 2 sticks of RAM rather than 4 sticks of RAM. This is because two sticks of RAM are able to operate on a 1T memory timing while four sticks of RAM require the 2T memory timing setting. The 2T memory setting operates at a significant performance disadvantage to the 1T setting. This setting is labeled "1T/2T Memory Timing" in the BIOS for your motherboard and is the last setting in the list of memory settings. Therefore, (4 x 512MB) sticks of RAM will perform slower than (2 x 1GB) sticks of RAM. However, the (2 x 1GB) sticks of RAM will cost twice as much as the two extra 512MB sticks of RAM.